Sows Ear Chassis

[garyeanderson]

I got an early start this morning, not a lot going on and I thought I would get to the task at hand. Tingles body with its new flairs had not been on a chassis so I needed to tune the arches so I could turn the wheels. the flairs intruded at the front at full droop. so I got the whiz wheel out and trimmed off the offending bit of arch. The next problem was to get it off of the cart so I levered it up high enough to set it on a pair of saw horses and pulled the cart out the side. OK time to drop it so I set up some make shift ramps to ease it down, the roller is getting a bit on the heavy side for me but it didn't drag me across the garage floor when I dropped it onto the ramp. So it was just about 9:00 when I got everything outside to swap things around.

It is not the best day to do this as it started misting about 5:00 am but summer is over and I know what comes next so sometimes you need to get on with it and in any case I did. I got the green shell in the garage and looked at where things needed to be, not sure this job is going to get done today as it will take another 8 hours to tape off and plastic over the shell and black out the bottom, cockpit, engine bay and boot. I think I'll be doing well to get the shell taped and the plastic covering it as I need to clean and prep it first. So I figured out where I wanted it, it was kind of dictated by where I could slide the chassis out from under it as I didn't want it to be a multi lift process. You see I have been a lucky son of a bitch with Doug seeing me lifting it the first time and helping me do the install to drill the chassis mounting holes. The fact that John was driving by at the right time was just good fortune for me and for lightning to strike three times was not so likely, as a mater of fact it didn't happen so I did it the old fashion way by myself kicking milk cases, blocks of wood, saw horses and what ever looked to be the right size while I held it up with one arm. There are better ways but this works for me as the body is about 170 pounds and you only are lifting one end at a time.

Sometimes you get what you pay for (yep a freebie), this was a rush paint job the day before the MBTA took possession of our shops that I and my neighbor had been renting for many years. To say it was a rush job is now going to bite my ass. The more I look the more I see that was missed. This looks like my friend slept at the holiday inn express and so it goes. I need to black out a bit more than I normally would but its still a better job than I would have done at the time.

Glad I got 400 feet of plastic

Gary

[memini55]

Gary your progress is wonderful! Glad to see you moving along and good to see wheels on again.

So I finished my latest project with a few days to spare. She looks nice and even drove down the lane and back.
Just tossed in a picture for conversation, hope you don't mind.

Mark

[garyeanderson]

Mark

The Marcos looks great and record time too. All I can say right now is "i'm tired, LFD" and I think I am taking tomorrow off.

Gary
Wednesday September 5th 05:59 am

The photos I took this morning show I missed a few spots and I'll hit those areas of the shell again when I do the inner doors. Nearly 18 hours yesterday do "get her done" and I was like I said "tired", when I got up the lights were still on in the garage and downstairs, that rarely happens but with the 300 watt quartz lamp on all night it was nice and warm and the paint was dry

Gary

[garyeanderson]

Took the tape off, looks pretty good

[memini55]

Now the day off? I see the other one is back inside as well.

Looks good.

[gordont]

am I confused, I thought it was Gulf Blue?

[memini55]

Hi Gordan,

You have to follow the post and process, Gary is building two S2's. One BRG and one in Gulf Blue.
He is a busy guy these days.

Hope all is well down under.
Mark

[garyeanderson]

am I confused, I thought it was Gulf Blue?

Hi Gordon

You think your confused?
What about me? This double resto is only the start to clear the plate so that I can get on with the rest.

Not a lot to report on in the way of progress, I got myself sucked into buying some stuff I didn't really need but the price was right and I have a weak mind when I have a few dollars in my pocket.
I ended up with the back of my pickup filled with stuff and its taken a couple of days to figure out where to put it. Old mother fu-ker Hubbard's cupboards aren't quite bare but I found a few places.

In any event I can't walk from the front of the garage to the back now with the green Elan body raised above the chassis. I need to get the body back down and to do that I need to get the engine and box installed. So I needed to pick one of the short blocks on the bench (lets see - been there since April 2003) and get it nearer the door. Thursday morning I took off the pressure plate, clutch and fly-wheel, looked at it for a while and thought "I know its weighs more than I do", grabbed the pig and slid it to the edge and sided stepped over the moving dolly and set it down. The only moment of concern was balancing on the prosthetic leg as it's got both toes broken already and I needed to shift myself over the dolly to set it down. This completed I needed to find some of the hardware that was in a box or can someplace and that took the rest of the morning. There is no room for an engine stand (I have a couple), so it sitting near the front door and I installed the oil pan and called it a day.

Yesterday I cleaned the tops of the pistons and discovered that it been bored .020 and thought that was a good sign as it may not have that many miles on it. I rounded up supplies and went to borough an engine crane so hopefully get the engine and gearbox back into the chassis before I drop the body back down. I guess I'll see how it goes this morning, with any luck it will happen later on today.

Gary

P.S. this is the 6 month update to the topic. Lots of stuff covered here.

11:30 am
I messed up and have forgotten about the core plug that was removed to surface the head a few months ago. I went to the auto parts store and they looked around and didn't have any. So I ordered a dozen and they will be here on Wednesday, the result is I had some time to kill so I taped off the machined surfaces and applied some "rebuild in a can", battleship gray and a bit of royal blue. This was a brush job as I didn't want to take it outside to spray.

September 11th 07:25am

Had a busy day yesterday, nothing much done but I was "fixi'en to get ready" as there is ten pounds of shit in a five bound bag I call my garage. To move the Elite shell, it involved moving 5 others. The only thing that wasn't moved was the Grantura mk2a as it fits as well as possible and there are a bunch of engines stored under it. Took till 9pm last night to finish moving cars and there is still a lot to do but it is going to wait until the pain mostly subsides. I wanted some room to continue to work on both of the Elan projects and with winter coming that was not a likely thing. Although the situation is not greatly better it is some what a bit more workable. Having 7 cars in a 20 x 36 foot garage is never going to be a comfy area to get things done but its what I have so I'll make do.

As things were before yesterday

The start

This morning early

[garyeanderson]

Core plug for the cylinder-head face was in at 8:00am, I turned the lights out at 7pm. Another longish day

[garyeanderson]

continued

Plastic under the front tire has some oil on it to make sliding the chassis with the engine in it a bit easier for me.

[gordont]

Brillaint Gary, a great read and great pics...

Keep up the good work.

[memini55]

Good to see the old sow has now been mated. You have made great progress over the last six or so months.
Was good to see eveything out of the garage if even for a short day or so.

How long has it been since some of those have been out in the light of day?

Great movement!
Mark

[pharriso]

So Gary, how many cars do you have?? I count:

1 BRG DHC driver
1 S4 White FHC
1 Blue DHC car in restoration
1 Green car in restoration
1 Elite
1 TVR? + 1 bitsa
1 white LoCort
1 Green LoCort

I think you have a problem!

p.s. good work
p.p.s. This is why my wife insists that I sell one car before I buy another

[garyeanderson]

Not a lot that looks different from this point on. I did some sliding around under the green Elan today and put in all of the chassis to body mount bolts, tightened up the engine mounts, the prop shaft bolts were installed yesterday. Some other work like a bit of grinding on the holes of the heater support/dashboard lower mount to make it fit as its from another S2. I needed to temp in the dashboard to make sure that the holes lined up correctly. I thought I better get the heater plenum in soon so I looked at a couple and so far out of 3 they are all slightly different, I decided that this one will work and the drain is what was different, this mix and match with Elans is not what I would recommend if you are in a hurry.

I found the washer jets and put those in and grabbed a wiper motor assembly out of the pile. This may be the original, there were 5 in the pile and this one fits so I went with it. I will test it before the dash goes in and see if it works - maybe I should have done that first but I didn't.

I was working on the door latches, they don't look good but they do seem to function so I guess I will use them. I took a few photos of them, the "before" one (upper left). I sandblasted the door to catch mounts Thursday and they "blew through" in a couple places so I filled them. These were painted but I had some problems so they will be re-worked, I would rather have chrome but that is not in the budget or my time frame. If at some point I get a hair across my ass for "original everything" they may get swapped out for something better. I am still not sure on the paint color for the catch brackets, I hope to decide today, gloss black was not the right color.

Gary

02:45 pm

Things seem to go in both directions, some progress and some regression. I messed up a bit in that the solenoid needs to go in before the plenum so it came out. I wasn't pleased with the way the drain into the "one way grommet was pushed out by the plenum so I sealed it in place with ultra black RTV and will let it sit over night and see if it has kicked in the morning. I got the VIN plate secured with the original screws into the Tinnerman Nuts, messed up again and put the parking-brake in place and then tried to fit the pedals - WRONG!
goes the other way so the hand brake came out then the pedals went in and then re-installed the parking-brake. Pulled up on the lever and removed the blocks and trid to push the Elan off of the ramps and it held fast so something positive done.

I did some more sanding on the door catch brackets and they looked fair enough to try some more paint. I was thinking semi-gloss black but went with Deep green with about 15% flat black to take the shine off of them. I will see how they look when dry, it they still look shitty, I'll wet sand with 1500 and re-asses. They can always be sanded and painted again

September 16th 04:00 pm

Seems like very little progress today but I am quite happy with what I have gotten done. Air plenum has been in and out several times and the drain grommet issue that I was having yesterday is gone. I found a new solenoid so that went in Voltage reg installed as well as the firewall steering column clamp. I figured seeing I was doing this, I would write down the order so that the next time I go to do it I'll have something to refer to other than my bad memory. This is for the LHD S2 but a lot of it will crossover to the other Elans too. The order is not cast in stone but what goes in first should not interfere with the other stuff that goes in after. Here is my list

1 ) Battery cable
2 ) Rear harness
3 ) Plenum drain (RTV into place)
4 ) Washer jets
5 ) Wheel boxes and wiper motor - pivot for the LHD pedal assembly goes in first if you removed it
6 ) Fuse box
7 ) Starter solenoid
8 ) Firewall mounted steering clamp
9 ) Voltage regulator
10 ) VIN plate
11 ) Pedal Assembly
12 ) Hand-brake pull
13 ) heater hoses
14 ) Heater

Thats where I am at the moment, Most of the firewall grommets are in except for the speedometer cable grommet. I would have liked to have installed the heater hoses but I don't have it yet. I like the marine 1/2 inch stuff, I get 6 feet of it and feed in both ends from the engine bay side and then cut to length after. The hose is kind of big in diameter but I have installed it several times and it's U.S. Coast Guard approved so I figure that its good and will last quite a while.

[garyeanderson]

Its been another few steps forward, stager a bit and then wobble back a bit and stager sideways some and then make a bit of progress. This is typical of how things seem to go so you just deal with it and make the best of it as this is supposed to be for fun anyway. I have been looking for the foot box closing plate that I had, I took some pictures of it back in February and its gone missing. I looked yesterday and some more this morning and its a no show. I found the pictures and that didn't help much to jog my memory. I decided to look for suitable material to make one from and I didn't find much and I really don't like cutting up other parts to modify so I found a roll of aluminum flashing and decided that it would work ok even though it was on the thin side (light weight right?). I made a pattern and it seemed to fit alright and then used a razor knife to duplicate the template on the rolled sheet of ally. I roughed it up with 400 grit wet paper that was in the bucket and wiped it dawn and used the black lacquer that I had bought to use as a guide coat when sanding prime (done with that for this year).

So now I wanted to get the heater hose and I went to one of the better local marine stores and they didn't have 1/2 inch hose so they sent me down the road and they had 1/2 inch and 3/8 also, the 1/2 inch looked huge so I figured that I was that far I would just get both and gave them $18 and change. I get home and pull out the heater as the 3/8 inch is a bear to get on and the 1/2 won't go though the firewall (not a f-ing chance) so I do the right thing and just give up on that, I'll see if I can get what I have used in the past later this week.

I was working on installing the lights yesterday and didn't have bulbs so I stopped on the way home and got those, I needed new gaskets for the L551 rear lamps and I had some 1/4 urethane foam up in my trailer across town so I stopped there and found it (good shit sometimes happens) right where I thought it was. Found a glove box lid to and it still had the hinges on it so I grabbed that too. when I got home I went looking (and found) the x-acto knife in the draw (there were two) so I took the good one, Upstairs I found the compass and installed the knife in it and it was about an inch too long so I did the surgery and amputated the amount needed to be removed and measured the diameter I wanted for the gasket rings and cut the first one, it looked good so I did 5 more, re-adjusted the diameter and cut all 6 to make the gasket rings - tried one and it had a nice fit so one thing went right and I will get those installed later.

Gary

September 19th 09:00 am
not much done but a little bit added to the engine bay