Reply With Quote
Well the unofficial hoped for target of an Easter completion seems to be getting a bit more impossible each day all though things are moving in the right direction slowly and seemingly disjointedly.
I thought for some quite considerable time what to do with the wiring, purchase a new from from a manufacturer, manufacture my own or go with the existing pieces I already had.
There will be a grommet on that speedo cable, never fear.
Alex (LRO53) happened to drop over one afternoon and convinced me that the existing wiring I already had was in pretty good condition considering it was 62 years old or thereabouts and that was quite usable the way it was. Unfortunately the braided cloth covering simply disintegrated every time it was touched so I re-wrapped it in self amalgamating tape and put it back in. With Alex's able assistance and my valuable looking on skills it didn't take too long at all to have everything in place and functioning once again..... except the fuel pump. I have had to weaken and actually bought a part from England at long last, and ordered a new pump from S.U. It arrived around about one week later and is now fitted. (The day after I ordered it I found the address of an S.U. service agent very close by!) Now I can pull the old one to bits and work out what was wrong and possibly fix it and have a spare from now on.
Not also have I ordered my first part from the UK but I have also purchased a set of "D" lamps from EBay. That was another interesting experience for an electronically inexperienced person such as myself, but luckily for me the vendor was quite considerate and understood this oldie's trepidation at these newfangled ways and was most helpful and obliging.
Am busy fitting rubbers and stoppers to doors, channels to window frames, wondering whether to refit new windscreen glass (The scratched glass has slipped downwards and as a result the wiper shaft will not fit through the aperture in the frame!) relays to headlights and a myriad of other minor bits and pieces.
Had fun with the brakes! Fitted all new plumbing, cylinders, shoes and master cylinders and then made the stupid mistake of fitting it all expecting it all to be in working order. (They were all new, or at least re-manufactured parts so why not!) Firstly the bleeders had worn to the extent (or were fitted with the wrong size) that the ball bearing valves had locked solid in 2 of the re-sleeved wheel cylinders. That was fun and wasted a couple of days before I eventually went to the local cycle shop and bought a wheel spoke and a bearing cone for $2.00. The spoke bent easily and made a perfect tool for pushing the stuck bearing out of the cylinder and the bearings from the bearing cone fitted perfectly as a replacement in the bleeder. Next problem was that, unknown to me, the piston was sticking in the brand new master cylinder half way between the outlet and inlet lines so it was not allowing fluid through the system whether I used vacuum, pressure or pedal pumping procedures, so I pulled that apart, lubricated it and reassembled it and now at long last I have good pedal pressure all round.
Hand brake was a similar story, as the original shoes had suffered a life time of leaking seals (or so I expect) and were absolutely saturated so I replaced them with brand new ones. Went to refit the drum and there was no way known that it was going to go back on, so, take it all to bits again, take the drum and the shoes back to the point of purchase where a most apologetic manager radius ground them in front of me and with another apology, sent me on my way. Needless to say the second time all fitted as it was supposed to.
So now mechanically it is pretty well up to date and ready to be filled with oil and water and fired up but not until I have fitted the exhaust system which in turn won't go on until the mudguards are finished and that is where I am up to at the moment.
What with Harry Ho Har's welding skills, my next door neighbour's panel beating skills and a lot of mixing and matching inners, outers, and tops from various donor guards the guards are starting to come along well. Now we simply have to wait for a drier spell to come along to apply some paint to the guards and the tailgate and Sweetpea is pretty well on the final home straight.
Patsy is going to give one of her sewing machines another run through some canvas to manufacture some door flaps to cover the door handle apertures and possibly manufacture a centre seat as well. We will wait and see about the centre seat as a storage box seems much more appropriate considering the lack of space in an 80"
Still have to source some suitable rear shock absorbers as when we pulled the rear tub off we were quite startled to find that the left hand rear shock absorber mount had not bent but rather torn the seam of the chassis rail asunder as the wrong size shockie had been fitted with not enough travel in the piston. The constant pounding had taken its toll at obviously the weakest point. Sort of reinforces the argument for the importance of a restraining strap doesn't it.
Regards
Glen
Originally Posted by zulu Delta 534
A fantastic effort to be very proud of.
Bookmarks