I've decided to strip the old girl down and rebuild her.

To date I've renewed the following:
  1. Suspension: rebuilt leaf springs, new check straps, new bushes and shocks
  2. Brakes: New drums, Lines, shoes rebuilt the Girling cylinders, rebuilt master cylinder and painted the brake fluid container.
  3. Steering: New con rod ends, painted con rods.
  4. Fuel: Replaced with rebuilt Solex, new fuel lines and new SU fuel pump.
  5. Ignition: Rebuild distributor
  6. Engine: New plugs, set timing, washed out the engine, cleaned and painted sump, new oil, new gaskets/seals as I go.
  7. exhaust: New stainless steel exhaust heat wrapped to silencer.


Today I started removing the old wiring loom to replace with a new loom, all as per the original with a few additions like indicators, trailer wiring and larger cable to handle the larger current of the alternator. The sixty year old loom was so faded and frayed that it made it difficult to identify the colour and located issues I was having such as no horn, interment lights and fuel gauge. Then I removed the fuse boxes , connectors and electricals. Then I took off the linkages to the carbi, the horizontal accelerator rod and a few engine bracket to clean and paint. Removed the headlamps which meant removing the grill. I pressure washed the engine compartment and noticed a few numbers painter on the engine stenciled in white about 3" high on the block numbers... "474" . The original block is blue and the head is red.

So anywayz... this leaves me somewhere in the middle of a strip down. There a few niggling things I want to sort out which could wait a few years but if I leave it sooner or later I'm going to need to tend to the following:

  1. Replace the clutch.
  2. weld up three holes on each wing where the previous owner had screwed on front indicators and there's a few cracks that could be tackled at the same time.
  3. Clean up and paint the chassis black
  4. run the wiring down the chassis for the rear.
  5. Remove the tub to repaint the interior, at present there's very little paint internally in the tub. Looks like she was used to carry a lot.
  6. Tend to a few minor surface rust issues (which could get out of hand if left)

I should upload a few images of the work to date.