Sunday 29 June 2008

Removed the rear end




Well after admiring our handiwork the previous day , looking at the chassis i decided that the rear end would have to come out, after all if i do it right now then there would be less to worry about later ;) . So , with some head scratching , i sussed out how i was gonna take out the rear end and did so on my own ( would be much easier with two people ). It came out without incident and i moved it out of the way so i could start on the chassis.


After a couple of hours cleaning, wire brushing and some more cleaning i applied the first coat of paint to the rear section of the chassis. It will need one more coat which i will hopefully do today, ( if the wife allows ;) )


The paint was taking a while to dry so i thought i would have a go at the rear calipers. They are a real pain to get to especially the two bolts . I eventually got them out and they will need refurbishing like the fronts , not quite as poor condition but close! I realised i may as well strip the rear end to get better access to everything to check , clean and re-paint if necessary, but that will have to wait for now as i want to get as much of the chassis done as i can till the engine comes out.

and the body is off!







well Friday was a day i had been looking forward to pre-booked my 3 other helpers and at 5pm we got ourselves organised! I had studied the fitting of the body from the manual and just planned to reverse the procedure. the first attempt saw some movement but not much then i realised my front two helpers were holding the nose up a bit too high ( i thought ), so with that lower we tried again still no movement. I then suggested we all push back not realising what i was saying due to my excitement, naturally the obvious happened and we ended up pushing the whole car off its axle stands! I could have nearly cried! Luckily there were no missing toes and the car landed reasonably well. After that the body came off pretty easy. With the body out of the way we put the chassis back on axle stands and all was back to normal :D



Later on i realised i missed something in the procedure which would have made it so much easier, the rear fixing tube that lock into the body frame should be removed before the body is taken off. So in the end i could only blame myself! We live and learn!

Monday 16 June 2008

water pump




removed the water pump today. I'm a bit concerned about what i saw. Hopefully it will clean up ok and i'll have to flush the entire engine block to clear out all that debris! It looks and feels like a mixture of scale and maybe that leak sealer was used to repair a leak, we shall see in any case ;)




All bolts loosened in readiness for the body removal, cant wait!

Saturday 14 June 2008

update

It's been a while since my last post. Not been able to do much due to the ill family (still! ). Just had a tidy in the garage , removed the radiator and drained and removed the oil cooler. I will add some more when i get the chance :D

Saturday 7 June 2008

calipers

Just a little message to say i managed to get both calipers un-seized and looks like they may be ok for a refurb. Will keep you posted :)

Wednesday 4 June 2008

last weekend











well it's a bit late as the rest of my family have 'man flu' , i struggle to find a spare 10 mins in the garage. I have removed the two front brake calipers to see what condition the're in and it's game over for them , not even exchangable ( well maybe one of them) ! Time to serch the scrap yards again , i'll add it to my ever growing list!




You can probably just see how bad the dust covers are for the pistons in one of the pics! Managed to free four pistons on one caliper but the other one is completly seized!








Managed to get the pedal box out , needs a good clean and a bit of paint otherwise not too bad :D