When I bought my 1964 Sting Ray, I knew that I didn't want to pay for someone else's over priced and over the top concours restoration. Nor did I want to buy an over priced, immaculate, pristine, low mileage curiosity. I wanted something cheap, something that I could drive and fix up at my leisure. The only stipulation I had, was that the car had to be able to be driven, and not be a chicken coupe or a trailer load of parts.

I purchased the car I wanted in 1995. I fixed up a few of the basics which were unserviceable , such as the clutch, brakes, body mounts, suspension bushes, and then drove it for a couple of years. Then in 1997 I took off the mudguard flares, had the body repainted and I replaced the horrible blue buttoned 1970's vinyl upholstery which someone had put in, and I replaced the rubber matting with new mail order carpets from USA. I replaced the wheels and windscreen, added a full compliment of badges and chrome bits and drove the car for a few more years.

The car had obviously seen its fair share of snow and salted roads. The chassis was full of grit and was badly rusted. If it was an Australian car, you would swear it had been used for fishing trips on Fraser Island. I made a number of running repairs over the years. But finally, the chassis flexing became so bad, it was time to remove the body and get serious. Con Milos took the body off the chassis, and stored it for several months while we went to work.

Photograph 1 shows the damage to the left side of the chassis. I have drawn over the photograph to show the extent of corrosion and metal loss. Basically, the chassis had formed a structural hinge at the point shown, and was relying totally on the right side chassis member for flexural strength. This right side member was not all that far behind the left side in terms of corrosion. Investigations showed that the cost of a replica chassis from USA would be prohibitively expensive and time consuming. Individual components such as chassis rail channels are available, from ZIP etc, but we needed to completely rebuild the rear trailing arm pivot area. We decided to repair the damage ourselves.
Photograph 2 shows the result of some drastic surgery on the left side of the chassis. As can be seen, the chassis is securely welded down onto some heavy steel trestles, and the offending steelwork has been cut away to sound metal. All body mount dimensions were checked from the shop repair manual and the chassis was adjusted accordingly. (It had a fair twist as a result of a front end accident and a bend in one rail, probably from a severe grounding on a speed hump or kerb).
Photograph 3 shows a tradesman manufacturing side rail pieces. These were folded to the original tapered trapezoid shape. The writing on one piece says 'LY-TEN' denoting the high tensile steel we used. Basically we had to fabricate every part out of plate. This was achieved by folding the plate and then 'blacksmithing' with hammer, anvil and oxy torch until we had reproduced the original pressings. This was not just a job of welding steel box sections together as is done in replicas cars. We followed the original design in every respect, right down to swaged reinforcements around openings, laps, joggles, indentations in the pressings to accept fuel lines and similar. We even reproduced the original body mounts with captive square nut and folded retainer plate system.
Photograph 4 shows the start of the reconstruction work. We followed the original design exactly, including the method of assembly with plug welds. The only major deviation from the original design is the inclusion of backing plate/sleeves at the main welds. This is a normal precaution taken when butt welding thin walled box sections together. As can be seen from figure 4, we cut the chassis on the diagonal, to provide a more fatigue resistant detail than a straight transverse cut. We also installed the baffles in the longitudinal sections with folded edge pointing forward. This enabled us to fillet weld the baffle to the inside surface of the box section on its strong part, not on the toe of the folded edge.

There does not seem to be any sense in the way the original chassis baffles were installed. We think they were welded in back to front back in 1964, not just on this car, but as part of the design. We were careful not to over reinforce the area around the trailing arm pivot. We did not want to introduce 'hard spots' which may be the source of future cracks. This area of the chassis is a shocker! There are four layers of odd shaped reinforcing plates stacked up on each other. Some of them had incomplete welds or were simply missing welds. This was either because they were inaccessible, purposely not done, or possibly just missed due to poor quality. There was enough steel left for us to deduce the shapes. While on the subject of quality, we noticed that the rear kick ups were offset about 5 mm differently on each side. We thought that the car was jigged when originally welded.

After completely finishing the left side, we repeated the process on the right side. Then we added a fair amount of weld in the areas where the original welders had missed, plus some extra welds in places of high stress. We then completely stripped off every last nut and bolt from the chassis, sand blasted it, painted it with a two pack epoxy and filled it with Tectyl for internal rust prevention.

We then re-assembled all of the running gear, and Con put the body back on. The car still needs some work after this major job, but in the mean time, I am driving it again and loving it.

Col Wolf