More Ramblings about 1969 E-Type 2+2 coupe. My girl Jazz.

5 th Edition… or is it Addition?

Tires & Body Work ~July 2007

I just keep getting closer and closer to having real money invested in my girl, Jazz. Her latest expenditures include a new headliner, matching visors, in a proper Jaguar, vintage grey… or is it gray, and a new black leather console arm rest. Anyway, that work was done by a local craftsman over on 15 th Street. That girl Jazz is getting a little less scruffy every time I invest some more money. As of lately, I’ve also had to put new tires on her… and when I say had to… I mean HAD to. We were out on I-44 in the Westbound lanes checking our acceleration, we were passing a couple of semi’s when I felt a little shudder in the rear end, followed a few seconds later by a terrible who mp that seemed to lift the car clear off the highway. I knew something bad had happened, I didn’t know what, but I expected the worst. After pulling over onto the shoulder, I looked at the gauges… and they were all normal, with the exception of the oil pressure gauge, which at the time was removed for cleaning and repair. Outside the car, things were obviously NOT normal. While all of the old Michelin Redline Radial tires were still up, the right rear tire tread was absent. Wait, absent isn’t the right word… GONE is the best description. From the time I lost the tread, Jazz was rolling on the steel belt, which continued to hold air in what was left of the tire. I actually drove Jazz home on just the steel belt. But what really got me, was that I had put a bad, bad, boo boo on Jazz’s bottom. The outside sheet metal of the spare tire compartment had been crushed in with a dent the size of a football. Now, that’s football US, not GB, but it’s still a really big dent. I had to deflate the spare tire to get it out of the boot. I should have replaced those tires a couple of years ago… but hadn’t because there was always something else that Jazz wanted first. I don’t think they’ve made Michelin Redlines commercially in probably twenty years. So, I visit with my two Jaguar Guru’s… you know them as Scott Young and Larry West. Since I have never done auto body work with even a hint of success, I look to these guys for help, advice, and guidance in all things… Jaguar… again, and again. Scott claims to know near nothing about auto body work, (and I know he’s lying, but there’s always Larry, so I’ll save Scott for something later, and more complicated… like electrical… or engine diagnosis, or one of those other damn things that is guaranteed to come along when you insist on driving a thirty-eight year old Jaguar. OK, so I see Larry at the board meeting, and he leads me to believe that he’s actually gonna help… but I find out later that his idea of help consists of telling me that I broke it, so now I gotta fix it MYSELF… and here is the bloody body book to borrow… last printed in 1969. As he’s running me out the front door, his parting advice is that… “to repair a dent, you start at the last bit of damage first… in that every dent happens in a sequence… you just have to reverse the process that actually created the dent.” He kinda sounds like a Guru…

doesn’t he. The one thing that he did NOT tell me is that when smoothing out a dent listen to the echo. As you hammer on the dent, a hollow sound means you keep tapping on that spot, but when the echo starts to sound solid, then move your tapping further into the dent. While I would not care to take on

more complex repairs as a vocation, at least now, I now have a fairly complete set of auto body hammers, dollies, and spoons. All are heavy steel forgings with little inclination to bend or flex. The hammers come in a variety of faces. Some are round, some are square, some are flat, and some are domed. According to the materials I’ve been reading on the subject, (Larry’s book, again), you hammer on a dent at the speed of fifty to one hundred strokes per minute. You hold the hammer

lightly… and you don’t hit too hard. The idea is to return the metal to its original shape… and NOT to stretch it.

Dollies are those odd shaped anvils you hold in your hand against the opposite side of the dent when you are hammering. The dolly absorbs the kinetic energy of the hammer blow, and returns a like amount of force to “run out” the dent. Ideally, the dolly will have a radius similar to the intended curvature of the body panel, so that you are not creating additional damage to the boo boo. You can also use a dolly as a hammer, but it is hard to hang on to, and really bounces your wrist bones. I don’t recommend much of this. You can also use a dolly as a secondary hammer by striking it directly with the hammer. I don’t recommend a lot of this either, because of possible hammer/dolly shattering, and the difficulty of gauging just how much energy is actually being delivered to reverse the original boo boo. Spoons are a more difficult subject. They can be used as round “slapping” hammers, where you are really just trying to get the metal to

“spring” back into place. Other spoons are designed to be struck by a hammer, and deliver the blow across several inches of steel, rather than just the spot where the hammer actually hits. Some spoons are used as levers from inside a reinforced panel to separate and smooth the outside body skin from behind a metal frame member, as in a hood, a trunk, or a door. OK, I know that “hood” and “trunk” ought to be “bonnet” and “boot”, but what is the proper nomenclature for “door” anyway? Anybody know? I expected the dent to be a really big deal to fix, but last week, I spent a couple of hours working on the damage, and I just about have Jazz ready for a little sand paper, a little Bondo, some more sand paper, and then, some primer. And just for drill, Jazz has no rust on her bottom... which I have got to know would have made the repair job a whole lot tougher. And, by the way, Larry’s book was so good, I bought my own copy… on ebay. It’s title, Bill Toboldt, “auto body repairing and repainting”, circa

1969. Now I’m thinking new paint… maybe Midnight Blue. Larry says I have to paint Jazz myself… I’m not so sure… I think Jazz would like a better paint job… as I’ve yet to paint a car… successfully.