Somewhere over the Rainbow.

[Blackpopracing]

Bits arrived today - unfortunately some were bits I did not order & bits ordered were missing. A quick phone call to Car Builder Solutions had it sorted and the replacements will be with me tomorrow.

Bits that did arrive were the wiper motor hoop (rubber pad is on back order) and brake pipe clips. Impressed with the wiper motor hoop as it's stainless steel - a nice suprise.



Other bits were some nice adjustable door switches and a wiper motor plug as Phils was missing.




Last bit was a hazard switch which looks quite smart as its a pretty flush fit when installed.




Quite a lot of connections on the back, I suspect not all will be needed though.



I got a test peice cut at work for fitting the bootlid interior lamps;



It needed a bit of tweaking but the lamps now click in nicely;





A full panel will be made for the upper boot area with 2 of these lamps fitted with a switch. I used them in my car as well as they are tidy and light the boot area very well.

[Blackpopracing]

Hmmm....tonight was a 'clean night' in the garage. To avoid getting dirty for once I thought I have a look at the spaghetti that pretends to be a wiring harness.

Chucked it on the bench and with a test meter started to work my way through the switches & wires to see what was connected to what. Phil had paid the previous rod shop to do some new wiring for him, while it's basically ok the crimping is complete rubbish.

Nearly every joint will pull out with only gentle pulling, wires were only squashed in with pliers He obviously does not own a crimping tool. The new multi plug connectors are pretty rubbish as well, so those will be getting replaced with proper quality items.

The wiring is basically ok, but as it's been messed with over the years it's completely tangled up, I'll get it labelled up and then disconnect everything so I can get all the runs neatly packaged and laid out in their proper sections so it all runs neatly in proper conduit with no knots in it.

I can then draw out a proper wiring diagram for it for future reference.

71 hours.

[Blackpopracing]

Phil came round again today for a good session on the car. Not much progress to look at but we did get on with a fair bit.

Phil wanted to drop the front suspension so he could take it away for cleaning & painting. Bolts were siezed in the chassis on the drivers side but the nuts came off fairly easily so we dropped it down with the bolts still in the chassis. I'll leave these soaking for a few days with WD40 for now and I'll see if I can get some penetrating oil from somewhere. The tabs for the flexible brake hoses were in the way of the crossmember nuts, so I cut them off and welded them a little further over to give better access for reassembly.



Phil also stripped the worst of the paint off the front chassis rails and in the transmission tunnel, only the rear axle & fuel tank left to come off now and it will be 100% totally stripped. And Phil thought I was just going to give it a quick respray Seized bolts can be seen in this photo.



After that I tasked him to clean all the rubbery goo off the rear wheel arch repairs - a rubbish job, but it is his car, lol. I had cleaned up some of the boot floor around the tank sender access hole but then Phil scraped off the rest of the paint ready for me to strip it to bare steel later on.



While Phil was doing this I was working on the fact that the doors close so tightly to the A pillars that there is not really enough space for the door shut switches.

So, with some sockets and a vice some metal got squashed



which produced these - pretty pleased with how they came out!



Door switches fit good;



So, choppity chop in the A post;



And bzzzt, bzzzt sparkly thing, combined with noisy grindy thing made it look like this, noice! A little bit of filler will make it look factory.



Just got to copy it on the other side now.

78.5 hours

[Blackpopracing]

So today I was mostly tired having got up at what would have been 6am to do my Covid centre work. Got home and had some lunch and then fell asleep, lol! Upshot of that was I did not venture out to the garage till about 3.30 today.

So, on to the other door pillar then........er...no Did I mention I'm a butterfly and like to flit around on jobs?

So......I looked at the rear boot floor area and cleaned it up fully;



Then did a bit of cardboard aided design to sort out the big hole where the fuel filler neck comes through the floor. As you can see the previous rodshop had chopped it out (rather untidily!) and just left it.



A bit of cardboard & tape later;



And transferred to steel. I folded it around a bit of tube as it had about the same radius as the boot floor.



And after a bit of work it looks like this;



I then dropped the tank out and did another trial fit, fairly happy with that so I drilled some holes in the smaller peice & plug welded it in - addind a few tacks around the edges to stop them lifting.





The removable peice fits quite well now.





What is under the removable bit is not so good it will need some work. It looks pretty bad here.





But with some cleaning back (cant get in the corners easily unfortunately) and some of the worst metal cut out it's looking better.





New metal will need to be welded into this area now.


83 hours.

[Blackpopracing]

Tonights progress was the other A pillar mod, not as tidy as the drivers one - the metal was really thin.
Again, a skim of filler will sort it though.



Then back on to the rear filler area. Some new metal was cut & shaped ready for welding in;



Cover still fits ok over it.



84.5 hours

[Blackpopracing]

Back on it tonight, boot gutter repair is now welded in on the left side, still got the other side to do.
Clamped up reday for welding;



And welded in.



Then on to the grotty bulkhead where the steering column exits. This has been hacked around over the years and is in a sorry state.



Looks a bit better now



Unfortunately as I was climbing between the chassis rails to template the hole, the steering column mount - balanced on the chassis rail for templating - got knocked by my shoulder, just as I had my hand splayed on the floor to take my weight. And of course the 6mm plate part had to land right on my nail bed of my finger Jeez did that hurt! The real barsteward part is I will lose the nail now

Ouchy finger



New repair section cut, needs a bit of trimmimg to get it to fit properly for welding up. That braze is going to be fun to weld near



85 hours.

[Blackpopracing]

Phew, that's my lunch hour used up! This brings us up to the end of March so far.

[IanT]

Speedy work! thanks for posting

[Blackpopracing]

Thanks Ian. The plan was to have it finished for Popstalgia this year, but that's not going to happen now as the Supernats and my annual holidays plus the Hot rod drags will lose me a month on it. Phil is happy to debut it at Wheels day next year, but I think maybe Brooklands New Years day might be more likely.

[Blackpopracing]

Finger looks like this now;



Funny, the nail already feels like it's almost detached and as Norman says, I've caught it on lots of things already

This was the offensive offending item that fell on it;



Anyway......ruined fingers aside, back to car stuff.

New steel all welded in now, braze did mostly grind off and only caused a few spits in the welds. Had to chase a few holes as the metal is very thin.



And dressed back. The bulkhead is never going to win any beauty competitions, but with some stonechip on the lower sections it will hopefully look tidy.



Rusty bits get a dose of Hydrate 80 on them.



and then on to the other side of the boot gutter. Boot floor also got a coat of Hydrate 80.



87.5 hours

[Blackpopracing]

I put a shout out for a new bootlid lamp on facebook, and it turned out a friend 3 streets away had one - result.
Picked it up but unfortunately it's in poor shape so may not be usable. It's currently sitting in a phosphoric acid bath so I'll see what it looks like in a day or so.



not much to show for todays progress as I was doing the rest of the boot gutter repairs. I was half way through welding in the new metal when I thought it was not good enough as the lip was too small. So it all had to come out again - which was a bit of a chore - proves my welds are good though!

Cut and folded/stretched a new peice of metal - with the right size fold on it! and welded it all in. Coated with Hydrate 80 so it will be ready for primer soon.



Then I welded in the new metal by the fuel tank outlet and fitted the rivnuts for the cover plate, all fitted here.



91.5 hours.

[Blackpopracing]

no photos of todays work as nothing very photo worthy to show, Phil came over to strip more paint off the bulkhead & chassis, and our friend Denis (who donated the boot lamp) came round for a garage visit - covid safe as we had the windows open & the extractor running - so a bit of chatting ensued which meant a fair bit less work than normal was achieved.

Denis helped me out with me welding up some of the holes in the boot floor and I made some floor stiffeners from some 19mm steel angle. I got these tacked in and we then tried the tank in - but unfortunately it fouled one of the stiffeners, so that had to come back out again. A Mk II version will get made tomorrow to see if it fits.

Phil will come over on Monday for another session, hopefully I might have a bit of primer on some areas by then.


98 hours.

[Blackpopracing]

Visible progress today.

The lamp came out of the acid bath, but it's not good news. The lampholder springs no longer work and the backplate is very corroded. I think it may be beyond saving. The cover housing is badly corroded but is probably saveable.





I finished off the boot floor stiffeners, welding upside down with 3mm metal to less than 1mm floor was not the most fun job, but the new welder made it mostly easy.



I then looked at the grill shell again, I had breifly tried it back on the car the other day which revealed it was a bit bent at the lower edges as well as having a kink in it on both sides. I managed to dress out almost all of the kinks and straighten out the sides so then it got stripped of paint. Needs the grill bars to be hand sanded as well as some of the corners.



And then some fun stuff happened boot floor gets a coat of epoxy primer;



As do the door jamb switch recesses;



I did the boot hump and bootlid gutter, as well as the window frame, this is so I can get the seam sealer applied to the body joint and also around the boot gutter repairs. I also did a small section of the lower valence where it's dented so filler can be applied.



At the front the bulkhead is now in primer, as is the window frame and a small section of roof at the front - again there are 2 places filler is required in that part of the roof where the original wiper was mounted and where I welded up the aerial hole. The chassis also got a bit of coverage.




103.5 hours

[Blackpopracing]

Another good day on the car today.

Had a chat with Pop Parts Plus and we scored a good backplate for the boot lamp for not too much money, so I can make one good one out of all the bits.


Phil came over again to help out, and his friend Andy popped over (in his Pop - sorry Andy, forgot to take a photo of yours) to check the car out and also to see Phil as it's been a while since they have seen each other. We looked at the seats in Andy's Pop, they are Mazda MX5 series 1/2 (not the tombstone ones) and Phil is quite interested in a pair of these - anyone know of a good condition pair in black?

So....progress....I tasked Phil to strip the paint of the rear inner arches, he had made a good start on the first one but he had to go back home for a bit to see his family. He came back later so I had completed both arches by the time he had returned.

You can see the repairs carried out by the rodshop before it came to me, he had replaced the bottom of both wheel arches. Again, covered in the bl00dy awful rubbery 5hit that we had to strip back off again.





Only had to cut out a couple of extra patches - not the tidiest of repairs but braze once again is just about everywhere! I'm wondering if the original builder in the 70's had dipped the car in it! The expected rust was all repaired in the 70's by brazed on patches, these have lasted very well except for the 2 areas mentioned.



I then welded up a few more drill/screw holes we found in the rear arches while Phil wire brushed all the loose paint off the underside of the car, not a job I fancied



It still needs a bit more cleaning back and the chassis rails need doing before we can paint/stonechip the lot.

Phil then stripped one of the front inner wings back while I templated the footwell for some new metal to be added this week.




109.5 hours.

[Blackpopracing]

Not much to show for tonights work, last night I coated the inner wings with Hydrate 80 which has now cured. I've sourced some stonchip cartridges that I like so should pick those up tomorrow.





Tonight I've been sorting the upper fixings for the dashboard. Phil dropped the new window rubber around last night so I fitted that to see where the upper dash rail would sit. This is so we can see where all the fixings will go in the new steel section the rodshop fitted.

Unfortunately the new section should have been a bit deeper, it also needed a lot more profiling to fit the dashboard so some hammer & dolly work later it was a far better fit. I had to make up some new steel tabs with rivnuts in them and weld them on to the new section so the screws would pick up on metal.



With so much of the original dash missing the lower screen panel is now quite flexible, I'll need to add a reinforcing strip somehow that will still clear the dashboard clocks. However, with the dash screwed in properly it's all pretty solid.





112 hours.

[Blackpopracing]

Tonight I have been mostly welding without a sparkly stick

Instead I was using this stuff;



So after a lot of prepping of surfaces - which were tricky behind the roof braces - and wiping down with Acetone as recommended bits of metal got stuck together.

Roof repairs passenger side;




And drivers side. Both sides had metal wedges pushed in under the inner braces to hold it while it cures (24-48 hours depending on temps) as well as the clamps.
I did do a couple of small bits around the roof gutter as well but I need to shape some metal properly for those repairs.





I bonded this bit in the floor as it's double skinned here, the outer is new metal by the previous rodshop but there were a couple of holes through to the engine bay, Not worth welding as it's all plenty strong enough, but this makes it all airtight, the holes were small but it was neater to do a big plate.





114 hours.

[Blackpopracing]

We sourced a new bootlamp backplate from Pop Parts Plus which arrived at work today, so had to go straight out to garage when I got home to clean it up.

After some sanding and chasing of threads it looks good.





So that meant I had to clean up the cover plate from the other lamp as well It's not bad but there is a small hole in the top that will need fixing. You can just see it in the middle by the little bump at the bottom.



We want to fill in that big hole in the bottom as it's not required for how we will use it now, I was going to weld it up but it's really thin metal and would be quite tricky. So instead the new epoxy glue will be used instead. I made a new curved section of steel to fit inside and this will be bonded in as shown.



I might fill this or maybe leave it with the slight recess as a feature as it's underneath the lamp. It will have a tiny letterbox hole in it eventually for the number plate lamp, it needs closing off as we will be fitting a superbright red LED stop/tail lamp in it so we don't want a red number plate light.

I had to assemble it to see how it looks, not too bad at all. It will need a little skim of filler over it to lose the corrosion pitting.



114.5 hours

[Blackpopracing]

Well nothing very photo worthy today as work did not go entirely to plan.
Phil came over again and we spent the first hour going over some options for things and cleaning the garage of grinding dust.

We had just started work on the car when Tommy - another friend of Phils came over to give us some seats for the car. He had a good look over it and we ended up chatting for a while - he owns a Green Maserati powered Pop as well

As such it was fairly late in the day before we got going, Phil carried on stripping the underbody & chassis while I bolted on the rear wing on the drivers side to assess the amount of work required to get it to fit right. It turns out it's going to be a fairly major job!

I then started grinding off the cage nuts and cleaning up all the bolt holes in the wing flanges. I had to add a couple of new patches of metal on the passenger side where rot had set in, and then I started welding in the new captive nuts for the wings.

119 hours

[Blackpopracing]

oday was one of those days where you do a lot of work but it seems you made little progress.

I started by bolting the wings on so I could tack the new captive nuts and washers to the body. I had to take the wings off again to drill some new holes where the new steel had been added, then put them back on again to tack the nuts over those holes.

I make no apologies for the untidy welding, not my best work - the metal is rusty & difficult to clean up and is also full of braze, it's not pretty but it is solid. Some of the captive nuts shown here;



Unfortunately I also found several more holes in the wing flange that needed welding up, some went well and some needed the big ally block as each weld created a bigger hole without this.

The rear wing corners are not that great, the drivers side - once I picked out all the putty stuff that was in there - was no longer fixed to the wheel arch A bit too much daylight there......



Some new bits of metal made up to tie it back together;



And welded up with a dose of hydrate 80 on it.



The wing corners still need closing off to the outside world, I chopped out the original metal underneath and will have to make up some closing panels soon.

Hydrate 80 applied to all the wing flanges and other repairs;





Then the wings went back on. The plan was to cut these around to get them to sit flatter as they curve back in towards the tyre and also to widen them to cover the tyres better.



You can see how warped the drivers wing is here;



Having had a good look at these I need to have a chat with Phil about the best way forward. The amount of work needed to get them to sit right and cover the tyres is not viable compared to buying a wider set of wings that will be mostly correct bar a bit of tweaking to fit the body properly. The only issue with this is the wider wings (to me at least) look a bit too wide visually.


The other (better) option would be to narrow the axle and buy a new set of the same size arches, there is acres of room between the inner arch and the tyre so a viable option, but also a more expensive one. I'll speak with Phil tomorrow and see what his thoughts are on it.






124 hours.

[Blackpopracing]

Had a chat with Phil earlier over options and he's going to mull things over for a while and get back to me as the what he would like to do.

Tonight was mostly a chemical night.

Seam sealant got applied around the bootlid gutter,



and around the seams on the bulkhead;



and the lower firewall to chassis/body joints;



and a few other areas that were not so photogenic like the boot floor to wheeltubs etc.

Then I stretched more steel for the roof gutter repairs, now all completed.



I also bonded the infill panel for the boot lamp.



I made a start on cleaning up the inner A posts as I will be making some steel filler peices to close up the clamshell vents, it looks so much better as shiny steel than the grot coloured paint/underseal/carpet glue colour before.



And lastly a reference shot for Phil, this is with a straight edge on the tyre to the arch;



126 hours