Fall/Winter/Spring Projects for 0248k

[steve lyle]

Back from Alaska, and making progress.

- 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.

[steve lyle]

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.

[steve lyle]

Body work completed, on to paint.

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.

[steve lyle]

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.

[pharriso]

Coming on nicely Steve!

[The Veg]

GO STEVE GO!!!

Looks fantastic!

[steve lyle]

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.

[TWebb]

Steve,

Would love to participate in the process if you have room. We can discuss progress on both of our Elans.

Tim
Tulsa Too

[TWebb]

Steve,

Would love to participate in the process if you have room. We can discuss progress on both of our Elans.

Tim
Tulsa Too

[steve lyle]

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.

[alan.barker]

I suggest you check clearance between Camcover and inside of Bonnet before final fixing down. You may need to shim between Body and Chassis.
You don't want Stars/Cracks in Bonnet.
Be careful of Rad Cap height also.
You've got some nice paintwork there.
Alan

[steve lyle]

I suggest you check clearance between Camcover and inside of Bonnet before final fixing down. You may need to shim between Body and Chassis.
You don't want Stars/Cracks in Bonnet.
Be careful of Rad Cap height also.
You've got some nice paintwork there.
Alan

Thanks, Alan. Good idea. Just tried it and it’s ok. If I did have to shim the body up, then what to do with the bolt into the right/front turret? Cut out the bobbin and move it?

No issue with the rad cap. My cap isn’t on the radiator. It’s on a casting in the middle of the upper hose.

Pictures lie. Not happy with the paint yet, it’s going to need a lot more work. I’m sure I’ll get it there eventually.

[alan.barker]

Keep polishing, lots of elbow grease.
Better to move a bobbine or two than to cry over a cracked/starred bonnet.
Alan

[TWebb]

Body went on amazingly easily. Glad to have had the opportunity to participate. My racecar project may get a body off rework in the not too distant future.

Tim

Thanks Steve.

[steve lyle]

I took a day off from wet sanding to do some assembly work.

Task 1 was installing the parking brake. You may recall I sent back the first cable that DBE sent because the rear 'nob' on the cable wouldn't fit through the chassis holes. The 2nd one fixed that problem. What I didn't realize until today is that the handle end of the 2nd cable was now a problem. My handbrake needs a spherical nob to fit into the handle rod. The one sent had a cylindrical nob. So out came the grinder. Actually a cutoff wheel on a mini die grinder. I tied some string around the rear end of the cable, and good thing since while working on the front end I inadvertently pulled the rear end back into the chassis tunnel, That was some fun getting it back out. Eventually everything was resolved, and I now have a hand brake that locks down after a couple of clicks.

On to the gas tank. Another screw up - I switched the gas line with the vapor line. The vapor line is shorter, so no I had a too short gas line. A run to the auto parts store gave me some fuel line to splice in, and after figuring out how to snake that over the rear cross piece that I probably unnecessary put some foam atop, the tank was in. This task involved moving the fuel filter to the trunk, since the braided fuel loom I got from RDE for my new Webers has no allowance for one in the engine bay.

On Saturday we simply threaded fasteners into the body/chassis mount points. Today I put the correct length bolts in, and made sure I had a good ground connection at the boot mount point - less than .4 ohm, about what I see at the engine ground strap

The seat belts went on as well, as much to get them out of the way as anything else.

Tomorrow is supposed to be a little cooler, so maybe I'll get back to sanding or painting. If not there's still plenty of assembly to do.

A buddy in the Tulsa MG club has an auto trim business - he'll come by on Tuesday and help install my new windscreen, and deliver a reworked dash pad and sun visors.

Really hot here, but progress is being made.