Importing a Car from the US

Oneball

Member
Messages
11,075
Took the plunge and started one of the bits I didn’t want to do, windscreen frame repair.

Left corner removed and worse than thought so cut part of the bulkhead away. It was broken around the wiper mount anyway so needed to be repaired.

I measured about 20 tie in points to different parts of the windscreen so fingers crossed it’ll go back in the right place. Top and right side removed left isok. Need to do some sanding and rust treatment before I start putting the new parts in

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Oneball

Member
Messages
11,075
A weekend of welding to top up my tan and the new windscreen frame is in place, roger me I hope the screen will fit :oops: Had to modify the repair panel for the bottom corner as you can’t get the correct shaped part for the earlier cars. A couple of other repairs completed too and I thought it was a fibreglass car!

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Oneball

Member
Messages
11,075
I’ve also spent an inordinately long amount of time cleaning contact adhesive off the interior. Properly bored of the stuff now!

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Off to town for a steak dinner assuming the bridge is open.
 

philw696

Member
Messages
25,119
Wow you're putting the hours in on this project mate especially after all the work you did last year on the 3200.
 

Oneball

Member
Messages
11,075
Wow you're putting the hours in on this project mate especially after all the work you did last year on the 3200.

You know when you’re pulling a vacuum hose off and you think “this is a bad idea, it’s going to pop off and my knuckles are going to hit the sharpest thing in the engine bay” and you do it anyway and a lot of swearing ensues. Well I’m like that with cars.

I blame the Ms, I said don’t let me buy something to work on again. I’m bored of crawling under cars. What did she do. She went to Mallorca for two weeks and left me on my own with the internet. Entirely her fault!
 

Oneball

Member
Messages
11,075
Got the block and heads back after being skimmed to decrease the combustion chamber size to about 60cc and bring the pistons to the top of the block. Should give a compression ratio of about 10.5:1

Also had new valves put in and seats cut. Only two valves actually needed replacing but no one seems to make them with that length stem anymore so had to change them all to keep the geometry the same. Will need to have new length pushrods made to take account of the skimming and new valve lengths.

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Just waiting for the flywheel and clutch to turn up from Holland, to meet FIA regs it has to be a single plate clutch, which with 500ish bhp is quite an ask. Once that arrives I can get the crank balanced and it can start going back together.
 

Oneball

Member
Messages
11,075
Did you have the mains line honed?

No, it’s just a basic rebuild, it’d burnt a couple of valves, probably due to running lean. They’re wasn’t any real wear anywhere.

Ive got a flat top piston and it had s dome before hence the skim.

Over here in Europe people have a habit of thinking that a couple of Facet fuel pumps will be all right. They struggle to give 70gph together. So although they seem to run ok you end up being lean at higher revs and full throttle. You see a lot of burnt valves and pistons on big V8s on carbs over here as they need high flow and low pressure.
 

Oneball

Member
Messages
11,075
You know when you watch those car restoration programs and they’re throwing a bucket of filler at the car. Well I now have a bin liner full of filler I’ve removed and some proper repairs to do. I hate fibreglass I can already feel myself itching already. 66170661716617266173661746617566176
 

Oneball

Member
Messages
11,075
No, it’s just that side I reckon it’s had a shunt on the rear left corner. The rear body is made up of a top panel, rear panel and two wings. It’s had the wing and rear panel replaced and they just bodged the gaps. If they’ed done it proper with fibreglass the paint wouldn’t have cracked time and again. I reckon it’d had five lots of filler one on top of the other over the years, presumably to hide the cracks every time they appeared. We went on a school field trip to Wenlock Edge to look at stratified rocks. Looked a lot like that, without the rain.
 

Oneball

Member
Messages
11,075
Almost there, a couple of bits need some more fibreglass but no filler in sight and hopefully as it’s one piece of glass the cracks won’t return in the paint. Getting a bit panicked as it’s booked in for the cage middle of April, will need to be a rolling chassis and body on by then.

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