Ed the Herald

Went and picked up the front bulkhead and the rear tub from rust repairs. :) Had to sit the bulkhead on the front just to remind myself it was a car i'm working on :D Front suspension is done, rear is completed as much as i can without the actual axles. should have those at the end of the week. Next job is to clean and prep the bonnet and roof ready for priming.

Ultra quick update The rimmer order finally turned up. i now have the missing brake part along with the tierod ends. The axles have arrived in Los Angeles ready for me to collect on my way home. So theoretically i now have all the bits i need to put the suspension and brakes back on. I'm hopefully going to get a chance to do it when i get back

Quick update, first the good news Yes we have shocks and springs Unfortunately the tie rods didn't turn up yet, but other than that the front suspension is done. Which is good news, went down to see Charlie (the mechanic at south foxton motors) who put them together. Which is where the bad news comes in. what you are looking at is one of the rear axles for the car. the technical term for what you're looking at is fucked. Its repairable, but this is the shot of the one thats already been repaired not that long ago. The needle bearing has basically chewed a groove in the axle shaft(the dull patch in the middle of the photo). So as a result i've ordered new axles :( not something i wanted to have to do. Lucky for me i'm going to the US next week so have organised to pickup a set while im there and save myself a truck load of money on shipping. Sigh! More delays

So some updated photos, Different angle Not all this work was done this week, the steering rack, wishbones, sway bar were all done last week. This week the uprights were attached, brake lines fitted. new wheel bearing fitted to the front. Found out i had a set of the kits that had the absolutely rubbish grease seals in them, the metal casing is too big and the felt is about 12mm wide, if you try and fit them nothing lines up at all. I removed the casing and reused the old one. took the felt out and cut them to about 1/2 thickness fitted them and they all look ok. I got them from Rimmer Bros, so I'll have to drop them a line tomorrow to see what they have to say. Fitted in the diff, put the read shocks and vertical links in to visualise where i needed to run the brake lines. The two tone paint job is due to using two pots of paint, the first (the lighter one) was the one i managed to spill half of. I looked at the rear axles but i ran out ...

So its been a long road but i'm finally putting stuff together.  I managed to take two photos :D But stupidly forgot to take photos when i'd finished. Basically i got the suspension towers on, the wishbones, the sway/roll bar, and the steering rack on. I've managed to misplace the tierod ends so they're not on yet. the trunion top seals havent arrived yet so the front uprights arent on either. I also managed to start getting the rear axles disassembled. I've got the partially disassembled rear axles and the front shocks and springs and the front hubs ready to go to the garage to get either fitted on the bearings pulled (i dont have the tools) Once they come back hopefully the trunion seals (which dont come with a trunion kit GRRRR) will have turned up and i can fit the uprights.

So, now I've been thinking through reassembly and the bits and pieces I'd need to get it together. I've rebuilt the pedals, painted them etc. heater box i repainted with epoxy. Pulled the master cylinders apart and got them down to the shop for a light honing. Dropped the rear axles and the hub puller to the mechanic as i dont have the 17mm allen key drive to pop them. Dropped all the suspension parts to the mechanic to put the bushes in. all sorts. As i was going through in my head the assemble process i realised a couple of things: Trunion kits dont contain the top seal,  My heater valve was completely shot (would explain why the car was always warm inside),  Complete bush kits dont contain shock bushes, or rear diff bushes.  You can get a set of solid brake lines made to length in the UK and shipped to NZ for about 1/2 the cost you can get them made here. There's quite a lot of triumph parts for sale at good prices on ebay. Canley classics parts are still ...

So, just got home after a LONG night and most of the morning painting. Basically we've got all the suspension components, brackets, the disassembled rear spring and the chassis. All coated with a couple of coats of POR-15 in grey. The brown box partially obscured in the background are the door skins :D Its kind of a weird feeling, I'm pretty much now at the point where I'm actually, finally, really going to reassemble something. I had a couple of questions on reddit about the molasses on rust and how well it worked. These were pretty heavily rusted and i have to admit i'm really pleased with how it worked out.  Unfortunately i didnt take any before photos but they looked pretty similar to this I have found that the mixture seems to settle and needs to be stirred occasionally else it seems to lose some of its potency.

Feels a little like I've hit the mid point, the chassis went off to the media blasters yesterday. I should have it back for the weekend to paint. The suspension arms are all in a giant vat of molasses and water, which seems to be working really well. I thought i'd have a go at cleaning and painting some of the front suspension components, the vertical links, steering arms and hubs. The vertical links are going down to the mechanics to check the axle shafts then i'll pull them apart and paint them, The hubs were stripped down and painted with hi-temp paint it took a while to find hi temp paint that wasn't red or yellow. The rear body tub went to Barry at Kult Kustoms on Monday morning so should be at the media blasters by now. I tried a couple of the tricks i found online to remove underseal. i'll write a post about it one day.

Got the brake calipers back today, they're sitting downstairs in the car, i should have taken a photo to make this less a wall of text. so thats one job down. Heard from dad last night that the guys at the garage had sucessfully extracted the bolt from the front trunion so the trunion and the wishbone are both fine. they'll do the other bits when they have spare moments as I'm not in a rush. Hoping to go up, not this weekend, but the following to start stripping the undercoat from the chassis. The pricing on blasting was too much, so i'm going to do it by hand. Shouldn't be too hard and hopefully wont take too long, i'll have to make sure i have a couple of beers handy when i start. I'm tossing up whether to try packing each chassis rail section in dry ice and chipping the undercoat that way, or doing the heatgun/turps trick i used on the floorpans. i was going to go up this weekend, but i have to stay in town and get my house in a state where i can re...

SO, the front bulkhead went to the panel shop a couple of weeks ago and is now complete. Had a little more rust than we thought. ended up getting it media blasted to clean up the firewall and get the remainder of the underseal off. I'm waiting for some photos, apparently the panel shop took a pile of photos. Ended up repairs to the heater and firewall (known), rebuilding both A-pillars (semi known), Repairing the outer skin near the passenger side body mount (known), the innerskin of the passenger body mount (unknown) repairs behind drivers side body mount (unknown) . Apparently its primed in 2K and had new underseal applied too. All done. Now i need to get the bonnet down to him for the same treatment. I rang the guy who was recommended for the chassis media blasting but its looking quite expensive. So i might have to spend some time with a heat gun and some beers while i'm up working up that way over the next month. Sent the brake calipers to the shop to be rebuilt,...

 So, disconnected the handbrake cable, jacked up the front of the car and lifted/slid the body tub off the back on Friday night. Got stuck in this morning and pulled the rear axles and diff off basically we're completely disassembled. .  The great news is the chassis looks perfect, the rear shock mounts are fine, diff mounts are fine. Had some horrifying moments pulling it apart, the left rear upper shock bolt didn't have a nut on it, the rear brake hose between the left and right wheels was basically rusted through, many bolts in the drive train that were loose. It was pretty terrifying. Had a little clean up too, still a mess but not as bad. I still have the rear half-shaft to pull apart, but other than that now its the slow and painful process of cleaning and painting everything. Oh yeah and i picked up my bits from the UK, YAY!

So back up again this weekend, started stripping the undercoat off the floor pan section of the front bulkhead. It came off reasonably easily. things were looking really good until i got the the rear passenger side body mount (middle of the right hand side in the photo above) but man its a time consuming job. There's a bit of rust in the body around the mount plate, it doesn't seem that huge and looks much worse in the photos as the left over undercoat has a redish rust like tinge to it So that brings the rust tally to, the bottoms of the doors, a small hole in the bottom of each A-pillar, the heater box and two small bits in the front of the front guards. From the looks of it water has been getting in through the hole in the A-pillar and pooling in the cavity about that body mount. All and all i cant complain, it could have been a lot worse. I forgot i would need the ute to drop off the bulkhead so its still at my parents, I'll drop it off next Saturday....

The container arrived in NZ last night so hopefully i'll have my suspension components soon, all depends on how long it takes for them to clean my mates tools. Unfortunately I'm getting stung with GST too, so VAT and GST which sucks, but it still works out slightly cheaper than if got them shipped direct. With all the bearings and suspension bits almost here the timing has worked out pretty well.

So, with much swearing and gnashing of teeth the body has been separated from the chassis. Also i've recently replaced my phone so the pictures should be somewhat improved :) LG G2 the camera is spectacular  No hidden surprises which was nice, the chassis looks really good, on the front half at least, i couldn't lift the rear tub off solo so that's still sitting in place. This one is a bit hazy, my dad was having a burn off outside and the wind changed and started to blow smoke straight in :) I've started grinding the surface rust off the front bulkhead and treating it with POR-15 Metal Ready, so far it seems really good. I put some on the top section of filerwall a few weeks ago and the metal is still clean and rust free. Ideally i should get the bulk head cleaned up next weekend and drop it to the panel shop for repairs and paint next Saturday. Almost at the point where there's no more to pull apart. if i can get someone to help me lift the rear...

So first step in getting the body off the chassis. Pulled the dash out, had one seized screw on the main dash mount, which i ended up leaving to soak in WD40 its the one in the middle of the picture. Not much left of the car now :) All thats left is to remove the sills then pull the 20 bolts that hold the body to the chassis and then i'm read to start sending it away to be repaired and painted. Did find one badder than i thought part From the firewall side From the interior So the rust in the heater intake goes all the way through. Ah well...  more rust repairs. I ran out of time and was held up with a couple of screws in the sills that just wont budge, i think i'm going to have to drill them out. not too bad. I've only found about 5 screws or bolts that just wont budge. Had a play around with the firewall and a nylon stripper wheel and covered it all with rust convertor to seal it up But basically the body is completely stripped now. ...

So i went up this weekend and finished disassembling the front suspension For some reason it keeps rotation the image :S Anyway, had Barry from Kult Kustoms  come around and have a chat about the car. showed him what needed doing and had a big chat about what was the best way to approach the build given what i needed to get done. Long story short the body is coming off and the bulkhead section is going to Barry to do the rust repairs and prime in Epoxy. Once that's done the rear tub will go off to him as well, i'll prep and sand as much as i can, then he'll repair the dent in the panel and spray with epoxy too. While that's all going on I'll strip the rear suspension off and send the chassis in to get sandblasted then bring it back home to be completely painted and reassemble the suspension. once that's done the rolling chassis will go to Barry to get the body tubs mounted and the doors re-skinned and primed too. then we'll work through the si...

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.

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

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 an...

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 p...