2012

Fine Tuning

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John Hurley is a busy man, but that's because Kent Town Auto Tune has long had the reputation of being the place to get your car properly tuned in Adelaide.

I had managed to get the car to run well enough to be just drivable and dropped it in for John to tune.

John is incredibly thorough; every component gets taken off the car, tested, adjusted to spec and reinstalled.

Unfortunately when John tested the advance curve on the new Powerspark distributor it turned out to be completely wrong with advance starting too late and not peaking until 7000 rpm.  No point on its curve matched the factory numbers.  After discussion I took John my old Lucas distributor.  He checked and calibrated it and deemed it satisfactory.

Needless to say, the car runs beautifully. The SUs do seem to provide more go to the car, although it's perhaps unfair to compare a brand new set of freshly tuned carbs with an old set of emission control Strombergs. Regardless though they look fantastic!

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On with the SUs!

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Today's work was to install the new SUs, and reinstall my newly painted, non emission controlled exhaust manifolds. I also took the oportunity to clean and paint the sides of the block, and to install a gear reduction starter.

Because of the tight access to the lower row of inlet manifold nuts I replaced all of the lower studs with new ones. This paid a huge dividend as I was easily able to do them all up finger tight before having to get a spanner anywhere near them. This easily halved the time it took to get them back on.

Access to the exhausts is a lot easier and they went on easily, as did the Bell stainless downpipes.

All in all a fairly easy afternoon's work, and amazingly the car started straight away on the first turn of the key! My attempts at tuning however were laughably poor so the car is off to Adelaide's finest SU tuner.

Looks pretty too!

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"All the leaves are brown.."

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With autumn upon us a man's thoughts once again turn to converting a road going car into an unwieldy pile of rolling junk.
With this in mind, I have decided that the time to install the triple SU's has come.
Actually, the real motivator was the awful noises that the starter motor was making.
So flush with enthusiasm I ordered a new high torque starter from Barratts and set to the task of removing the Stronbergs.
As the crossover manifold means that the rear exhaust manifold also needs to be changed over I have chosen to install the rest of the stainless exhaust too.
Removal of the Strombergs was a slow but straightforward process. Locating and removing the dozens of completely invisible nuts concealed under the manifold took a while. So did understanding the baffling arrangement of studs that hold the Stromberg manifold together. Presumably this is to prevent the amateur mechanic from risking the release of valuable Lucas smoke from within it's tortuous interior.
Anyway eventually it succumbed to reason, bad language and a 1/2" spanner.
The exhaust manifolds, which were the ones I was actually worried about, literally fell off in about 5 minutes.

I had to call a friend to work out how to get the starter motor out though. At a stretch I could almost see the head of the bottom retaining bolt, but given that it was the best part of a foot down a 1" wide gap between gearbox and transmission tunnel I had no idea how to access it. I asked Chris, who wisely told me about the access cover in the footwell. Armed with this information I had it out 5 minutes later. The picture below shows that there may be some slight wear contributing to its noisy operation...
Now if the new one would only arrive from Blighty. The Barratts carrier vultures must be out to lunch..

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Phoenix reborn

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After Lord only knows how long off the road, I finally got to take my car on her maiden drive today. We did about 120km without any major incident. At first every press on the throttle had me expecting to see a piston depart via the side of the block, but nothing like that eventuated. No overheating, good oil pressure and absolutely nothing caught fire or even released a bit of smoke. And the brakes work, even if the pedal gives the impression that they don't.

I've had her since July last year, and she came to Australia from California in 2009. Before that the only thing I know for certain is that she was sold on 31st October 1967 to her original owner, Mr Arthur McGill, 965 Mangrove Avenue, Sunnyvale, California. I was a 2yo at the time.

There are lots of rattles and squeaks, half the interior trim is missing, the paint is 5 different colours and the seat frames are knackered. But the engine runs sweetly and the car feels solid and purposeful on the road.

Next job is fitting Wilwood calipers, a proper set of SU's and then it's off to throw money at the motor trimmer.

The last 6 months has cost 100's of hours of hard work and a lot of money. Today confirmed that it has been worth every cent.

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Mea culpa

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Today I took the car to the Dept of Transport to be inspected for road worthiness.

I had heard many horror stories about the DoT inspectors and inspections and consequently I was not confident and a bit on edge.

I had planned to trailer the car, but we were unable to get it onto the trailer because of low ground clearance, so with trepidation I decided I would have to drive it. It never rains in South Australia, unless of course you need to drive an unfamiliar and largely unproven vehicle a long way on busy roads to make an appointment that costs $250 whether you arrive or not.

But arrive we did, and my experience was very tame. Everyone I dealt with was polite and helpful. I had a very helpful exchange of emails before the event with one of the inspectors. The inspector who did the vehicle ID check actually smiled and chatted.

The inspector who did the actual roadworthy inspection was also friendly and complimented the quality of the restoration work done on the IRS. I expected a list of defects to be rectified. But there were none apart from a comment that the RH front wheel bearing was a bit loose, but "nothing that was excessive".
4 hours after I left home, I had a set of registration plates and a big smile on my face.

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Boooooring

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Well.  A whole lot of nothing's going on here.

Still waiting for permission to "modify a motor vehicle".

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Please, Sir...

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The time for action is past.
Now it is time for the paperwork..
Over the weekend I had the engineer and the Historic secretary from the Jag club look at the car. Both have reported favourably.
I have submitted the "Application to Modify a Motor Vehicle" form to the DOT. At some point hopefully they'll reply.
When I have that form back, I can book the car in for a registration check, where they inspect the car to make sure that all the numbers match the paperwork.
If I pass that, then I can book the car in for a roadworthy inspection by the DOT, which is usually like the Spanish Inquisition without the comfy chair.
If I pass that, I can then go to motor registration and actually register the car.
And....DRIVE IT!

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Finally....

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The last few little jobs have been done since the windscreen went in on Wednesday.  It was an anticlimax; the new screen was an exact copy of the old one, the seal fitted perfectly and the nice bloke from Complete Windscreens did an excellent job.

With a little help I'd managed to get the padded dash top back in as well; again it was easier than expected and apart from one of the ignition dash lights everything still works.

Yesterday I reinstalled the grille trim bar.  This is held in place with two double ended rubberized bolts. The rubber had broken, and the bolts in the overriders were firmly rusted in place. I had to remove the overriders and use screw extractors on both sides to shift them.  Add another 2 hours to the hours worked.

Today I tackled changing the windscreen wipers to park on the right. Much has been written about this mystical process but fortunately the US LHD Series 1.5 has the DL3A wiper motor.  All you need to do is remove 3 screws, rotate the top plate 180 degrees, do the screws up again and it's done. It really is that simple and took 5 mins.

To celebrate, I gave the old girl a nice wash. She looks great.

 

 

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Whole again

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The bonnet is back on.

I'm ringing the windscreen blokes this afternoon.

 

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Don't say the "F" word

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I have put the carpets and the seats back in.  On Monday the bonnet goes back on, and I hope to have a windscreen by the end of the week. It's nearly...fini@#ed.

If it wasn't for Barratt's infinitely stupid policy of not sending orders because one part out of the whole order isn't available but not actually TELLING you this, I would have had the choke light bezel that I need over a week ago, and I would have the crash panel in too.

 

So in 6 months I have achieved the following:

 

LHD to RHD conversion with all new parts
Cooling system including heater fully reconditioned
Car fully rewired with the exception of the rear light looms
Fuel system completely restored from tank to carbs
All hydraulics including brakes completely rebuilt
Front suspension reconditioned
IRS completely reconditioned and ratio changed to 3.07 from 3.54

I have spent around AU$25k in addition to buying the car.

As soon as the car is registered, I have new 6.5" wheels and triple SU's ready to install. The rest of the new SS exhaust will go on then too.

 

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