The first job was to rebuild the rear wings and secure them to the chassis to hold the back half of the shell in the correct position. This was essential as the lower parts of the B posts were very rusty and were going to have to be removed completely and replaced by new fabricated sections. The bulkhead was next. Rust wasn’t a problem; it simply wasn’t there as the previous owner had removed it to create the space for a V8! Fortunately Neil had a spare bulkhead in his pile of bits and this was soon in place along with newly made toolbox panels.

The basic shell was now ready for paint preparation. It was rubbed down to bare metal, filled and painted with no less than five coats of primer ready for the colour to be applied. Here came a problem but not a technical one. Neil had his heart set on maroon but the powers that be in the Y and C club ruled that a 1937 Y had to be either Vineyard Green or Black. Searching through the paint catalogues a Datsun colour was found to be near to Vineyard Green and the decision made to paint the shell with that in two-pack.

Having sorted the chassis and the shell the time consuming work of fitting out began. A nice pair of running boards came, courtesy of Dave Tebb. They fitted perfectly and were soon painted black and fitted with the proper spec rubber. The windows were not so easy. Neil had looked at a lot of Y’s at rallies and had never worked out how they went up and down without falling out and the bare shell in the garage didn’t exactly provide much inspiration! A ring around Y and C club members turned up the wonderful John Argent of Hatfield. John not only let Neil look at his car, he let him take it away and dismantle it to work out how the windows operated . A truly super guy.

With the aid of John Argent’s car Neil soon worked out how to assemble the windows, after freeing off the seized winder mechanisms with heat and penetrating oil and obtaining new runners from Woolies of Peterborough. John’s car also revealed a lot of other detailed information about various brackets and braces that had been removed or rusted away when Neil got his car.

The next job was to tackle the woodwork. It was possible to repair the wood surrounding the rear window but the roof rails were too far-gone and were replaced with a kit Neil managed to acquire. The detail fitting out took a tremendous amount of time, doing lots of work, but seemingly achieving very little. The door panel’s were shot blasted, prepped and painted, the floor boards fitted and the gauges assembled to the dash which was then bolted in place.

With the Y taking real shape it was time to bolt on the wings and other detachable panels. Most of them had come with the car and been restored but the rear offside wing had been to far gone so Neil had a new one made by Ken Arthur, a superb craftsman who was making a complete body for a SS100 Jaguar at the time of Neil’s visit!

Neil kept thinking about the back axle, as although it had been fitted to the car it had not been checked. He had a spare axle, which from the outside looked nearly new, but Neil decided to do the right thing and strip and inspect it first. With tools borrowed from the Y and C club the job was started. The first thing was to spread the rear spring by welding a large nut on a gigantic G clamp tool and using this to compress it. This took forever and despite being really worried that the clamp would slip it was finally possible to undo the shackles and remove the spring. With the axle spit the crown wheel and pinion revealed a complete tooth was missing from the pinion and part of another was missing. Neil managed to locate a replacement CWP and bearings and reassemble the parts with the necessary pre-load.

The Y was now looking like a real car but oh there were so many little parts missing. Neil made a huge list and started searching. The clutch and brake pedals needed return springs. These were found during a trip to the local MG specialist where two clutch slave cylinder return springs for a Morris Minor 1000 were found to be exactly the right length. Walking round the show room Neil put his head inside an MGA to see the Pull Starter and Choke Cables would fit the Y so these were snapped up. They only had the letters C and S on them rather than the complete words that Mr Ford had but beggars can’t be choosers at this stage!

There was a lot of work making and fitting new panels to the body and getting all the gaps right but finally it was ready for painting.

There was a lot of work making and fitting new panels to the body and getting all the gaps right but finally it was ready for painting.