Factory undercoating on my BN1,

This week I made a visit up to Sydney to visit some of my fellow car buddies.
I test fit one of my new Tonneau covers on a friends BN1, and got to catch up and talk Healey's -
Of course while I was in the area I made a quick stop in to see my BN1 at Jetstream Auto and Custom.
Jason has the chassis all rigged up in a rotisserie and he's already cut off the old rotten outer sills, as he's preparing it for wet blasting.

He tried using a pressure washer on the underside to clean off the mud and expose the original undercoating on the rear chassis around the rear axle. - What he discovered was quite interesting!

Here's some good pics of the underside condition - the front cross-member will definitely be getting replaced! as well as the outer sill areas:

Most interestingly though, It has been found in the past that the factory seems to have applied a small amount of undercoating - by hand, to only a few surfaces of the rear chassis area:
Often under the boot floor, (sometimes including the protruding gas tank!) - and on the vertical boot bulkhead surface immediately behind and over top of the rear axle.

Most cars have shown this undercoating applied before the body was finally painted, so the black undercoat would have been painted body colour.

However, my car seems to exhibit the undercoat being applied over the paint!
There does not appear to be any undercoating under the blue body colour on my car, nor was any found under the boot floor at all!

What does turn up is black undercoat, clearly brushed on by hand, on top of the blue paint-  only on the 2 bulkhead panels behind and over the rear axle.

Of course the first thing that comes to mind is when was this applied? is it indeed factory? - it certainly looks like it is and, fits the previous descriptions of location and style of hand brushing - but this ones over the paint! ? 

There you have it concours guys - the plot thickens!

In other news, I've packed up my original front and rear shocks and will be sending them out east to be rebuilt at Apple Hydraulics.

Until next time -