In a long running multi-year amateur restoration there are going to be mistakes and do-overs and there is no more nerve wracking a time than re-installing newly painted panels. My boot lid was a prime example.

This is a post-60K TR3A with the tubular boot lid cross brace that is bolted to the boot lid and the raised plinths on both the bonnet and the boot lid. This is how the underside of the boot lid looked the day I removed it from the project.

There is a lot going on under the right hand hinge. Not only is the cross brace attached under one of the hinge bolts but the boot support is also attached via the hinge bolts.

When I stripped off the paint and examined that right hand plinth I could see that there was a lot of damage. There were cracks, holes and distorted metal. This is where alarm bells should have been going off but what did I know back in 2011.

I welded up the holes and cracks and rebuild the plinth with lead and it looked ok. We proceeded to do the surface prep and get the boot lid ready to paint.

After wet sanding and buffing it looked pretty good and I took it home to do the final assembly and re-install it back on the car.

I realized as I was installing the boot support and the cross brace that something did not look right. The end of the brace was spanning the plinth and the bracket for the boot support was also pressing on the sheet metal. I went back and checked my disassembly pictures and notes and saw no evidence of any washers or spacers to hold the stuff away from the sheet metal so I went ahead and tightened the hinge bolts.

It was only when I flipped the boot lid over on the bench that I saw the consequences of proceeding without thinking this through. The end of the cross brace had been pushed into the boot lid and a crack had appeared close to the hinge plinth.

I may have said some bad words around this time.

I was afraid that I had cracked the metal but after sanding off the paint in that area it was clear that the metal had distorted and cracked the paint but the metal and my lead work had not been involved. So no welding or lead needed and we just used a hammer and dolly to fix the small bump in the metal and spent another afternoon sanding the top of the boot lid and re-painting it.

This time on re-assembly I added some washers under the brace bar so that when this is tightened we are tightening against the flat section of the hinge plinth and not pressing the end of the cross brace into the boot lid.

So a lesson learned the hard way but not catastrophic. Now on to the front wings.