1934 Wolseley 9 Restoration
Reproduced from the Wolseley World Issue 126 - March/April 2007.
It all started a few years ago, we saw the car advertised as a 'project' and then went over to see her.
The car was sat in a barn, the big headlights looking kind of sad and were sort of saying 'please buy me and get me out of here'
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
So we did.
The Restoration team consisted of just a couple of people.
First is me, and my name is Keith Bartlam, I am an aircraft engineer, and have been for a long time too, which is where I gained most of my skills. I have always had an interest in the vintage car world and the old engineering skills in general.
Secondly there is my wife, Michelle, but we all know her as Shelley.
During the restoration Shelley undertook all the sewing and the tedious but important jobs around the car.
We started by stripping the car back to bare bones, to see what was wrong and how bad the damage was. It was quite surprising once we got there, as we did not find a great deal wrong.
Once all the floors were ripped up and we could see better, the wooden frame was remarkably in good condition. All the chassis rails were good and not a lot of rust about at all.
We pulled all the roof lining down and the sunshine roof lining off because the material was to say the least well past it.
While we were there we replaced the floor with new wood instead of putting the old back, it wasn't bad, but while we there it seemed like a good idea to replace it.
The only thing I found that was a nightmare was the wiring. Because of it's age the cable had gone brittle, so as we were moving thing's around it was cracking and breaking up all over the place.
So this is where the next person in the restoration comes along and that is my brother Alan, he is an electrician both automotive and domestic, good job really, so he was the one who done the re-wire, I was confident of a good job and I knew the car was in good hands.
While Alan was re-wiring I thought I would continue to strip the car. Everything came off, doors, windscreen, well everything that could come off .......... did.
As I was dismantling everything it was the turn of the doors, I completely dismantled them and got them ready to be painted.
All the window channels were replaced and all the rubbers.
During the stripping the only piece of rotten wood was under the rear window. The rotten wood was stripped out and replaced with new.
It was a bit more difficult than it looks, the hard part was getting the window out to do the repair, with all the old putty and all.
Once we had done all the repairs to the wood and Alan had done the re-wiring (and what a pain of a job that was too), we started the task of body work.
So we entered into the days rubbing down and rubbing down and some more rubbing down.
The days of rubbing down got quite dark, and the end seemed so far away.
One of things we had to get done elsewhere was the chroming, so while we were rubbing down and carrying out minor repairs to the body, the chrome was off to get re-chromed.
Another thing that was a very time consuming job with the car was all the woodwork around the windows and doors and the dashboard.
In the past they had been painted black, and they looked horrible, so I thought I would strip them all and take them back to there original wood.
Well that was some job I had undertaken, the paint was like nothing I had stripped before as soon as stripper hit it, it went to jelly, but I started so I had to finish.
What seemed a simple task seemed to take me 100 years to do, but as you will see I think it was well worth the effort. (as you will see later).