Monday 30 July 2012

Accelerator cable change

Over the fist km I have made, I noticed when accelerating, the pedal was sticky and therefore acceleration was very annoying, specially driving in a city.

The organ style pedal was not the reason as it was restores some time ago, and the hinge was cleaned and greased. So therefore the problem was the cable.

Reading the MG Experience forum, I found that some people instead of buying a porpoise made cable from the usual provider, they just used a normal brake bike cable.

So I ended up on my nearest bike shop and asked for a cable. The inner cable is sold as a unit of 1,5meter, and the outer case is sold my meter, so just got one. These bike cables have some kind of plastic inside which makes the braided cable to slide very smoothly.

I removed the original cable, and but the new one to the correct size, just about 8cm longer because I felt it was a little short and reuse the original end-point. As Haynes books would say, refit is the inverse process of removal.


It´s incredible to see the difference that makes a new cable on the riding. Now acceleration is smooth and much more progressive.

I noticed the original cable had inside a spring that was not coated, so the braided cable had a very rough contact surface.

Total cost of the cable: 2 eur

Monday 23 July 2012

Soft top structure restoration

Hello all, this weekend I had nothing to do on my resto, because I just had no time to remove parts from the sprite. So I just turned my eyes to the original soft hood structure. I will not be using it until next year possibly, as I have no soft hood and as they are expensive, it will have to wait. But I just wanted to restore it and store it safely....




The structure was in good condition.... plenty of surface rust as you can see...


Also I had a problem as one of the hinges was broken and not working. The hinge was positioned correctly, and taken to a metal shop where they kindly repaired with a few sports of MIG welding.


All the structure was wire wheel cleaned, because it was big and would not get into the sand blast machine. As the smaller parts and hinges could not be easily cleaned with the wire wheel, I used an outdoor sand blast gun I had, and cleaned them, with the counterpart of loosing most of the sand media.

Once the structure was completely cleaned, I had to paint it, and here come the problem. Originally the structure (as well as the toneau sticks) was painted in cumulus grey (ref Terry Horler's book). As I had no clue of a paint code for this grey, and I was not willing to make a special porpoise made spray can with the correct colour as it´s very expensive, I just got a RAL chart and searched for the most similar shade. I found that medium gray RAL 7000 was very very similar, and fortunately it´s a colour widely available at all hardware stores.

Some coats of spray primer, and several coats of RAL 7000 gray ended with a lovely restored structure that anyone would hardly tell the difference with the original colour.

Tuesday 17 July 2012

Gear knob restoration

Fortunately the original gear knob was still in place. Condition was good, with  no cracks, but all the original paint was gone and the grooves full of dirt.





As always, I was not going to buy a new one, or one of those modern wood ones. I just had to try to restore it. The process was easy and gave excellent results.

I first used a needle to remove from the numbers and grooves all the rest of paint and dirt, cleaning all with alcohol and a ears cleaning stick. That way the surface was clean enough to accept new paint (white enamel paint by the way)

Now came the difficult question…. How to apply precisely the paint?? A tiny paint brush? What I finally made was to apply paint with the needle, giving 3 layers, because each layer as it would dry, it would shrink.

You can see that after 3 coats, the lines where thick and the numbers could not be seen……

Now came the clever bit, as what I did was to sand down the paint with a very fine sanding pad (about 600 grit), with water. Slowly  sanding, until the excess of paint came off and the lines came true and the numbers came clearly visible.



Once I was satisfied, I polished the entire knob and came up with a nice an lovely restored unit.
My doubt is if I should give a coat of clear lacquer to make it shiny and protect the new paint……. What’s your suggestion???

Monday 16 July 2012

Some seat cleaning and several things...

This weekend I could spend some time with the car.

I fitted new rubber buffers on both the bonnet and the boot, with a new rubber seal for the boot. Original buffers where shot with very rusted screws which in some cases I had to cut off with the dremel cutting disks. Now I have to figure out what to do as the boot lid is about 6mm above it´s normal flush position with the rest of the car body



The seat are the original ones trimmed with the original blue vinyl and silver piping. The vinyl is in superb condition considering it has almost 50 years, with no rips. But I think it has never been cleaned so it was the moment. I removed the pilots seat, removing below the flow the 2 big nuts that hold the seat rails. After you have to move the seat to the front to unveil the 2 rear screws that screw to 2 captive nut soldered on the lower part of the floor. Some wd-40  always help to remove the nuts and screws because as the are exposed to the underside if the car, they are always rusted and difficult to remove.
After removing the carpet, I could verify the floor is solid and the paint is there. Nearly no rust was present, just a few tiny spots, so I was lucky.

Seat rails where originally zinc plates, and the lower part wad some surface rust. As I have no option for a new zinc coat, I just sanded all the surface to remove the rust, and paint it black matt. Once dry, I just sanded the matching surfaces of the upper and lower rails where they will slide. Some grease was applied once installed again, with all new bolts and nuts.



The seat it self was cleaned with APC (All Purpose Cleaner) that my good mate JL gave me some time ago to clean the golf mk1 cabriolet white roof, and it really makes the difference! After soaking the APC, I would just scrub lightly and leave it there for a few minutes so it helps to solve the dirt. Then with a scrubbing pad, I cleaned all the surface and then removed with a clean rack.  The process was made twice on each section. Result was a fresh and clean seat, that slides over its rail very smoothly.



I also removed all the four metal finisher that surround the grill, drilling the rivets. The metal parts are very matt and dirty, with some dents that will need to be removed. I will polish them to a shiny condition. The metal part that covers the lower front part of the bonnet, was a nightmare as I could see that nothing good was hiding below….



As you can see a lot of dirt was trapped between the bonnet sheet and the metal finisher, so corrosion has made it´s work….. The front side of the bonnet is a very common part for corrosion as water gets trapped there. British Heritage sells new replacement bonnets (must cost a fortune to send it to Spain…) and repair sections for the front part of the bonnet are available. A repair section would need to be carefully soldered in place, which now is out of my scope. So as corrosion looks to be more on the surface, and just a small spot has a corrosion hole but nothing structural, I will repair it my self. Once done I will post the procedure I used. 

Next week end I would like to remove the front bumper, and remove all the metal parts that hold it to fit sand blast it and paint it. The front bumper looks tatty, but I will try to clean it first with some steel wool and wd40 to see if I can restore it to a good condition before spending hundreds of eur re-chroming it…. 

Friday 13 July 2012

Lost & Found: Austin Healey stolen car found after 42 years

Not a restoration post, but I just had to put a quick refference.

This morning I read a great history where a lovely Austin Healey that was stolen 42 years ago, finally was recovered by it´s original owner.


I was impressed and excited how things can turn, and a car that no one would ever think to see again, so many years later appear again!


Congratulations to it´s former owner Rob Russell , who now can try to catch all the missing miles he has not been able to make during the last 40 years!





Take a look at this Video

Wednesday 4 July 2012

Back home and running again after nearly 20 years

Hurray!

Finally yesterday I went to the MOT station. All of the workers where excited to see the car there and all where willing to make the test and have the chance to drive it! All the checks where correct except for the CO2 level which was high, about 4.5, but within the legal limits.

As all the original papers for the car where lost, I had to ask to make new ones, which costs some 20 eur more and will delay for several weeks.

As the car was not legal to drive, I had to call for platform to get it at the workshop and take It to the MOT station and then back home. The platform used was a small company specialized in moving classic cars, and have very competitive prices. The company name is Kass Sport.




All the hard mechanical part could not have been made without the help of my great fellow friend Jose María from Autoal Service. He is a master mechanic having been aftersales responsable for several great brands as Ferrari, Maserati, Rolls, Bentley, Lotus, BMW, etc, so he is the perfect person to look after my cars. He is so delicate working on others cars, and so professional. Thanks José María!!!!

Now the car is home and pending to make some legal papers and ask for an insurance. Then I will be able to drive it….. From now, a lot of work is pending: seals, car paint, chrome restoration, possibly I will install modern retractable seat belts for easy daily use, and restore hundreds of parts.
So for the next year or so, I will have plenty of weekend projects to do!


Monday 2 July 2012

Cleaning and verifying the radio

Hello all, until I get the car passing the MOT this week, I removed the radio console at the workshop, as I was willing to take a closer look, make some cleaning and see if it worked correctly.


The radio looked to be original period style. I have read on several forum posts, that spridgets never came from the factory with the radio as it was a dealers accessory. So one could buy the radio he wanted. I am unsure if this was the case for all markets.


Once removed, I noticed the top of the radio full of oil , and lower part of the radio also full. The mechanic told me that when he started the engine for the first time, he notices oil drops coming from the oil pressure indicator, and that he had to tighten up the tube nut. Flipping over the radio would reveal a nice vinyl sticker from the Smiths Radiomobile Company, with model number 970T.

A quick internet search for this model, revealed that it was a very expensive radio on those days, normally fitted to important cars. This Jensen web site has more info Therefore I have a small treasure in my hands, and incredible that it was fitted locally at the dealer. Spain in those days was a rather closed country, and getting this kind of radio must not be an easy task. It is an original positive earth radio from 1965.


Without my wifes permition (ugggg), I used the kitchen to make al the work. I removed all the external parts of the radio, knobs, plates, plastic buttons, etc, which where all dirty and oily, so had to wash and clean them. Inside I discovered a lovely sticker with all the necessary instructions to convert it from positive earth to negative earth. This sticker was made in paper, but as it was full of oil, it had separated from the inside cover. With some great care, I could clean it, just rubbing with my fingers with some detergent. Once cleaned I dried it  with kitchen paper and put some books on top, so the paper wont wrap. The outer sticker was made in vinyl so cleaning was an easy task.



All the inside of the mechanism was nice and clean, so after verifying all looked correctly, I wired up the radio to a variable power source I have, a classic car antenna, and connect it to the original speaker. The radio did work ended, but it is only LW and AM. FM was tooo modern for it. On LW I could not tune any radio, but on AM I could tune 3 or 4 different ones. At least in Spain AM is nearly extinguished.

The speaker is also an original unit made by ELCA from the UK. It looks to be in perfect condition, with no rips ot what ever, but I have the doubt if speaker material gets “old” and looses quality even if it´s not broken. I need to ask a specialist to see if I should get a new one, or should I keep it as long as it works.


The radio console is made out of a thick black cardboard. It is in very nice condition and no one has ever drilled holes to fit extra swithes or similar.

A complete clean of all the components and some polish of the metal fascia and how I have a lovely original radio in great shape. THE BIG QUESTION: should I fit a more modern unit which has FM? Or should I just try to fit an aux connector to connect the IPOD? If I fit the aux, I would reuse the original radio, will be able to play podcasts and also will be able to connect by mobile and set it´s internal fm tuning program, so can end with all what I want. I really feel I should go this way, and just try to fit the AUS. I will read some post to see if it´s something I can do my self, or I should take it to a local specialist which told me would cost about 60€