OK, first up is my new workbench. For scale, the legs are 3×3’s and the top is (sacrificial) 18mm MDF rebated into the frame and resting on multiple 3″ wide cross-braces. Still to be done is flush-mounting the woodworking vice into the left-hand face, mounting the metal vice on the right and cutting & fitting the lower shelves for tool and parts storage OK, enough of that – back to…
Someone at work flat out didn’t believe a “crappy old car” like mine had actually made it to France – until I walked out to the car park and picked the return journey card from Eurotunnel off the back seat Shut him right up, that did Currently waiting on Burtons to get their act together and actually get the head gasket set I ordered on Friday out to me . I…
“Last night I dumped out the sludgy brown coolant that’s only been in there since June, flushed with water, ran some Holts Radflush through, flushed again, then refilled with fresh coolant. To be fair to the sludge, it’s basically been a 2,000 mile flush and de-crud, as the car’s only pootled about locally for years before I got it. The coolant boiling over at the weekend probably worked a bit like kettle…
Apologies for the Holiday programme interrupting the restoration thread – just think of it as a road test report We had a family gathering to get to on Sunday afternoon in Surrey, so looking at how far away it was, I said I’d book a hotel for the Saturday night. After aimlessly clicking away on random websites and finding no interesting places that weren’t full or outrageously expensive, I had…
Wahey, we’re back A 753 mile round trip that involved, amongst other things; James Bond levels of subterfuge, two tanks of petrol, five litres of water, a kindly Essex barmaid, a slightly eccentric French mechanic with a vast array of cutting equipment, a spectacularly humourless Gendarme and a snoozing trucker doing 65mph! Full story later, as I’ve gone and left all the photos at home, but to recap my initial…
Aarrrghhhh Either the filler shrunk, I sanded it wrong, or something else, but when I got the blue sprayed, all the edges where I’d sanded down were clearly visible as little ripples. Guess I’ll have to have another go, but for the minute … All washed and put back together ready for a secret weekend trip to France that my girlfriend doesn’t know about Taking the Capri should make her think we’re not…
Finally finished refurbishing those new rear brakes that I started a couple of weeks ago. Stripped, wire wheeled, worm poisoned, Hammerited and then rebuilt with new cylinders and shoe fitting kit… If anyone knows where I can get a pair of the rubber seals that go over the handbrake lever and onto the backing plate, please let me know Got a couple of coats of filler primer over the sides…
This weekend was a little mixed to say the least. I’d been having a few issues doing the valve clearances earlier in the week, which mainly centered on a bendy spanner that didn’t fit the locknuts on the valves and a new oil spray bar fabricated by some complete muppet who had obviously never even seen a Pinto This is what it looked like after it got stamped to death…
The front bumper wasn’t the cheapest, but it’s in damn good condition and sets the front off nicely. It’s kind of turning into a Mk2.5 as the side rubbing strips “fell” off the other night – once I gave them a bit of assistance. The holes in the front/rear wings have been filled in and the mounting lugs on the door skin ground down, so they’re all getting a dab…
Now I know why my grandad used to say “I’m off to reset the points” every time he popped outside to light his pipe, (imagining, somehow, that my grandma wouldn’t notice the smell when he came back in ) … I’m having to fiddle with ’em as much as me old grandad Rummaging around in the “big box of things I bought when I couldn’t work on the car”, I found…
Everything always takes longer than you planned, doesn’t it? I gave the tailgate frame a couple of coats of Corsican Blue, sorted for me by Wigan Car Paints. There’s a distinct edge between the old and new, but the tailgate’s probably the most faded panel on what is after all a near thirty year old car Apparently I should be able to blend it in once I attack the rest of…
It’s all practice, practice, practice as far as bodywork goes I guess Generally speaking, a bolt either fits a nut or it doesn’t – whereas there’s a million and one things that can affect a weld Even if I totally bodge it up, I can still pick up another tailgate and call this a test piece On with the show… Having put the new metal into the bottom of the screen frame,…
Spent an afternoon laboriously hand-fabricating some pieces to fill the holes in the frame, and to be brutally honest, they looked like my five year old neice could have done better I’ll not even show you them, you’ll laugh too much Popped out to Machine Mart and got one of their vice-mounted metal folders, together with a nice shiny new vice to fix onto the new workbench (when I finish building it ) For the…
Chopped out the rust on the inside of the screen frame last night and even managed to find some good metal to leave in the middle as a reference A small amount of the outside of the frame will need chopping out too, but I’m planning to get the inside done first so I can then use that as a new datum. As a reminder to me, (as much as…
Concensus on the oil leak seems to be that they pretty much all do that anyway and I should just keep an eye on it until I either replace the head gasket or it gets worse – I can live with that This weekend I spent most of Sunday mixing filler, applying it really carefully, sanding back down (with 80 then 180 grit paper) then giving it a squirt of…