And now the icing on the cake! The front left wing lip. Remember I said it was the wrong shape! Under about 10-15 pounds of lead, filler and paint. Notice the front and rear wings, completely rounded when they should be square at the top. Today, I would spot it immediately, but at the time, not having owned a Frua before, it looked fine to me. I knew both sides were not exactly the same, but the paint was shiny and it looked OK.
Well here it is:
All 6 pieces of it! Definitely corrosion! Truly Amazing what you can hide! The welder did not even try to grind the welds, he just put a huge amount of lead above them! The amazing thing, is that until the lead started melting and falling on the floor, we had no idea how bad it was. It should not be too difficult to fix since there is no inner wing to worry about. All these patches are welded on top of each other.
Since the car started in Belgium, then went to Switzerland to end up in England, what happened to old world craftsmanship? The worst thing is, who ever worked on it, went through a lot of headache and probably through a lot of labor to do such a poor job and doing it properly would not have resulted in that much more labor.
I think who ever did it did not have the necessary skills to do it right in the first place. This is why one always takes a chance buying a vintage automobile without documented history throughout. Buyer be aware!
Emmanuel [
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