Sows Ear Chassis

[ElanSeries2]

Gary (or anyone else for that matter)

What's the small hole in the dash for directly under the water temp/oil pressure gauge?

[ardee_selby]

Gary (or anyone else for that matter)

What's the small hole in the dash for directly under the water temp/oil pressure gauge?

Think it's for a handbrake warning light. See download/file.php?id=2460

Richard

[ElanSeries2]

Aha! Thank you...

[garyeanderson]

Not a lot done as of late so no reason to spew on this topic. Wednesday I went looking for hinges at West marine and struck out. There are some available on the internet that will work but I hate to order shit that way, I like to hold and see what I want before they arrive at the door step. Anyway I continued on to Tiny's for lunch gave Bill his S2 dashboard and he liked it. Shit I like it too Thursday was one of those days I wait for all summer, Highs around 80 and no humidity so I wet sanded the shell again to get rid of the orange peel and it sanded out nicely with 600 grit and a constant light flow of water. I think I will continue with the finer grits and polish it and see what it is I have.

This morning I didn't have anything planed so I made some work, I have normally bought a new front harness for the cars I have done in the past and I would have like to have done the same this time but I am still not in a spending frame of mind so I looked at 2 of the used harnesses and one was clearly a bastardized piece of hopelessness. The other had several issues but for the most part repairable and just in need of a good exterior cleaning, The generator connections were ok but the plastic was hard and cracked so I replaced the brown/green and spliced in a section of 12 gauge brown/yellow. I think that this was the original harness out of
26/4020,, it's going into Tingles shell now.

Sunday August 26th
Seemed I played around with old parts most of the day, The choke and heater pull cables that I had installed for photos had been cut at sometime by a previous owner or just frayed and rotted in the case of the choke cable. I found a solid cable for the heater cable off an old lawn mower cable that I had been saving, took a while to extract the cut one and reinstall the one with the extra length. I also got the back of the S1 dash sanded and painted black

Maonday August 27th
I think I changed my mind about the dashboard for the 26/4020 shell too, I was going to use an original one that was still in pretty nice shape but I think I ought to save it for it's original shell, someday I may own an all original S2. I started to populate the home made S2 dash with parts

I guess I'll have to look and see if I can fix the bonnet pulls as I am short on those.
I went an picked up some wet/dry paper to continue with the sanding, the last photo of the shell was sanded with 600 grit, I got 1000, 1200 and 1500 grit and went around the shell 3 more times with water flowing the whole time to wash off the sanding residue as I went. There are a few suck ins that I will just live with, I don't like them but thats life. To fix for the shells intended purpose just does not warrant the effort.

Tuesday August 28th 7:45 pm

We had a good rain this morning, Beau's double washtub had an extra 2 inches of water when it stopped. That kind of delayed me getting my ass in gear because as soon as the rain stopped the sun came out and the humidity did too so I waited till about 5:00 to really get going. I bummed a buffer from Willie yesterday and decided it was time to try out the Turtle wax polish. I had a new pad and put that on and got the spray bottle with water to keep things wet and went around the shell. I did install the head lamp buckets, and put the boot and bonnet in place to keep me from burning an edge, I had already sanded through on the back edge and had to touch that up this morning so I wanted to keep the potential problems down. I have yet to wet sand the boot, bonnet or buckets so they are as painted. After I did the once around with the buffer I washed the shell and dried it and got a couple of pictures. I am quite pleased with the results of this paint. I think I have $100 and change into the color (another $120 for the prime 8 years ago) and it still needs to be looked at in the full sun and the stuff I missed done and then waxed but I think its nearly time to tape and paper off the exterior and paint the cockpit, engine bay, and boot.

Gary

Wednesday August 29th 11:55 am

Nice day today, I found a thin spot along the rear edge of the bonnet and burned though with the 1500 grit, I saved the batch of touch up I made on Monday and dabbed the thin area with a Q-tip, its still a little soft to polish so I figured I would add a couple more pictures with the doors in place.

[garyeanderson]

Another nice day and I thought I would get the rest of the shell painted so off to Lowes to pickup supplies this morning at 8:00. I stopped and saw a friend so I got home about 10 am and started taping of the shell. It took till about 4 pm till I had the shell all taped, papered and the plastic sheet taped off. I had gotten a quart of battle ship gray, I needed two so I made a second run and picked up 2 more. I used 80% of the second quart and I still have some areas that I will need to go over tomorrow. Supposed to be a miserable hot and humid day so I guess I am going to blow off going to Lime Rock, besides I spent the money on the supplies to gray out the shell. Of course there are a few other issues that need to be taken care of and they will be addressed in the morning when the paint has dried. The coverage over the blue was not that good, so I will hit some areas again after some prep work. All in all its starting to look like someone spent some time (but not the money ) to make it look right, maybe not original but that was not my intent.

Gary

[gordont]

Looking good Gary, I think the full width dash is the way to go anyway and the Gulf colour scheme is going to look fantastic. What period nice fat wheels are you going to use?
Love the posts, very inspiring.

[garyeanderson]

Looking good Gary, I think the full width dash is the way to go anyway and the Gulf colour scheme is going to look fantastic. What period nice fat wheels are you going to use?
Love the posts, very inspiring.

Hi Gordon
The blue body shell is going to be RHD and the S2 dashes that I have made are LHD so the Elan will be RHD Elan 1600 style dash. I could make another S2 dashboard to RHD specs but that is not in my plans. The LHD S2 dash is destined for the BRG shell of 26/4020. I have the parts for the RHD Elan and this bitsa seems to be the best use for them. The wheels that I have are a set of JAP Magne knock-on that are 13 x 6 for the fronts and 13 x 7 for the rears. I also plan on using a pair of plus2 rear knock-on hubs for the rear to widen the track another inch and an eighth so it will fill the wheel wells (I hope). The t-ires that I am planning on are 225/45 x 13 so I have a good chance of filling the arches.

These t-ires are a bit big for the front rims but there is not a lot of selection for the rims I have in the U.S. at the price I really don't want to pay.
http://www.tirerack.com/tires/TireSearc ... iameter=13

[gordont]

Tyres - FYI and for what it is worth I bought my last set of sticky road ryres from the UK and even with postage were 1/2 the price of them in Oz.... PM if you want the details or just google, easy enough to find

[cabc26b]

That's a really nice job of masking off the car , if it were not for the distance I would pay you to do that on my next project

Nice call on the medium gray for the engine bay, trunk and interior -

[memini55]

Gary,

I guess I have been working elsewhere and not watching your thread. I would second the comments from George and Gordon, colors are great and looking quit fitting for the race car look or should I say street rod look.

I have just done the same task of taping on the Marcos bonnet and what huge pain to do it right. Took me about three hours but better than having over spray and a need to re buff or paint again.

So maybe you should hire out your service?

Keep it coming
Mark

[garyeanderson]

Hi George

Thanks for the offer, If I walk to your house, maybe the "project" will be ready to paper off .
I tuned up the blue areas this morning with the rest of the second quart. I think most of the blue is gone from where I didn't want it. I also thought about the inner door skins and as I don't plan on having any trim on them and they were kind of nasty looking I taped and plasticed off them too. not much prep work on them, these doors have the body number on them and it is the only place that has it so rather than sand it off and risk screwing up the blue on the outside I just wiped them down with grease and wax remover and gave them a coat of gray with 200grams out of the 3rd quart.

Hi Mark

The plastic (.31 mil) came in a 400 x 9 foot roll, that was the smallest they had, cost $20 and I used maybe 20 feet, took 6 hours to tape and plastic the shell. I think that included taking it off the dolly and placing it on the two bar stools, it was not quite high enough but I didn't feel like dropping it and then having to get it back off of the ground. I need to do 26/4020 next and I don't think it will go any faster, I should have known that a quart would not cover, I guess I had forgotten that it took nearly 3 quarts of black base coat to black out the green S2 that I am driving, I don't remember much about the white Coupe, I had that shell prepped and painted in about 10 days, but I was working about 16 hours a day and it was just a sand and paint Oh yea. I don't think I really want to get good at this stuff, its a lot of work .

03:15pm
I don't like leaving tape on paint any longer than it needs to be there so I pulled it off as soon as I could. Probably took a bit over an hour to get it all off. There are a lot of holes to cover up and when its 80 plus degrees it starts to get real sticky. I bought 3 roles of 1 inch and a role of 1.5 inch tape, these are 60 yards each, I went though nearly 2 roles, I will get the other shell done next week as I don't like old tape, the next one will be flat black though.

[garyeanderson]

Today seemed like a good day to get something done, I been fussing around for too long and not moving in the right direction, or so it seems. Christ, it's September 1st and the weather will soon be getting cold and stuff that I have been doing for 4 months now won't be possible. I need to get the chassis back out from under 26/4020 that I installed back on May 11th, the body lifted, the boot, engine bay, cockpit, and underside blacked out, the head on the short block, engine and gearbox mated, then install in the chassis and the body dropped back in place. Seems like a lot of work but I am guessing that it wont take all that long. I would also like to get my living room back, I think I am stuck with one chassis in there as I don't have a good place for it but today was the day to get that god dam two bit whore rolled out and installed under Tingles C production body. I needed to get the strut inserts in the uprights and that took me till 9am, I decided to try the adjustable rear control arms and shimmed them with flat washers, oh what a joy. Once it was close I looked at the rotors but I didn't have the correct bolts so I just said "screw it", time to start pushing this thing towards the door. So I got the camera and did just that.

Once it was on the saw horses in the back of the pickup, I could move it over to the deck on the front of the shed. I picked up the rear of the chassis and pulled out the saw horse, then I put the moving dolly under the middle and went around the front and did the same with that saw horse. Rolled it out of the pickup with a bit of dragging of the front studs on the shocks, but for the most part it all went pretty smooth. I still had the cart that the body had been sitting on outside and lined up my cruddy 4 x 6 ramps so the height was pretty good and pulled the moving dolly off the porch and rolled it on the body cart. Sweet I thought and just about this time my friend John show up and says "looks like I'm too late"

and I replied "not really I think your a little early, the chassis and cart are going back under the blue Elan body", to which he replied "Oh".
We did a test lift and it was clear that I was being a bit ambitious with my thinking as I wanted to get the 17 inch tall saw horse on the cart and the body on top of that. I tipped the two DEC pc's on there sides and another trial lift and we went for it and dropped it right on the chassis that was about 21 or so inches up. Doesn't get any better than that I'll tell you.
John left and I started to fuss around with Chassis bolts and only one is close, I may need to do some fiberglass surgery and move one of the rear cockpit bobbins as one is about a 1/4 inch off width wise and I don't think there is enough bobbin to hog out. The whole body looks like it should come back a bit too but the chassis is hitting the front of the boot so I am going to have to think about this a bit. The truth is I am very happy that the body is on the chassis and I can move on to other "warm weather" work. Here are a few on the chassis pictures.

[garyeanderson]

I started this morning by moving the adjustable rear control arms, It was clear that with the body on they were in the wrong location so that killed an hour. Once I was none with that I got my head around to the body bolts. One of the rear strut tower bolts was in yesterday and I was able to get the two bolts at the front of the console, one took some minor grinding of the bobbin to get the bolt to start. The front turret bolts needed a fair amount of grinding to get them started but they seemed damn solid now. The 6 floor bolts in the cockpit took a bit of grinding to the chassis to get them to align properly and that left the two all the way in the front that the horn brackets secure to and the rear most bolts in the boot, these are still not done as they just need new holes to be drilled through the chassis. that left this one on the left rear strut tower.

and a little grinding wasn't going to make it work. So after getting 11 of the other 16 secured, it was next. I just decided to move it, or rather replace it with on that was in better shape as this bobbin had already been massaged before.

I got out the 3 inch grinder and cleaned up the area around the bobbin, I would have liked to have done a larger area but its tough to take off that nice gray paint I put on Thursday so I just removed as little as I felt I could get away with and still get a good bond.

I drew in the bobbins new location

And cleaned up a little more

to avoid making a real mess I papered and taped off the aria around the bobbin and ground a bit more.

9 layers of 1 1/2 ounce chopped stand mat completes the surgery.

The resin hardened pretty fast today, looks ok to me.

a quick coat of paint and its all better

I guess its time to drill out the last 4 holes in the chassis that have no portion of the factory holes showing.

Monday September 3rd 2:40 pm

I finished bolting the body on this morning, The front 2 mounts had a gap of 3/8 of and inch and I left it yesterday to ponder the situation, I thought I may want to close that gap but to do so meant re-thinking and more than likely redoing the front turret bolts so I made some spacers out of 3 mm lexan and stacked 3 of them and bolted it down. I figured that it would lift the bonnet that much and I don't have the engine picked out for the final configuration. I think a Pre-crossflow will be the starting point as I have a couple but after that who knows. I didn't really have much of a plan for today so I went an picked up the wheels that were in the trailer and mounted the rears to just see if I was close on the set up. The shell is empty and not a lot of weight to it but it looks like these rear springs (12 inch x 115lb) are coming back out and a new set will be needed, I don't imagine that even when the all up curb weight is reached that the control arms will be parallel so a pair of 10 inch springs will find a home in the rear. The plus2 hubs may be a bit much but even if I have to take some of the inner lip off of the arches it will be a nice thing to keep the outer control arm bolts away from the wheels. I put the tape across the back and outside to outside it measured nearly 59 inches, I am guessing it will be nearly 60 when the arms are in the correct position.

[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