I purchased my ‘E’ type back in 2006 with the full intent of doing a quick restoration and get the thing
back on the road. Funny how things work out, the car was much, much worse than I had first thought! But that’s the way things go sometimes!!
Still, I actually now owned an ‘E’ Type.
The car was going to need a lot of work. The engine was out of the car as it had blown up at some time in
it’s life. This was not a problem as I could get it rebuilt, the only thing it had been left outside with the sump off for the past 10 years! I wasn’t going to worry too much about that for a while.
First job was to get the car stripped. The bonnet had been de-seemed badly by someone, they had placed brazing strips of metal over the wing joints and then added bucket loads of filler to hide their poor workmanship.
What this had caused was water to get underneath and rot away at the wing and bonnet edges. A new bonnet would be required, what else would I find??
The bonnet weighed a ton it took 3 of us to lift it off! This really should have sent alarm bells ringing, but still I continued in the hope that the rest was going to be much better.
As the strip down continued it became clear that this was a car in a very bad state! The engine frame had rotted through; the floors had been plated over so it looked like an early flat floor car! I started to ask myself “What on earth had I bought.” Many people told me that the tub was going to beyond repair and that I should get a new or second hand one in better condition! But, I decided against this and that I would get it fixed, mainly because I am a stubborn old git and I wanted to prove people wrong!
It was then I remembered a friend of mine who had done some restoration work on ‘E’ Types in the past, so I gave him a call and begged him for help!!!! He had a spare body jig that was not needed at that time, so I was able to borrow it.
Once I got the body on the jig, thankfully everything lined up, so at least the body was straight if very corroded. The one part of the tub that looked ok was the roof. The rest would need a lot of work!
This project is still ongoing. I have not set myself too much of a dead line as there is a lot of work to be done. I am in the process of gathering all the parts that are required in readiness to repair the tub.
As things progress with this restoration I will add the details onto this page (with pictures!!)
