Thursday, May 29, 2014

A goal!

Hopefully achievable.

I want to have the car back on the road for the 32nd Lake Ferry Classic Motoring Excursion on the 13th December this year (2014). 

The Triumph Club's breakfast run would have been nice (when i first got the car it was the first run i went on)  but given its on the 3rd of August i doubt i'll have time to finish. Unless of course i move in with my parents for a month :D

Hopefully i'll end up that way working a bit around September so should be able to finish it off over that time.

Thursday, May 15, 2014

More bits part 2

So I have confirmation that the parts have arrived at my mates house!

YAY, Rimmer Bros managed to make my next business day parts delivery if the order was received before 3pm into a two day delivery which was a bit stink given my time pressures. but it seems to have worked out in the end.

I was a little annoyed when the guy I contacted to confirm they had been sent replied with pretty much "no, we got busy with a pile of orders over the weekend". That's fair enough, but I did contact them Monday lunchtime to confirm they had the parts and were able to deliver them NBD, only to be told the next day they couldn't.

Ah well, its done now so that's good. Now the long wait while they go on the long cruise to NZ. Should give me some time to strip the front suspension and paint the engine bay/chassis with the POR-15 that's sitting in my little Mazda. ready to fit the new shocks/spring, bushes, bearings, ball joints, trunions and everything else :D

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

More bits

So i thought i would get some more bits and pieces, i had a friend who had a container coming over from the UK with some space in it and i was luck enough to get some space in it.

After having a look at what it was going to cost me to get the door section repair panels fitting (about NZ$400 each door) I was tossing up the options on how to go forward from here. The full skins were available but shipping was going to be expensive. Even with the shipping (about NZ$150)  it was still cheaper than getting the repair sections installed. So i bit the bullet and got me some extra bits at the same time.

I decided that after all the dramas i had with Canley's i'd try Rimmer Bros this time, The container is being packed tomorrow so i had to be sure that they A) had them in stock and B) could have them shipped to my mates house overnight. So i got on the website and had a quick online chat with an extremely helpful guy called Andy. He confirmed that everything i wanted was in stock and would be able to be delivered tomorrow. So i jumped online and ordered a lot of the heavy/larger things i avoided ordering before.

Two Door skins, left and right :) these should be considerably easier and cheaper to install than just the repair sections. the added benefit that i should be able to make my money back on the repair sections selling them locally. (about NZ$100)

Additionally i decided to get a full set of front and rear wheel bearings, I got a quote for a single front wheel bearing from a local supplier at ~NZ$82.00 each, Which was quite expensive given i got a set of front and rears for about NZ$150.00 from Rimmers

Then i went a little bit silly, but hell, i'm only going to rebuild this car once i might as well spend a little bit more on some

A set of front and rear Spax shocks with uprated, slightly lowered front springs. These springs should be a decent match for the lowering block i got for the rear.

 I thought about this a lot, I've got the Koni classics which will probably need to be rebuilt for the rears, and a set of unknown Munroes  for the front. I got a quote for about NZ$250-320 for front shocks in NZ that with the cost of rebuilding the Koni's made getting the shocks with basically free delivery cost neutral. I get better springs to as well with the option of selling the Koni's to offset the extra cost.

Then the final thing, something for nothing but aesthetics



Meh, why not :D i've seen them for sale for about NZ$130 locally, for NZ$45 i thought why not :D

Saturday, May 3, 2014

Finally a burst of motivation

So i went up and did some more of the pull down finally.


Pulled the front of the car off, valances everything. The plan is to pretty much paint everything from the top of the firewall forward with POR-15.

I've been lucky so far i guess but i was gutted to find 2 pieces of bad (not just surface) rust. One in the bottom of the heater intake.



And the other on the inside of the passenger side  A pillar 

Which is a shame, but given this is the worst rust I've found so far, i cant complain.  I need to get the drivers seat floor pan welded where the mounts have fatigued anyways so I'll get these two, plus the front of the front wheel arches done too. In the mean time I'll start stripping and treating the surface rust ready for POR-15. Maybe see if my cheap sandblaster works around the battery box and the wiper mount on the firewall.

Oh yeah, and for the record Mr White if you're reading, I finally found a couple of bolts on this that would do your Alfa proud :D

Here's a closer shot of the front, prior to my next job of degreasing EVERYTHING