1955 Jaguar XK140 roadster - photos

[tonyfoale]

That looks really good! I've never had the skills to do anything like that, spent most of my time learning other skills, many of which are now obsolete since we don't use stuff that way anymore. Should have spent more time on the metalworking stuff that I liked, but got seduced by art and science... I became an excellent technical photographer, but never managed to be artistic at it. Finally got a clue, once SWMBO slapped me upside the head and took a class in machining, which took me 7 years and 3 months, to the day, to complete. Should have been a 8-9month class, if I'd gone full-time. When I call myself an old retarded Master Sergeant, I'm not kidding.

Bill

Glad that you like it. In the film days I also became quite good at the technical side of photography but like you the artistic side eluded me. My formal education was theoretical but I had the good fortune to have had no training in the physical arts of making stuff. I say good fortune because there was nobody to tell me that "you can't do that".

Actually it was much easier to make the Jag based car than it was to repair a Porsche body. I crashed a Porsche in the mid 1970s due to a new tyre being badly fitted the day before. The body was bent like a banana, beyond straightening. I scoured the country for a body shell and found only one. It looked OK but when I got it back, it became obvious that much of it was rusted out and would not have enough structural integrity. A previous owner had stuffed newspaper in the missing sections and covered it with filler and paint. I have very poor sheet metal skills but it needed fixing although "expert" body people told me that it was too far gone.

This shows the state of the sills;
Click for full size

After a bit of TLC;




On the road again;


I hated that work and I would never do anything like it again. Whereas building the Jag based car was no worries at all.