Today I have been mostly doing woodwork

My first day back on the car since Stoneleigh (more on that later), I wanted to get on with the interior trim parts, so I started by stripping the vinyl trim from its backing hardboard and giving it a good clean. Washing up liquid and scrubbing brush!

I needed to do this because all the backing board is damaged and warped

I need to source the thin foam that covers the board as removal and reuse is a pig - anyone know where you can buy 3-4mm thick foam?

Anyway several hours later here are all the backing boards remade and tested for fit.

I still need to drill the mounting clip holes, which are 13mm diameter, but I need to get a sarrett hole saw for this, as large conventional twist bit drills just tend to drill a strange shaped hole in hardboard.

When complete I am going to give the vinyl a quick paint with vinyl coat paint, as there are surface marks after the cleaning, and the nos rear hatch board donated by Alan Chatterton (which was brown originally) looks really good after 3 coats of vinyl coat.

I then dug out the parcel shelves, which currently look like this

Getting the rivets out is a pain, and left me with blisters, but I got the driver's side unit stripped down like this

the shelf itself looks OK, so I am only going to replace the upright trim, now that I have some millboard and the templates to make it from.

One of the tyres is still going flat too, so I only managed to fix 3 out of 4!

That was all the work for today.

Back to Stoneleigh, although I had a good show, 3 of my visitors were also involved in painting cars professionally. They pointed out various paint defects to me, and suggested that I get a report from a qualified assessor. This I have now done, and his report is a bit depressing. because as well as the dirt which has surfaced in the paint, there are fish eyes (from silicon contamination), some evidence of micro blistering (from trapped water), and pin holes developing from solvents trapped in the primer layer. There's also shrinkage and various other defects are appearing. To rectify it appears that there's a lot of rework to be undertaken, and several panels need stripping back to bare metal. Needless to say this takes some of the enjoyment out of the project, and is certainly going to cause delays while the rectification is undertaken. Additionally some of the exterior trim needs stripping off . I am not a happy bunny!

Hours worked now 786, 6 hours today.