The mail man came today and dropped off a package. A "new shifter" that my friend Phil sent me. It needs some work but doesn't everything. I got the base cleaned up and noticed that it had a number 105 E 7305 or 105 E 7505 on the shifter base.
The shift handle is a bit long and bent but thats fine. Phil put an extra bend in it so it fit in the box, I told him the length I needed and he adjusted it to that length.
when done it will look like these two that were done previously.
Monday June 25th 4pm
Yes it was a slow day, rain this morning and it cleared and now its pouring out again, I almost forgot, I'll get the base painted up with the Hunter green and black mix that I have been using...
The morning started off nice and clouded over quickly, I had the cover off of Tingles C prod body and put the dash back in and the glove box too. I got out pencil and some masking tape and used the cut off tab that held the LHD steering column that I had cut off as a guide (it was laying in the body shell still, remember never toss anything out
) and marked the dash with the pencil. I took it out and used the worn out belt on the belt sander to nose into the crotch and a small block to sand straight the line next to the glove box and reinstalled. Pulled both dash and glove box together and had a nice uniform gap of about an 1/8 inch. I found the quart of Minwax polyurethane that I had around forever and shook the can and it seemed like liquid so I opened and stirred it a bit and poured some into the spray gun and laid the dash out on the 4 x 8 painting plywood and gave it a few passes and then brought it inside before the rain and thunderstorm passed through. Got the body covered up and called it. I need to get some part put in and place it back in the body to see if it is something that I can live with but it may be just about close to use as it is (if I squint hard)
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both prototypes, urethaned on the left, original right
Tuesday June 26th 7:15pm
Very little done today, unsettled weather with rain threatening all day. It finally came down about 3pm. I was looking at the first reject dash while I was making coffee this morning and pulled out the boiled linseed oil and gave it a coat to see how the walnut looked, I let soak in and wiped off the excess after I had coffee. the sun was out so I sanded the urethane on the second dash and took that out for another coat and brought it in to dry. About 10am I looked at the first proto dash and I like the color but knew it would never hold up in a roadster, I gave it another wipe down with BLO and let it sit till noon. It was dry to the touch but it should have sat over night but I was impatient so I brought it out and gave it a coat of Urethane just to see how the two product would react. Lover the color and I need to play around some more with this method and see how it will hold up. May have to leave it outside and subject it to some of the daily thunderstorms after I urethane the back.
both prototypes, first proto with Boiled linseed oil and urethaned on the left, second proto just urethaned right
While waiting for things to dry I got the shifter out and thought I would see if I could get enough heat into it with a propane torch to straighten it. I managed to get a dull cherry red and put it in the vice and took a lot of the bend out. I also manged to make it sine wave shape so a lot more heating and some additional pressure in the vice and finally got out my favorite tool (3 pound hammer) and heated and hit until the strait edge looked consistent. I cut off the right angle bend that Phil put in it to ship and cleaned it up a bit. I hope to get more done tomorrow
Straightened shifter - top, and one of the finished shifters - bottom
Thursday June 28th 5:00am
I went to fetch my head that's been surfaced for nearly a couple of weeks and it looks a whole lot better. I guess I need to get off my ass and get on with it now.
I brought a couple of shifters with me and got the end of one trimmed up and got some threads put on so it wouldn't hurt so much to use the shifter (without the jam nut). Bill and I trimmed a second one that I butchered 20 years ago. We put tab A onto one part to fit into slot B in the other and I'll get Karl to put some glue on it to make it all better.
Picked up two sets of front wheel bearings at the bearing supply house in Quincy so I am good for a while. Need some front rotors now, I priced them and they have gone up too so I will think about those for a bit before I bite the bullet.
Saturday 30th of June 4:00am
It was starting to get warm out yesterday so I painted the shifters early and went inside to shim the head. Had some problems with the cosworth style shims that I had access to. I had bought a bunch from Don Tingle when the doors closed at TLC and they had a deeper recess for the tip of the valve than the ones that were installed in the head. So when I did the valve shim math it was not working. It took me a few passes with the intake to figure what the hell I was doing wrong as you can see from the picture of the shifters on the shim math scribbles. The intakes just weren't cooperating and it was until I started to measure the total height of cosworth shim that I figured it out. The recessed pockets for the valve stem in the shims in my head were like .060 inch while the new ones I had were .100 so the shims were bottoming on the valve keepers and not the top of the valve stem. once I figured that out the valve shim math started to work again...
The two piece shifter in the photo above is not the third painted shifter in the photo, thats has yet to be welded.
First of July 06:55
I needed some black gauges to make the S1 style dash look right and I wasn't going to use those that I had from the LoCort so what was I to do? I thought about it and I had some bezels that were not being used so I sandblasted the chrome off and put a coat of semi-gloss black on them. Turns out I distorted them blasting them and it was an absolute bitch to get them back together. I took off some of the semi-gloss on two of them trying to re-install so after comparing them to the original black bezel gauges, they sere too shiny so I stripped them again and flat-blacked them and I think they came out a bit nicer looking. I still had problems assembling one of them so I taped off the gauge that was giving me real problems after I had the bezel installed and painted it. this is the result and I think it will be just fine for the sow's ear that it is. I wish I had a good crashpad to use but I don't so that may be one of the next low dollar projects to do. If it looks like crap then I'll shit can crashpad and leave it off and flat black the area.