April 2006
| I am aiming to finish prepping the body for paint by the end of the month. The main body needs most of the work. All the panels are resting under my house in bubble wrap. I will only need to go over them with 800 wet and dry. Only a few hours work in that. The main body will need a closer scrutiny and a good rub back. I will try and unite the chassis and body back very soon. I have had to replaced the master cylinder as it developed a leak. While I was at it I also shortened the push bar from the pedal to booster cause I had no room to alter the height of the pedal. I had used all the adjustment provided. I then had to re paint some areas that were affected by the brake fluid. I have now got a new master cylinder. I knew I should have gone new from day one, but the original one looked new, so I took a gamble. A lesson learnt. |
| This shows the new master cylinder. For anyone wondering what it is off, well it's an XA/B Falcon unit. Also in the pic is the exhaust hanger come clamp. I welded the hanger straight onto the clamp then spaced it out from the tube bracket. It worked out nice. Next pic shows the insulation sleeve that I placed over the transmission cooler hoses. There is well over an inch gap between the exhaust and hoses, but I wanted to be sure. I zip tied the hoses to the brake lines. I also placed insulation bandage over other sections of brake and fuel line where the exhaust intersects. |
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| The passenger side hanger required a bit of thought. You can see that I intended to hang it the same as the driver's side, but there wasn't enough room. I ended up hanging the strap sideways. It worked out OK. Next pic shows the fake and real braided hoses I used to hide some of the rubber. I used heat shrink to neaten it up. You can see that clearer on the PCV and brake vacuum hoses. |
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| Some more braded hoses. I even have the accelerator cable in braid. The next pic shows the chassis is now back in the garage. That wasn't easy manoeuvring it from its tight area out back. It took much grunting and groaning and many attempts with the trolley jack. Here are my sons and a mate planning how we are going to attack this. |
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| OK, it lifting time! A couple of 2x4s and one guy on each corner should suffice. |
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| This is the time we need to remove the front 2x4 before we slide it home. Marg is keeping an eye on things and guiding us in. She is looking at the brake pedal in relation to the hole in the floor. Here it is home and no damage done. Not even a scratch off the paint!. The engine looks low, even with the scoop. |
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| Looks great!. The contrast between the alloy/chrome, candy blue and black look nice. Next job is to bolt the body down for the last time. I will get my book and my bag of spacers that I numbered a while back and start packing and bolting. |
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| Well I have now bolted the body to the chassis and my theory about having the packing pre numbered and mapped didn't work out exactly as I planned. I did have to fiddle with it a bit. I have now began to get all the gaps just right. The driver's door had virtually no gap. I couldn't work out why. I suspect its not the original door, as there appears to have signs of early work. In any case, I could see no other option than to grind the edge with the flap disk. That was fine until I found the edge was now detached from the door skin. I had to clamp the edge and spot mig the entire edge. I then ground it flat and finished off with a big flat file. A little bog (bondo) and a slight sand and primer and it looks none the worse for wear. |
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| Here is a little trick I have worked out. For those that use the original hinges know, there is always a gap between the hinge and door skin. That is a way for water to get in, and possibly rust occurring in the future. Some just bog the gap but don't realise there is a bit of flexing between the hinge and door skin. This will crack the paint and usually in a jagged fashion. I figured out that if you place a bit of cellulose between the hinge and door skin, then bog the gap, this prevents the bog sticking to the hinge. Here I am showing that I have done this. The second pic shows I am about to cut the excess off with a sharp knife. |
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| Here it is rubbed back and primered. I
done this to the lower hinges a couple of years ago but wanted to be sure it
was a good tip before I made it public. I don't like passing on ideas that
are not tried and proven. Well I guess the doors have had much use in this
time and there is no signes of the dreaded cracking, so I guess its a
success. Next pic was an idea that sort of worked. I'm showing what I did and why, but I will say now it wasn't a resounding success. I do have a solution though that I think will work for sure. The problem is to get the door to close squarely top and bottom. The usual method is to bend / twist the cross brace to vary the tension at the bottom of the door. Some will place a block of wood between the door and sill and push on the door. My idea is to tension the cross brace with less brutality. I cut the brace and welded an adjustable tensioner with two plates at either end. I then just closed the door and lent in and turned the turn buckle slightly. It worked great but the bracing had lost its rigidity. The tensioner was not strong enough to stop movement in all directions, just laterally. |
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| I ended up welding the section back into the
cross brace. At least the tensioner held it in the correct position while I
welded it. I left the tensioner in there as a bit more support. It doesn't
interfere with anything. The solutioin would be to use 2 tensioners. One on
each edge of the cross brace. That would fix the problem and make it
adjustable. You will see I have welded the side of the door. That was, as I said before, because there has been some work done on this door in its life. One of the problems was the inside gap was to wide. Opposite to the outside gap which was to narrow. It had the latch to far away from the pin. I had to have spacers to get the pin out far enough.I re-cut the door and straightened it out more. I then welded in a piece and ground and bogged it back up. It looks undetectable after its been sanded and primered. The gap is as good as I can get. |
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