Couldn't leave it alone

When I purchased the car one problem was the bonnet. The previous owner had changed the Sromberg carbs for SU HS6 carbs. The problem is these carbs give no clearance under the bonnet and one fine day someone had dropped the bonnet from a height a made one hell of a convex dent in the bonnet. Over time this paint had then cracked and so the car I got my hands on had a large dent with a big hole in where the paint had broken away and fallen off. I know I said I was going to practice and all that but once I'd gotten that 80 grit paper in my hand there was no stopping me.

No going back now!

Well it all started pretty well with the 80 grit paper and after I'd set about the dent with a hammer trying to reduce it a bit I filled the hole with P38 filler and sanded with 600 grit paper. Now the problem is I couldn't get rid of the dent totally as the bonnet clearance is zero and if I made the dent concave so I could fill it flat I would have a problem and I dont want to raise the bonnet any higher and give crap panel gaps. So I settled for an improvement, a filled hole that wasnt as big a dent.

Then came the really tricky bit. I sanded back a larger area and then primed the area to approx 6" x 6" and then used my Rimmer Bros aerosol paint to hopefully touch it up. To cut a long story short after X amount of coats and leaving to dry I came back to it 24 hours later. I then flat the area with 1500 wet paper with a touch of soap and then used a rubbing compound. It was at this point I realised I hadn't put enough paint on as I could see some primer coming through so I flatted the whole lot back again now about 12" x 12" and started to spray about 10 coats leaving about 5 - 10 minutes between each. Again 24 hours passed and after flatting a few dodgy bits and using the rubbing compound I then used some Autoglym Resin Polish and finally waxed it. After the previous effort and some serious panic setting in, I think the result is pretty good and the blend isn't bad. I think if you didnt know it had been done you probably wouldnt notice it unless you gave it some real scrutiny.

What a relief!

Another thing has cropped up in the mean time. The brakes seem to be sticking a little bit from time to time so that another one for the list...