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First lot of top coat

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Ross sent me a couple of pictures today. The first lot of top coat on the underside of the tub.

 

 

 

 

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Sunday run to Goolwa

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We go for regular E Type runs on a Sunday morning, weather permitting. Today we ended up at Goolwa.

 

 

On the way back we dropped in to see Ross. Bonnet is reassembled and about to be pulled apart prior to painting.  My body shell is in primer and being blocked back prior to putting some colour on the underside.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Coopercraft

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One of the front hubs on my coupe has worn splines which make an annoying clunk on braking or acceleration. So I bought a new set of hubs a while back. I had also bought myself some upgraded front calipers from CooperCraft in the UK. I haven't got around to fitting either as it's a fiddle. Essentially you need to pull down the whole axle unit and rebuild it to replace the hubs.

Then, with all of the front suspension bits from the roadster sitting in the shed it occurred to me that as they are identical I could reassemble the whole axle unit and do a straight swap. I did the assembly today and they look lovely with the new discs, shiny zinc and Greenstuff pads.

All I need is a new set of bottom ball joints and I can drop the old ones off and bolt the new ones straight on. That's about an hour's work depending on how troublesome the ball joints are. The originals will go onto the roadster. I'll still have to strip them and reassemble them with new hubs but at least I can drive the coupe in the interim.

 

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Coupe update

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I've been sorting out a few irritating problems with the coupe.
First and formost has been poor tune, with a miss under load. This has been going on since the engine rebuild and I finally admitted defeat and took the car back to see John Hurley. The problem turned out to be that the piston in the middle carby was sticking because the jet wasn't centred. John sorted this out and tuned the car and it runs perfectly. I drove the coupe out to see Ross when I went there. It is now a joy to drive. I have also replaced the exhaust cam cover gasket and now no oil leak!

I fitted the 5" chrome wires that came with the 3.8 roadster to see whether the car handles differerently on them. Both sets of wheels are fitted with 205 70 tyres and to be honest there's really not much difference between them. The wheels have cleaned up a treat and have brand new Pirellis fitted.
In doing this though I noticed a loud knock had appeared in the front left suspension. On checking I found the sway bar link arm had pulled away from its bush; the washer I had used was too small. Easy mistake, but easy fix and no damage done.

 

Other things I've fixed are some rattles from the bash plates under the engine frames, and I have finally found the source of the petrol smell from the tank. Turns out the flexible filler pipe hose was too big and leaked. Replaced with some difficulty, it cured the petrol miasma. I still have too much exhaust smell in the cabin but that's a job for another day.

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Apologies and an update

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Apologies to my readers; there has been a bit of a hiatus over the last few months because while I am waiting until the roadster body is ready there's little I can do.

Current state of play:

Bonnet. I drove out to see Ross two days ago. There are 14 individual panels that make up the bonnet, held together by about 100 1/4" bolts and a lot of setscrews. It's been disassembled, paint stripped and grit blasted and all of the dents have been knocked out. The underside of the nose was pretty crumpled. otherwise the panels are pretty straight and rust free. Ross reckons he'll have the guards done this week and will then reassemble it with the newly replated bolts and screws.

 

 

 

Body. All of the metal work on the tub is complete, and Ross has filled it with fish oil and painted the underside with stoneguard. It is painted in primer and ready for blocking back once the bonnet is reassembled. The doors have new skins and are fitted up to the body shell.

Engine. I pulled the engine down 2 weeks ago. It looked to have been recently rebuilt; bores look good, +20 pistons that looked pretty new and pristine looking -10 crank journals. The head though does look to have some internal corrosion and the flywheel is quite scored and will need a serious face.

After a bit of thought I have put aside the temptation of just putting it back together and I'm sending the block off to be resleeved to standard bore with top hat liners. I'll get everything including the head checked and measured, and hopefully will be able to leave the crank as it it with just new bearing shells. I'll still get the block chemically cleaned, get the mains line bored if necessary and rebush the rods. Then balance everything and reassemble with new timing gear and a full head rebuild. Chris reckons he'll have the engine done by the time the body is ready to bring home to my place.

Other ancillaries: IRS complete. Suspension complete. Carbs complete. Cooling system complete. Brakes largely complete; trial assembly of the Kelsey Hayes looks encouraging. Heater box complete. Gearbox done and dusted. Wheels: cleaned, pumped up and trialled on my coupe, seem pretty much brand new.

 

 

Next big PITA job is getting all the chrome redone. Ross has still got the bonnet chromework to make sure it all fits, but I should be able to get that back soon. After my experiences with the last chromers I'm going to try someone different. Hopefull they'll be better.

Roll on End of July!

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Bending the pedals

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2 pictures that nicely demonstrate the differences between the clutch and brake pedals on left and right hand vehicles.

The shinier pedals are from my LHD.

 

 

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Starting to come together

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IRS finished. Carbs finished. Lots of hours but both were a lot easeir than I had imagined.

 The IRS is a beautiful piece of engineering. Very satisfying to reassemble.

 

 

 The carbies look fantastic with the pipes polished.

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Ross has been busy

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Ross has been very busy with the bodywork.

The floor sections under the seats have been replaced with new panels from Robey's.

The rust holes in the boot floor have been cut out and repaired.

The accident damage to the right rear quarter has been fixed.. 

..and the trial fit of the chrome work is complete.

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There's always one little tiny problem...

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I thought that I'd be sensible and rebush the throttle shafts. I couldn't do this myself because you need a good reamer so I sent then off to Midel in Sydney, who returned them having done an excellent job. I specified that they only do the bushes as I was confident that I could refit the throtle stops etc. How hard could it be after all?
However the PO had had this done too, and had used oversized shafts. So the throttle stops, having been overbored, were loose. George at Midel rang me and said I'd need new stops, which I bought.
However when they arrived, they had no holes in them.
Now I was happy enough to drill the shafts to fit the old throttle stops with existing holes. It's easy; you just use the existing holes as guides. But I'd never been confronted by a virgin stop before...
After a lot of thought and a good look at another SU today I did the deed. I bolted the SU body down firmly onto the table on my mill and using a #31 drill as specified, drilled the stop and the shaft in one. Tense?? You could have cut the air with a knife.
But happily all went well. In the end all 3 took about 15 mins including pressing the locking pins in.

 

 

Flushed with success I moved on to the IRS. Today's job was to install the lower wishbone, along with its multitude of Torrington bearings, bearing tubes, spacers seals etc etc.
Essentially the difficulty relates to the deciduous nature of these various accoutrements, while trying to gently fit a heavy lump of steel. Alan B said "it's a 2 man job". The only spare man I had available was my 13 year old son, and try manfully though he might he just isn't strong enough to hold the bugger still for long enough.
Adversity, however, breeds innovation. I turned up a couple of dummy accoutrement retainers out of Delrin. Without them the job would have been impossible. With them, each side took maybe 10 mins.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Here we go again...

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It's fun when finally the time comes to begin turning piles of parts back into a car.

Yesterday I put the carbies back together. As it is with these things, the first one took me about an hour, the second 20 mins and the last 10 mins.

 

Today I spent a while putting the reassembled rear brakes back onto my rebuilt diff.

When I originally stripped the IRS I had noticed that there were a lot more shims between the calipers and the diff than I had expected. I assumed that this was because someone had in error fitted the later discs. I ordered a set of new, early discs. Lovely though they are, they fit worse. Eventually I accepted the need for a 40 thou washer. 

 

 

 

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