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Daimler Dart restoration

by Esmond Tearle

Tango'd (tan) interior

Well then, if you have been following the progress of my Dart project you will remember how I told you last month that the body had been removed from the chassis and the chassis had been sent away for bead blasting. I considered that this was an essential part of the restoration. It seemed rather pointless going to such great lengths to restore a car without doing a proper job. In any case, by now I was well into a major rebuild.

I received a call from Brian, informing me that the chassis was back and on trestles in the workshop. When I went over to take a look and saw it sitting there in a fresh coat of etch primer to protect the metal from corrosion, it looked pretty good. Well it did from a distance. There were a couple of small holes in the front tube which was also a bit dented. The rest looked fine. That is until I took a close look at the offside rear spring hanger.

Crispy metal that was once body support.

A very noticeable crack was evident and it was now very obvious to me why the car had previously sat low on the offside rear corner. To be honest it was quite frightening as if this had been missed and the car used on the road, I think that the rear axle would not have been long in parting company from the rest of the car. The end result could have meant that at best I ended up in a hedge. That is of course assuming I was lucky. If not so lucky, then the prop shaft would possibly have stuck in the road and launched the car. Either way I think that learning to play a harp may have been on the cards.

I took a very close look at the area and the next thing scared me even more. Some clown had at some point in the car’s life, tried to carry out a repair to the cracked area, obviously with the body still in place. He had actually welded along only one edge. There was fresh air between the two bits of metal with what resembled pigeon dung hanging from the other.

Spring hanger crack.

Detached spring hanger

I prodded the semi detached spring hanger and it actually moved! Then I pulled it with one hand and it literally came away. The metal of the actual chassis didn’t look good beneath where it had been sitting. It was totally hidden from view before.

I was at this point I began asking myself what I had bought. When I first went to see the car, it actually looked half decent.

Brian said it wasn’t a problem that couldn’t be put right. I knew that spring hangers are available from David Manners the Daimler specialist so it would be a case of ordering a pair of new ones and have both replaced as if one had gone, then the other was probably in a poor state too.

I told Brian I would let him know as soon as the new ones arrived, but Brian had other ideas. He wanted to make a pair of new spring hangers from scratch. There was no point in buying fabricated ones when it was something he could do himself.

On my next visit to the workshop I was shown that things had already progressed. One new spring hanger was already made, and the other was already started. The old front tube had gone and a new piece was ready to be welded into place. Brian had completely removed the sections of chassis where the spring hangers were previously mounted (or not as the case may be) and new sections had been welded into place. To be honest, I couldn’t even see the join. I had already decided to upgrade the chassis to the same specification as the later cars by having two side beams added, as this helps no end to combat body flexing. Flexing was a problem with the earlier cars and Daimler actually fitted side beams to the ‘B’ specification cars. I think that just about every earlier model of the Dart has probably been strengthened in this way by now. My two new beams had already been made and were in place.

The brand new spring hanger in place.

The next step was for me to do a complete paint job on the chassis. I had considered powder coating, but after talking to a number of people I had received very mixed opinions. In general it looked great, but the down side was that if an area became damaged then it would allow water it get beneath the surface and the dreaded tin worm could do it’s worst totally unnoticed. The Dart sits very close to the ground and I remember from the days when I had my first one, that it had bottomed out a few times. With a nice shiny smooth black finish it would not be a major task to touch in any scrapped areas.

I decided that the way to go was with the good old Finnigans Smoothrite. Brian delivered the chassis back to me but as I wasn’t here at the time, the guy over the road let him leave it there which was very decent. I then had the job of lugging it across the road with my son at one end and me at the other. That thing is heavy!

One restored Dart chassis with new spring hangers, side beams and front tube. Awaiting paint.

Once it the garage, I had the chassis mounted on a couple of trestles and gave it a thorough clean with Finnigans thinners so as to avoid any reactions when the paint was applied due to grease being present. Just by carrying it around in the course of moving it back home, it was likely that grease had got onto the primed surfaces, so it made sense to play it safe.

I think that Finnigans is wonderful stuff, but when you apply it, each coat has to be applied within a few hours of the previous one. If you leave it too long between coats, it will react and the only option is to then leave it for a few months to let it fully cure.

I had decided that I could achieve a better overall job if I brushed the paint on, and then any areas that would be visible from under the car could be finished with a spray to make the job look neater. I also timed things so that I started early in the morning to allow for drying between coats. By brushing the paint on, I was able to achieve a thicker coating than a spray would have produced, and using spray cans for the entire job would have worked out much more expensive.

The chassis itself has very few areas that coat be described as rust traps, so that was good. It was a relatively easy job to paint all surfaces and I paid particular attention to nooks and crannies and surfaces that would not be visible when everything was back together and the whole car finished.

I have to say that I am very pleased with the result, it does look very neat.

I attacked any areas that I thought could have been an area for concern with Waxoyl, just to be on the safe side.

The chassis sat in my garage for quite a while before Brian collected it on the back of a transporter as it would have caused a problem keeping it at the workshop, it does take up a fair bit of space. However, despite time marching on, other things were happening behind the scenes.

I purchased a complete kit from David Manners with all the bits and pieces needed to fit the body back onto the newly restored chassis. This includes all new mounting bolts and the spacers that fit between the chassis and the body. The old bolts had seen better days so this was a very necessary part of the job.

At the same time I bought everything needed to rebuild the suspension including new trunnions which can be the cause of problems if they are not properly greased. It made sense to eliminate any future problems by replacing the old ones. Not cheap, but worth it in the long run when you consider that any suspension repairs at a later stage would mean a strip down. Whilst the car was in component form, it made sense to do the work now. It’s pointless cutting corners to save a few quid.

Brian offered to take on the task of painting the suspension components and the rear axle that had already been checked out. The previous colour scheme of mint green and red was something I thought was best done away with.

It still amazes me that a previous owner of the car had obviously spent a lot of money with various garages or so called repairers. From the extent of his colourful repainting, the suspension and even the engine must have been removed from the car at some stage.

Anyway, at the time of writing this installment, I am waiting for everything to be put back into place so that I will basically have the car in pretty much one piece. At least now I can see that we are really getting somewhere, but there is still an awful long way to go.

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