0071 Looking for holes

29th October 2018
We look for holes and do 1001 seemingly small things.

Fuel tank removed

After spending one day working on the door trim, it was time to move on to one of the more important issues - The boot, and the mystery of "Where did all that dust come from ?".  You will remember that every day in Alice we had a boot full of dust.  Initially we thought it was coming in past the rubber boot seals,

And the source of the dust found !

but we sealed the boot lid with gaffer tape one day, and it still filled up. Another day we sealed up all the body panel joins inside the boot - But that didn't work either. Then, last week, Brett had found big gaps around the chassis extensions where they pass through the floor of the boot - Today was the day to dig deeper.  To do this I had to remove the fuel tank, and to do that, I had to empty out all the fuel - It was full to the brim !  And to suitably access the underneath of the chassis in order to find the holes, I needed to remove the rear skid plate.  It was going to be a busy day.

0070 Gidget comes home

14th October 2018
After a long month, the roll bar is finally installed.

231 DAYS TO GO ! 

Picking up Gidget from JH Restoration

The roll bar was finally completed this week, but we were faced with a week of heavy rain, so I was going to have to time my pick up carefully !  Due to the impending rain, JH Restorations wanted to get some extra space so they could get all their cars inside easily, and since the new seat bases weren't quite ready, I decided to pick up the car on the trailer rather than rush getting the seats in, or even putting the old seats back in again temporarily.  It is quite a job to get the undertrays off, and we want to weld the seat bolts in place this time so they are easier to get in and out, so it is better to take some time and do it properly.

0069 Roll bar, windscreen and more dust

9th October 2018
Slow but steady progress

Hydraulic jack in boot

The final completion of the roll bar is proving a little troublesome - Every time some welding is done on it, one of the four mounting points moves very slightly with the heat, and it then needs to be straightened again.   When I got to JH Restorations one evening this week, there was a hydraulic jack in the boot spreading the rear mounts slightly, and Brett had a chain hoist on the roll bar itself, pulling the legs in by about 2 mm.  It is almost there, but is very fiddly.  If the bar was

Roll bar sitting in position

just welded permanently in place, it would be easy, but making it removable means everything must line up with absolute precision otherwise it will not be, well, removable. And the fit of the sleeves into the 4 pipes cannot be loose otherwise they would rattle around in there. The final problem is that because the car itself is not quite perfectly symmetrical inside, the mounting brackets for each side need to
be shaped independently.