Buyer's Guide: Inner Body
Healey Journal
A Buyer’s Guide: Criteria for Buying a Rustbucket: Potential Inner Body Faults
3) The Inner Body comprises the floors, front and rear bulkheads, inner wings and a few other miscellaneous pieces. In general, the higher off the ground they are the more likely they are to be healthy. Points to watch are:
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The sill & main floor with rot along their join. Also note the rot in the joints with the radius box and wheel arches- "fixed" with a heavy plastering of body filler. |
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a) The floors will tend to rust through. The interior floor has a front section for the footwell that is often in fair condition since it may be sprayed with leaking engine oil. The main floor has no such protection and it is often rusted through, particularly where water may settle. The rear floors run from the rear outrigger to the rear bulkhead. They too may rust. All floors should be carefully inspected. Seat runners should be inspected too, for they may seize up. On my car the floors were all rusted and will be replaced. The rear transmission tunnel and the floor panels alongside the transmission were useable. The foot well side panels were both rusted for the bottom 4 inches for which replacement sections would be fabricated. (Update: I've since decided to fully replace these along with the reinforcing panels and "A" pillars.) See the inner body section for a discussion and photos of the sills and mainfloors susceptibility to rot.
b) The boot floors should also be carefully inspected. They too are very susceptible to rust. My car had boot flooring that had been patched in places and it was heavily rusted in others. I choose to replace it all. Replacement flooring is readily available. The fuel tank was missing, and a used one was bought through the UK club magazine. Upon removing the boot flooring I discovered that the upper parts of the rear cross member and the rear chassis rails had suffered from rust through holes as well.
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Both the inner wing and front panel were badly affected. |
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c) The Inner wings are also susceptible to rust. They, and the underside may have been undercoated. This may do more to hide faults than it did to protect the car. A small screwdriver may be used to test how solid a surface truly is. This may be a useful test on chassis sections too. The rear inner wings and wheel arches were rusted on mine and will be replaced, although not shown they too were susceptible to rust at joints with the outer wings. The front inner wings are useable though a replacement section needs to be fabricated where they attach at the front. This is a common problem.
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Typical Healey rot in the "A" pillar. |
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d) The door pillars both front and rear are susceptible to rust. Bottoms of the front "A" pillar, its reinforcing panel and the lower section of the outer footwell panel will often need replacement. I find it very odd that no one seems to make these replacement sections- whole panels, yes, but just the rotten bits most often replaced, no. In my case it didn't really matter- I'd just as soon replace the panel and have the whole known to be good rather than fool around with fabricating odd shapes and sizes. I suspect replacing the whole is easier than the fabrication chores....
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Copyright © 2005 James M. Wilson All rights reserved.