We had originally bought another RR Silver Wraith (Hooper bodied), the delivery of which had been promised for months. We were were badly let down at the last minute and needed to find another car quickly; five weeks in fact!
A friend of ours, Ray Hillier, found this lovely old car that belonged to a long standing client of his. She had been sat in a barn for quite a few years and needed re-commissioning for the road.
Hillier Hill are great people to deal with and are as honest as the day is long! If you are looking fo a RR or Bentley give them a ring.
We needed the car very quickly so, as he had sourced it. I asked Ray to get to work preparing her for an MoT.
With work to the brakes, engine and chassis, it took three weeks to get the car MoT'd and delivered to us. She then went to the painter, Ian Ellis owner of Motor Body Cosmetics in Elvington, for a repaint. We only had two weeks left to strip all the brightwork and get her rubbed down ,painted and re-assembled.
Five of us stripped the car in a day and Ian was left to prepare her for painting whilst I took the boot lids back to my workshop for some major reconstruction - the lower boot lid had been nailed in place! We rebuilt the frame and the panel and fabricated new mountings for it. We then returned to the paintshop to repair the rear body frame with new ash sections whilst Ian continued with the paint preparation at the front of the car.
The paint to the main body was finished on the Thursday of week two so the same five people returned to colour sand the body whilst Ian carried on with painting the bonnet, wheel trims and spats. These were then fitted late in the afternoon ready for colour sanding and for the whole car to be machine polished ready for the brightwork to be re-fitted.
We finished at at the paintshop at 8.30 on the friday night. When I got the car home i fitted the new set of carpets i had made up and valetted the whole interior of the car - all a bit of a rush, but we turned the car round in two weeks!
