Anyhow, here's where I am. The footwells are nearly finished, I've cut all the metal and just need to weld on the last three panels. A quick coat of paint for that and then I can move on.
I have three sheets of metal in the garage now. Two sheets of aluminium, one sheet of steel, all three are 2 metres by 1 metre. They came from The Metal Store, and while the final bill was £124, that was including delivery to the door which was proving to be the most challenging part of sourcing it locally. Because I needed it in pretty large sheets (as opposed to the steel bar which could be transported much easier), even if I could have bought it from the next door neighbour it would have still been challenging to get it home.
Comparing it to current prices though, I don't think I paid too much over the odds. There are people who seem to get huge swathes of metals for pennies, but I seem to have to pay normal prices.
The two aluminium panels are going to be for the rest of the cabin (so two side panels, the floor panels and the transmission tunnel cover), with the steel mainly there for the fuel tank. I gave up trying to source a ready made one, there were some second hand ones but they were either tatty, overpriced or a fair distance away (and fuel tanks don't transport well). And on the subject of fuel tanks, that'll be my next job after I finish the welding for the footwells.
The footwells have actually been done a little differently to the book (and a typical seven). For my car with the Healey body, it's actually more important to me that the interior is better than the exterior (at least on the frame). I also want to give my feet as much room as possible, as it's a bit tight in there. So I've decided to have the forward section done so the metalwork is on the outside of the footwell, then the rearward section is done so the metalwork is on the inside. This gives me a smooth interior surface, but an extra couple of inches at the bottom.
This does create some interesting challenges though. The main one is how it fixes to the frame. The welded panels are easy, but the aluminium panels are to be rivetted where there is nothing to rivet to! This is mainly around the seat back panel, as under normal circumstances that panel would cover all of the frame. I'm thinking if I can make that panel slightly oversized then I can create 'tabs' round the outer edge. Whether this works in practice I have no idea, but I'll give it a go.
