2013

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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Jigsaw

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Ah the logistical delight of car restoration.

Bits of my car are all over the place. The body's at the paint shop 50 miles away in Strathalbyn.

The engine's still up at Chris's awaiting a teardown in a couple of months. The new 5 speed box is there too.

There is a steady stream of parts coming from the UK.

I'm continually dropping off and picking up lots of plating, powder coating and chrome.

The carby bodies are in Sydney being rebushed by Midel.

The tacho is off the see Mike Eck in the US, and the speedo to Nottingham to be rebuilt at Richfields.

There are bits all over the floor in the spare room, on my desks in my study and in ever increasing piles in the shed.

Within a week or so I'll start having complete sets of bits, and then I can start putting it all back together again.

 

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Nearly ready to reassemble IRS

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I'm still plugging along fettling bits of the IRS.

I'm 95% ready to start reassembly. Just need to get a few more bits plated and I can reassemble the driveshafts. I have all of the new parts and all the major bits are plated and powder coated.

Just waiting on the diff to come back from Bob, the diff man.

 

 

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At the body shop

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You might think that I've gone into hibernation over Christmas, but you'd be wrong.

I've sorted all the plating and powder coating, arranged to have a million bits sent around the globe to be fettled, and today Ron and I took a couple of bonnets down to Ross at the body shop.

 

 

When we got there we found Ross has been busy with the tub. Sexy original lead.

 

 

So far she looks pretty good. Apart from a few rust holes in the floor under the seats she is surprisingly rust free.

 

 

 

 

 

New door skins will be needed, as expected.

 

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