Assembly Begins

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.

More stuff arrives, and "deoderized" fish oil

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:

1. Trunion kits dont contain the top seal, 
2. My heater valve was completely shot (would explain why the car was always warm inside), 
3. Complete bush kits dont contain shock bushes, or rear diff bushes. 
4. 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.
5. There's quite a lot of triumph parts for sale at good prices on ebay.
6. Canley classics parts are still great and their communication is still shit house
7. TR7 Master cylinder kits are the same as Herald ones.
8. Deodorized fish oil  still smells pretty bad.
9. There are all sorts of little rubber bits you just dont think about (dust covers for the rear wheel cylinders, door check strap seals, master cylinder gaters and gearbox mounts for example)

 As you can guess from point 8, I've spent a little time spraying fish oil into the chassis rails. Its deodorized I've since found out that deodorized does not mean odorless and although it doesn't reek as bad as i suspect normal fish oil does it still smells pretty ripe.

I didn't do anything else this weekend, but i will certainly be going up this weekend and expect to have the front suspension back on at least partially. This week I'm hoping to have the master cylinders rebuilt and the last of the brake pedal sorted out.

The rear tub is also complete too which is good. I'll be picking it up in a week or so to reassemble that body. Cringe, I'm not looking forward to that.

Paint! and some photos of the molasses

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.

Finally some pictures

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.

More!

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 rent it. once thats out of the way i'll have more time and money available to focus on the car. I'm looking forward to getting the chassis done as then i can actually feel like i'm moving towards having my car back. Actually finally assemble something.

I've got a few liters of molasses coming and a big drum so i'll be using paint stripper on all the small suspension components then soaking them for a week in the molasses and water to remove rust, then an ospho bath followed by POR-15 should finish them off quite nicely.

Not many updates but much work

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, while i was up at my parents last weekend i pulled apart the rear suspension assemblies and removed all the suspension bushes from the radius arms (and the front wishbones).

I loaded the rear axles, front shocks and springs along with the lower wishbone that has the seized bolt in the trunion on to my dads ute. He was dropping them off to the local mechanic to disassemble them for me. I only need the shock tops as i have both replacement springs and shocks. the axles need to be pressed (which i dont have) and i'm hoping some heat will help the trunion bolt.

Fingers crossed.

And DONE!, well Phase One

 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!