Thanks Richard.classiclife wrote: ↑Thu Apr 22, 2021 9:25 am Excellent progress, Brain, along with interesting technical insights.
Well done and keep up the good work; in addition thanks for taking time out to update the thread which in itself is time consuming.
Regards.
Richard.
After my initial spurt of curiosity in this thread back in April 2020 on construction techniques used on the Consort, it was the idea of removal of the headlining in my grandfather's car that held me back from looking at what was going on above the B pillars in this car. After a year of "should I, shan't I" and other dillydallying, about 4 weeks ago (Monday 22nd March) I resigned myself to the fact that there was no other way than to begin to remove the headlining - and as I got into it, I could see that it was not concealing a Pandora's box.
That plywood side section could easily be filled and put back with the B pillar, indeed I might do that temporarily as I'll need to transport the car somewhere for a respray of the body (with all the doors and wings off the car and windscreens out of the car - I'm currently removing the rear windscreen, which is very troublesome.). I'm also considering putting the head back onto the engine just to get it running, so that I can move the car around under its own 'steam'.
It's a shame that there are no photos of the Daimler factory showing various stages of assembly of various models.
I suspect that they assembled the Consort thus
1. built the cabin floor/sills section onto the rolling chassis, followed by boot floor and the front scuttle
2. erected the aluminium and wood skeleton onto the boot/cabin floor and scuttle - possibly with jigs and cross-bracing to hold it all 'square'
3. then attached pre-shaped boot and sides, the rear windscreen area, the roof, the front windscreen area, welding the parts together and screwing onto the aluminium/wood skeleton in places (there's evidence of hidden screws all over the place).
If I'd known this back in 1975 there is no way that I'd have had 6 people in the back and 4 others in the front with me crammed in the front right - that probably increased the overall weight from 1.5 to ~2.2 tons and yet it survives to this day.