Clarissa meets partner Jim and starts to strip

My partner in the project was my brother in law, Jim Maxwell, and he came down from Thames to look over Clarissa. Like me he got quite a shock over her poor condition and the amount of work required but agreed that if we were going to restore her then it should be done correctly. The amount of work that was required became a huge mental block to me, the more I thought about it the bigger the hurdle it seemed and the deeper I sank into depression. I needed a break so I went to Australia for a week to stay with friends, and with their help I eventually rationalised the problem and recovered from the shock.

While I was away Bill Davies and Steve set to work on Clarissa. Steve took off the outer guards, cleaned them and repaired the parts that were damaged with rust. Then off came the running boards and inner guards - these had to be discarded as they were far too rusty to be repaired, but not before new ones had been made from the pattern. Their aim was to tidy them up before priming and refitting. Bill knew how I was feeling when I went to Australia and wanted to show a dramatic improvement to help me gain a bit of enthusiasm.

On my return I called in to the museum to see what was happening with Clarissa. Bill must have known a thing or two about psychology because I got a huge surprise to see the car with red primer guards and running boards and I had a surge of enthusiasm. Steve, Linda and their children then left to work in the South Island for a time but promised to return next April to work again on Clarissa.

When Steve and his band arrived in April they got straight to work and started stripping the car down to a bare chassis, preparing it for sandblasting and painting, reconditioning the suspension and drive train and reassembling the rolling chassis. There was a lot of work to do.

The heavy doors were removed, with their brass hinges, glass and mechanism still attached. Next came the bonnet: someone must have sat on the bonnet at some stage because it had a sag in the middle. Steve took out the rods and was left with just four panels which with his hammer and dolly he soon had back in shape. They were then taken to Rotorua to be dip stripped and readied for restoration. Then the guards had to be bead blasted and painted. All in all, it took very little time to get a lot of big bits fixed up - and all at an encouragingly reasonable cost.