The bodywork on the car was wonderfully well built, and had benefited from being dry stored for the vast majority of its life.
Most of the bodywork is of aluminium over an ash frame. Ash is considered excellent for stability, and aluminium does not corrode easily. This means that the bodywork is very solid, pretty close to how it left Sanderson and Holmes in 1927.
The main problem was that Percy Collinson's colour scheme was very much not to our taste. We conidered various options, then decided that because the original colour, according to the old Log Book, was grey, a two-tone grey was called for. A supplier was consulted, many shade cards were pored over, and we settled on two shades of grey which were not "greeny-grey" nor "bluey-grey". Of course, the finished car looks "greeny-grey" when parked near trees, and "bluey-grey" when the sky is blue.
The front scuttle, and the panels below it, are made of steel. The panels to the rear of the door hinges are aluminium. The windscreen frames are of cast aluminium.
The boot lid had been closed on an object which was too tall, causing a slight bulge. Attention with a hammer and a little filler made this fade away.
Cast aluminium window frames need a fair bit of cleaning up and priming.
Progress was made. Our Daimler returned home.
Lots more rubbing down and priming ensued. In the process, I think I found traces of the original grey mentioned in the log book. There was not much to be found.
I was the one who sprayed the front wings. My first attempt at paint spraying was not a great success, and I ended up doing a lot of polishing out of flaws. I decided that my dad was better with the spray gun.
The roof of the car was masked off. No paint wanted there!
The rear wings were masked up and sprayed. Without the hideous red, the car looks much more sedate.
With summer approaching, and its inevitable increase in insect population, we picked a nice warm day to spray the main panels pale grey. Disaster! The day was too warm and we used too little thinner. The result was a speckled (well, lumpy really) finish. It took a day to rub it down.
A few days later,, a few degrees cooler, and a bit more thinner in the spray can. The result was paint with a shine! Not the finished article of course, there's the polishing out of the inevitable dust marks, but that's my task for the following weekend organised.
On the Sunday, we rolled the car outside and stripped off the masking.
From the picture above to the one below, took all of half an hour. All that trim was just waiting on the sidelines!
