{"id":6894,"date":"2013-11-11T09:12:11","date_gmt":"2013-11-11T14:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.monocoque-metalworks.com\/main\/?p=6894"},"modified":"2016-01-06T20:44:44","modified_gmt":"2016-01-07T01:44:44","slug":"e-type-series-1-to-series-2-tail-conversion-recap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monocoque-metalworks.com\/main\/2013\/11\/e-type-series-1-to-series-2-tail-conversion-recap\/","title":{"rendered":"E-Type Series 2 to Series 1 Tail Conversion \u2013 Recap"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hello!\u00a0 – Once again I find myself needing to apologize for a long hiatus between the blog posts…\u00a0 A big reason for that is the car you’ll see below – which is now completed – finally!<\/p>\n

This E-Type has been “the bane of my existence” for most of this year.\u00a0 The project was to supply a Series 1.5 coupe shell in place of the customer’s current Series 1.5 2+2 shell.\u00a0 So, based on the desire to use the customer’s current Series 2 steering components (there are differences in the firewall and front bulkhead), and for the sake of availability and cost, we sourced a Series 2 coupe shell to build this up from.<\/p>\n

Also worthy of note is that the customer originally wanted to go full Series 1.\u00a0 But with the steering differences, and the interior differences, it just made more sense to stick with Series 1.5, which gave us the Series 1 look, but the ability to use the SEries 1.5 components from their 2+2 donor.<\/p>\n

SO – in early 2012, I found a Series 2 coupe donor in Connecticut, brought it home, and disassembled it.\u00a0 The plan wa to convert the shell to a Series 1 tail while restoring it with the usual new floors and sills, and also swap all of the “coupe only” items for his current “2+2 only” items – door internals, 1\/4-windows, interior drip rail trim, console, etc…<\/p>\n

I know this shell was on the rougher side of things when I bought the donor car, but as usual, my optimism got the better of me, and at the time, it was what was available, and so I dove in.<\/p>\n

The shell turned out to be a DISASTER – it is the roughest one I’ve done to date.\u00a0 I love a challenge, but this was ridiculous!\u00a0 And so on many, many days this year, I would head out the the shop with every intention of diving into this car, only to be disgusted by the condition of the shell, and then wander off and work on bonnets or something.\u00a0 And every time I DID get into it, things just got worse and worse the more you peeled back the layers, and I’d soon jump back off it in disgust…<\/p>\n

In addition, the deterioration was so deep – AND, previous bodgers had gone CRAZY on this thing with overlapped patches and bondo and you name it, that we couldn’t even blast it properly, and alot of the internal sections were still “as-received” and there was alot of hand-stripping of undercoating, surface rust, etc. as we went – so it wasn’t pretty to work on either – or very pretty to blog…<\/p>\n

Well, I’m happy to say that I did finally push through and get her done, and NOW she’s something I’m pretty proud of, since as we joked all Summer and Fall, we basically “built a new E-Type under an original roof” – if you draw a line 2 inches ABOVE the rear bumper seam, and take that all the way to the firewall, we replaced EVERYTHING below that – inside and out – and then some!<\/p>\n

I have put together TEN blog entry drafts with photos, and over the next week I hope to go through and add captions to the photos to take this shell from start to finish.\u00a0 I just finished the car last week, and I’ll do one final entry of a good photo shoot of the finished product – outside.<\/p>\n

I actually already blogged most of this conversion earlier this Summer when I did it, but I’m just going to recap that and start here – adding in some shots of the pieces we made for the Series 1 tail, etc. – Enjoy!<\/p>\n