Thread: "Sweetpea" joins the clan.

Originally Posted by Lotz-A-Landies

Although, 1600 engines weren't duck egg blue!

Diana

What colour were they then?

Mine was a blue/grey,

Cheers Charlie

Still plugging along slowly in between mopping out inundated garage floors and other wet weather influenced drawbacks (170mm fell last Tuesday- more than my rain gauge could handle! 305mm this week.), trying to work in rather cramped conditions, and simply not being able to do the contortionist acts to get to some nuts and bolts that I used to find pretty easy to do - like the centremost four nuts that hold the rear of the tub to the cross member.
Was very pleased with my mate Ho Har's paint matching skills, as we painted the chassis in two separate sittings, the front half one day and the rear section a couple of days later. When we removed the tub to expose the rear half, we wiped some of the accumulated mud and dust off the old previously unseen and untouched chassis railing and had great difficulty telling where Harry had painted up to the previous session, and where the old original paint finished. The only thing that gave it away was the gloss!
The engine is sitting on its engine mounts, transmission and clutch all fitted up, brake parts and cylinders all out and awaiting opening time tomorrow to be replaced/refurbished. We are going to need some new brake kines and hoses and I can't really see this as being a problem as long as my flaring skills(?) don't let me down too much.
I have fitted and removed the seat base and floor panels etc simply in a "lining up" exercise and altered/elongated a few holes here and there so that when I eventually fit it back together, all should be good.
The fuel tank was removed and inspected and found to be almost as good as new inside but still received a thorough cleaning out and reseal with Redkote as also did the fuel gauge sender float.

Had a lovely time refitting the steering column (decided that perhaps I might leave the steering box as is as the play in the wheel is borderline at the moment) and was feeling all full of myself, as one does, when Alex (LRO53) comes along and points out that the steering column top cover and spring were on back to front. The second time I fitted it it was right though.
I am now up to my pet hate, the wiring loom. The old original wires are really not in that bad a condition although every time I touch the woven covering it simply disintegrates and crumbles into a pile of brown whiskery dust, so the decision had to be made, keep the old one, make myself a new one or purchase a new one. For a long time - well, a couple of days at least- I was considering making up a new one myself but in the long run I decided to go with the original wires in their original faded sheathes and simply rewrap them in some self amalgamating tape and save myself a lot of trouble. Now all I have to do is spend a day or two with a multimeter tracing which wire goes where as the colour codes on them are all a dusty creamish colour and any trace of original different marking colour has long sine faded away.

My dash board and instruments were refurbished quite some time ago and now it is just sitting there waiting for a few final wiring tests to and from the ignition switch and it can go in too.


Just recently we purchased a brand new radiator core and that has also been fitted and the header tanks rejuvenated and a few battle scars removed from them.

By gee I sure have cut a few gaskets from that sheet of gasket paper over the past week or so. Probably gone through a tube of stag and half a bottle of jointing paste as well. I have lost count of how many new nuts, bolts, flat and spring washers have gone into this little meccano set so far but we purchased a bulk box to start with and they are long gone, and they have in turn used up the best part of a tin of anti seizing paste as well.

Patsy has already done the seat backs and at the moment we are intending to use Daisy's original seat bases (which are currently superfluous as daisy is fitted with a couple of 'Isri' operator seats) until we get round to manufacturing some new specific Sweetpea seat bases.

At the moment we are probably at the more frustrating and also the more rewarding end of the job, in that we have over the past number of months slowly been getting odds and sods done up, now we have to firstly find where it was that we put them for safe keeping and then refitting them and watching Sweetpea begin to bloom once again but at the same time frustrating because there are so many silly little things that actually stop progress so regularly. Misfitting fuel lines, crimped brake lines, rounded nuts and the likes of such. Surmountable but nonetheless, time consuming and frustrating........ but really its good fun!
Our new number plates are due in the next couple of days or so, so if you see a little shiny 80inch Landy running around the SE Corner in the not too distant future with a green lettering on gold background Rego plate "LRI950" and two oldies riding around with grins from one side of their face to the other...that'll be us!
Regards
Glen