Finally got around to de-skinning my bootlid. Thanks to my super-clever special pliers this was very easy, with no damage to the ali skin. I’ve used a Wurth nylon wheel to remove the paint and several pounds of filler (it’s the American way!), so now a bit of reshaping and some timber repairs, with new steel fixing straps, should see it good again. There was some marked corrosion in the bottom edge flange but not enough to worry about.
Do you have a picture of the pliers. This is a job I will be needing to do in a few years and would like to know what is needed. Did you anneal the aluminum before unbending it as well?
Brilliant, and very effective tools. When you order, you get two sets - one wide and one narrow for the corners. I didn’t anneal before as I was concerned about the timber beneath. Wasn’t a problem, came off without splitting.
Roger
No problem. These pliers removed the ali bootlid skin in a matter of minutes, and the steel door skin took a little longer. All panels were perfectly reusable.
I also have recently done this job removing the skins of two Mark V rear doors. So a word of caution regarding the photos on the evotec website.
The hand using the blue handled pliers is not doing it right, or perhaps just wanted to condense the demonstration into a few frames, and didn’t really care about the door he was using. He has distorted and stretched the lip, and he would have a lot of extra work getting it flat and smooth again.
The unbending of the lip should be done in small increments; bend up a little bit like 1/16" or 1mm, move along, all the way around the lip, then come back and do another 1/16" or 1mm all along, and so on, stopping as soon as you can get the pieces separated. This method minimizes the distortion and stretching of the lip.
You can see that Roger has done it correctly. His lip has no ripples or distortions.
Replacement is the same in reverse, workbench covered with a towel, going all around with a smooth faced hammer, a little bit at a time.
Ouch, yes, didn’t look at the other pictures. Just a mm or so at a time, going round and round the frame, and for the bootlid you only need to lift the top curved edge a tiny bit to break the seal, then you can slide the frame out from under the flange.
You could probably custom-adapt some claw pliers, but the big plus for the Evotec items is the offset handle, which allows the toothed claw in behind the bulk of the door frame.
I have just finished dismantling the timber bootlid frame, as the lower horizontal timber needs to be replaced and, typically for XKs, the entire structure has to be dismantled to get to the main screws.
Interesting - most of the timber is a red hardwood, but the two curved longitudinal side timbers are built up out of thin strips of laminate. Not seen this anywhere else on the car. Presumably because they are curved and need to take the whole weight of the assembled bootlid, which is significant.
The structure is similar to the doors, with steel strips screwed to the timber frame and the ali skin crimped over the steel strips. Oddly on my car the four strips are not the same gauge steel - the top strip and the left longitudinal one are 1.2mm steel, the right longitudinal and bottom transverse strips are 1.5mm. And they are definitely the originals. Whatever was lying around, I suppose. Only the top transverse strip is a simple rectangle, the other three are all curved (very slightly for the two longitudinal strips).
