Still Plugging Away

I am still plugging away (literally) as I replace the wiring. I have made a few nubie errors so far which resulted in fitting a lot then coming to the realisation that I would have to undo it all to fit another area first! Slightly frustrating but essential so that I can do it right.

The downside of course is that regardless of how soon i can get it all together, I won’t necessarily know it all works until I get the engine back in. Oh well, I better cross my fingers and hope that I get it all in the right order!

Now while I continue doing the electrical work, I need to find someone who can help with uprating the transmission.

Understanding the Electrical Spaghetti

An expected arrival this week brought me some joy as the new wiring loom from Vintage Wiring Harness arrived.

After nearly 50 years, the old wiring was well past its prime and the new harness is definitely needed as the covering was shredded and the wires were brittle. So after a good clean and scrub, a whole heap of sound deadener and the engine bay is already looking so much better. From this

Not looking so good

and you can see the covers all frayed and torn

To this

Much cleaner much simpler and much, much better. Thanks to Paul for the easy to follow instructions that means a novice like myself can put it all together.

It is not finished yet and tomorrow I plan on tackling the interior which may be more of a challenge if the first few glimpses are anything to go by but i am set and ready for the challenge.

More on Door Panels

Making the new door panels has been fairly straight forward with and I thought I might share how I have done it. The doors were in pretty bad shape with moisture, dirt and time taking their toll on the flimsy old fibre board card.

The interiors were virtually non-existent having been rotted away. So to put a temporary replacement into place, lightweight, cheap and expedient for the rally.

So I started by making sure that the rust in the interior was treated and prepped so that it would not get any worse, giving it a good coat of rust converter, a good zinc rich primer and etch primer etc. Making sure all the drain holes are well cleared so that it won’t fill with water and cause more problems in the future.

Making sure the panel fits properly and the clips are in the right place is probably the most tedious and frustrating but has to be done, again and again till it fits “just right”.

Once that is done several times, I then put a waterproof membrane over the door, in this case of sheet of heavy duty plastic  that was laying around the house , held in place with some race tape. This should stop moisture ruining the card and material in the future.

Then I use spray adhesive to attach some woolen backing material left over from my wife’s quilting experiments.

Give that a chance to dry, then attach the facing material

Trim it all to size and then stick it down making sure it all fits properly and doesn’t cause any creases, then it is just a matter of fitting it back onto the door.

Then fitting the classic Jaguar/Daimler walnut wood trim

Then Ta-Da a new door trim! Simple easy and quick steps to a better looking interior. I am keeping all the original trims so that I can have new, flash looking door trims made when the car becomes a normal car again in its post rally life.

 

 

 

One step forward…

Continuing on the interior I did some work on the doors, replacing the tatty, worn door trim that looks sad and definitely in need of some refurbishment, being held together with tape and good intentions

Thinking of how to make cheap and easy interior trim, I was lucky enough to have some old core flute boards and my ever resourceful wife found some cheap material at the post Christmas sales (only $2.10 a metre!). So with a little bit of ingenuity and a can of contact adhesive I managed to turn this

into this

then finally into something a little bit more respectable for the big green car

I plan on having the original door trims remade but that is not going to be for some time.

Unfortunately as the title suggests while carrying out the cutting and fitting for the passenger door I managed to find firstly a small hole, which after some poking and prodding turned into a rather large hole!

Some head scratching and soul searching stopped me from just filling it with bog and ignoring it but to fix it properly so I don’t become a “dreaded previous owner” and I would always know it was there. It turned out most of the bottom of the door was pin holed with rust.

So taking the door off to access the rusty bits, I cut them out, cut new metal to fit and used the new welder to fix the shiny new metal in place.

Now it looks a lot better but still not finished yet.

Unfortunately I have to return to work tomorrow but will try to get everything refitted and fixed up sooner rather than later.

 

It’s the little things…..

Strangely enough sometimes doing some small things suddenly makes a big difference. I discovered this today after doing some work on the interior, I decided to trial fit some new floor carpets. I bought some cheap, hard wearing carpets and using the deep, expensive but very old carpet as a template, cut the new pieces.

So it has suddenly gone from looking like this

Overall a little bit ratty, tired and worn

To this…

Looking pretty flash!

Well parts still look tired and ratty but the floor looks great!

I’ll wait till I get the wiring before fixing the carpets in place and  will look at doing some more interior work over the next few days to get that wonderful sense of accomplishment!

Engine Bay Work

Spent most of the day sitting in the empty engine bay scraping, grinding and welding while stitch and continuously seam welding joins.

It took a fair while and I only managed to set fire to a few things before I was completed!

It doesn’t look the prettiest but it should do the job. Now I can start on the interior while I am waiting for the wiring loom.

 

Getting there

I lashed out today and with my Christmas money, I bought myself a welder so I can strengthen the body by stitch welding and seam welding the body but before I started this I had to finish stripping out the engine bay.

So I have progressed from this

to have the engine out

Now to having the engine bay and ancillaries totally stripped out

Next is to strip back most of the paint and prep it for welding. The engine bay is progressively becoming lighter as years and years of accumulated oil dirt and grease is slowly being removed, some by degreasing, some by scraping but it seems that most is being removed by being smeared all over my hands and clothes much to my darling wife’s ambivalence.

Hopefully once I have finished it will look more like this competition spec MG.

Brakes plumbed in

The new brake lines are fitted after some trial and error, fortunately I only forgot to put on one of the fittings once.

I managed to put in an extra loop, to give some extra suspension, allowing the pipe to give but not break. This is  similar to what the fuel pipes on old bikes do. I also managed to give the pipes some extra protection by running them close to the body.

Where as you can see below it previously sat a lot further out away from the frame making it more susceptible to be damaged.

Hopefully the wiring will be delivered soon so I can finish the engine bay. I am just hoping it wasn’t on a the train that was derailed but even if it wasn’t the main highway was cut for about three days with no road transport coming to or from Darwin.

The cyclone didn’t get another near us but still managed to stuff us around!

If it is not here in another week I may just have to start combing the banks of the river.