I haven't been near the TVRs for a week, because I've had a bit of family business to sort out. Without going into detail, it seems that when shit happens, Mrs Git and I become the default shit-sorters, cos nobody else wants to do it. This says more about everybody else than it does about our competence. Never mind, my inheritance will be a pile of shit to be sorted through...
Anyway, in the middle of all this, I came across a box of old photos, and among them was this:
This is a photo of me in 1979, beside my Sunbeam Alpine that I describe under "Cars I have owned" in the menu over there <---.
When I bought it, it had been resprayed in red, but the paint was hanging off in strips. I rubbed it down and primed it, but in the process, a huge crack developed in the front wing, which had been dented in and crumpled at some point, and then repaired with a 2 inch thick layer of filler on top of the original crumpled metal, without the slight inconvenience of sanding back the paint first.
Even at that tender age, I had developed the sense to know that I had to fix this or lose money, so I knocked out all the filler then beat the wing roughly back to shape, then cut out a section of the worst crumply bits and the rotting wheel arch and headlamp surround. Then I drove the car a couple of streets to my cousin's driveway (I didn't have a drive or access to electricity near my house) and welded a new section of metal (well, two new sections to get the shape right) and a new headlight surround. All of this metal came from the side of an old fridge that had been fly-tipped nearby.
Then I took the car back to my house and annoyed the neighbours by spending days with proper panel beating hammers and dollies, etc to beat the new bits into shape, including reconstructing the shape of the wee wheel arch lip and the flange underneath, before spreading on a thin coat of filler to smooth out the final shape, before painting the whole car white.
Not exactly "concours restoration", but it looked a lot better than it did before!