August 2012
Friday, 31 August 2012
Sunday, 26 August 2012
Paint's on!
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Trying to paint in winter is lousy. It's been cold and rainy for weeks.
I had lined up my mate Andrew, a spray painter of 20 years' experience, to help me paint the frames.
Andrew's a quiet sort and I think he quickly decided that I would just make a horrible mess of the job, so he came over today and put on undercoat, colour and gloss clear topcoat in just over 2 hours. It looks superb.
I'll give it a couple of days to go off properly and then I can start hanging bits back on again!
Back from the machine shop
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The block, head and crank came back from the machine shop last week looking lovely.
I was initially a little shocked at the $5000 bill, made up of $1500 on the head, $1000 for top hat liners, another $1500 on the block itself and around $1000 for the crank, rods and balancing. However when I looked through the invoice I really have got a lot for my money. Everything is clean, straight, balanced and back to proper tolerances.
I decided early on to replace everything else, and I've spent around $2000 on new parts. Around $2500 in labour and I have a $10000 engine.
All things being equal though I should never have to touch the engine again.
Monday, 13 August 2012
Hibernation and reflections on plating.
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Well as with all unicorns, Carl turned out to be mostly a mythical creature.
The quality of the zinc plating was substandard but was as expensive as the good platers. And, some of the more difficult to replace bolts were lost. Happily though I did get some extra parts that weren't from my car at all, so that was maybe compensation.
I ended up getting all the zinc replated elsewhere, and it now looks good.
The powder coating was good, however there was a "misunderstanding" with the original quote. When I said "that's for everything?" I understood it to mean that the quote included all of the chrome and zinc plating and the powder coating. Sadly it seems the quote I was given was for the chrome alone, making it the total about 30% more than expected.
The final nail in the coffin though was when I went to pick up the chrome to discover that the holes in the overriders for the Amco bars hadn't been welded up as discussed.
I asked them to give me a call when they had fixed this. As the chroming has taken the best part of 2 months I won't be looking for them much before Christmas..
Here is the reassembled front suspension in all its glory. Now if it would only warm up enough to enable me to paint I could start putting the car back together.
