Got the chassis back from the powder coater today. Looks very nice - they even made my ugly weld look better!
Also working on fixing all of the unused and accidental holes the engine bay has gathered over the years. Then will be painted in satin black urethane.
Meanwhile, the wishbones are at a shop getting the bushings replaced. Still researching how to do the sway bar to link bushings,
Finally, the last known parts I’ll need are on the way. That should be everything needed to assemble the chassis.
Had fun getting the rear uprights in. New strut inserts, new bump stops, new lotocones. I couldn’t get the strut top up far enough in the lotocone to get any threads started. Eventually I realized it was because the new bump stop forced the spring abutment too high. I had to contour the top of the bump stop a bit with a flap wheel to let the abutment sit lower on the strut shaft. This bump stop sits on top of the ‘ledge’ of the shock absorber shaft, not sure if the original did or not. I called Ken at DBE and he supported my mod.
Today the transmission went in, thanks to the help of the 2021 winner of the “Blind Eye” award, which is annually given by the British Iron club of NW Arkansas to the spouse who best tolerates his or her partner’s silly hobby.
Since I’ve done this task before, I was able to benefit from my previous mistakes, and avoid putting the tranny in without the speedo cable, or the driveshaft, or the reverse light wiring.
Another recent success was the drop-link to ARB bushings. I had challenged the shop that did my wishbone bushings to handle these, and they gave up. But I was able to follow Flatcap’s method from this thread viewtopic.php?f=42&t=21016 to get the job done, at the cost of about 30 min per side.
The next few days will be devoted to my new Webber head - the guy who did the work wants me to cc the chambers and measure the valve height. It also needs painting. Then a few seal and gasket replacements and the engine can go in. Then it’s back to the body.
Got the cv axles installed. Had to wait for cv grease, which I couldn’t find locally. Also got a kit of clevis pins so I could put the handbrake linkage together with them instead of #10 machine screws. So the chassis is done other than the handbrake cable, which Ken mailed out to me today, and the engine.
On that front, I installed the cams and made valve to piston clearance measurements, and sent them to Barry, my head machine work guy. I’ll call him tomorrow to see what I need to do next on the head front.
Barry Sale, who did the head work, wanted me to check the valve clearance and compression ration. This was a particular concern since the head height was 4.56", which I seem to remember hearing was on the short side.
Clearance was checked by putting #1 at TDC and measuring the projection of the #4 valves past the head surface. Then comparing that to the distance from the block deck to the bottom of the piston relief cuts. No problem, there was .070 of clearance, or .1 with a .030 gasket, so that was good.
On to compression ratio. I got a burette and dial indicator from Amazon and watched several Youtube videos. Here’s what I got:
Which look fine to me. at most, less than 2% variation, and worst case if I need premium fuel I can live with that.
So now I can go ahead with assembling the engine. A stand would make that easier, so I’ll see if I can find one on Craigs list. Worst case HF has them for $100, and I can sell it when done.
This is the last post for awhile. We’re off for an Alaskan cruise - actually finishing up the one from last year where we came up with Covid just before getting on the boat.
Ken sent the correct handbrake cable, which is now on the car. Yes, I know I could have ground the nipple down, but why not have the supplier fix his problem?
Went out and got an engine stand to make painting and dressing out the engine a bit easier. At the price HF sells these, why not? Masked up and painted the block - 3 coats of primer, 3 coats of Ford Gray.
The engine had lots of oil seepage previously, so replacing the sump gasket was on the agenda. So I did that, then realized I screwed up because I didn’t have the rear seal installed. So I removed the gasket and sealer, and redid it with the seal installed.
On to prepping the head. I took some fiddling, specifically polishing the front of the intake cam that mates with the sprocket with 200 grit paper so that the sprocket would slip on when with the chain on it. I tried to follow Buckland’s checklist when installing the head. The one hiccup that he doesn’t cover - he has you put the crank at TDC, then before putting the timing chain on, turning the cams to TDC. Oops, can’t do that, maybe, without getting interference. So I removed the cams, put the sprockets on, installed the cams at TDC position, then removed the intake sprocket to enable the timing chain install.
Then on to installing the engine in the chassis. I’ve done this a couple of times with the body on the chassis, this way is a LOT easier. This took a big chunk of Sunday afternoon, and I was getting a little punchy toward the end, which is what I blame for the fact that I got confused about how gravity works, and installed the engine mounts upside down. This actually doesn’t work, which I finally figured out and corrected.
Another gotcha I ran into was stripping one of the cam bearing cap studs. Fortunately I had a set of 5/16 NC helicoids, so this was rather quickly fixed.
So at this point the chassis is as done as it can be. So I’ll set it aside and get back to prepping the body for paint.
If you’re going to switch to Webers, might as well get rid of the bump. Got this bonnet from DBE. Today I reinstalled the bonnet latch mechanism, installed the catch bars on the bonnet, and adjusted the system as best I could. The front edge is a bit high, but I think I can live with it. If not, it’ll be a project for next year.
Some of the bodywork I had done earlier in the fall/winter - the cracks in the front, and the door gaps. Really the only issues left were stone chips, star cracks from the battery in the boot, and some cracks in the front wheel arches. All were address with by grinding out the cracks, filling with epoxy and 3 layers of deck cloth, then toping with polyester filler.
The only other body issue I could find was actually the dash. The lower left side of the dash molding should be glued to what is essentially the back of the left fender. That joint had failed in my car, no doubt leading to rattling and cowl shake. I always thought the dash made more creaking noises over bumps that it should. That repair was done with thickened epoxy, and seems quite strong now. The right side didn’t suffer from the same issue.
I block sanded the entire body with 220 grit, and today (at 6 am to beat the Tulsa heat) sprayed 2 coats of surfacing primer on all the external surfaces. I’ll now sand that to 400 grit, and should be ready to spray color in the next few days.
We have color on the body. 3 coats of Valspar Honda Milano Red, R81. Single stage 2k polyurethane. A couple of sags, a few flies, but I was going to be cutting and buffing anyway, so no big deal.
Still have the doors/bonnet/boot lid and HL pods to do, they’re ready to go. Plus the bumper and wheels that need some touch up. That’ll be next week as we’ll be out of town for a few days starting tomorrow.
I’m scheduling a ‘body on chassis’ party for the 15th. That should leave me about 5 weeks before we need to leave for LOG, given that we’ve got a week at the beach scheduled in there.
I’ve got some friends coming over tomorrow to help put the body on the chassis. I’m in the middle of wet sanding the paint on the body - more to come on that. But I took some time to mask off the body and spray satin black on the engine bay, lower rocker edge, and rear valence flange, since the bay really needed to be done before the merge.
I bought a new spray gun for this project. It turns out that the gun was defective, which I hope explains the problem I’m finding with the body paint. I’m having to wet sand pretty deep, and even then I’m still seeing glossy spots in the paint. Very odd. I swapped out the defective gunn one for a good one, and. painted the boot lid today. I’ll wet sand that and hopefully see better results. If not, the root cause must be something else (moisture vapor in air line? Something else in the air source?) I’ll need to find out what the cause is, fix it, and respray. I may not have time to do before LOG. I took a small section of the body and buffed it - the spots aren’t really visible at 2-3 feet away, so I guess I can live with them for a few months if I have to. I got good results with basically this paint setup when I did my B a few years ago, so I’m a bit bummed for the extra work.
In the meantime, looking fwd to the ‘joining’ tomorrow, which will open up a whole series of tasks to do.
We had a body/chassis joining party today. Tim was a very helpful partygoer, along with 5 of my Tulsa MG club buddies. In about 90 minutes we had the body on and the 18 bolts initially threaded. So, major milestone completed.
