Hi
Got back home yesterday after a 3 weeker, back on Wednesday for 2 weeks or possibly 3 if any more extra weeks come up; got to pay for the restoration.Won't be able to get much done this time home as my wife has also taken more leave to climb some more big hills. It was Roseberry Topping this morning, only 50 mile away in Cleveland and very nice indeed, 360 deg views.
Anyway the time away was very productive as I managed gather a lot more information about restoring cars than I started with, so it is stop what I am doing and re-start afresh.
One of the Engineers I have been working with lately and have known for a year or so is (un-be-known to me) a serial car restorer and has been so for the past 30 odd years. He has restored everything from E types to Morgans to MG's and everything in between what he does not know is not worth knowing and goes by the fine name of 'The Dog' or Shaun Licence on his birth certificate.So following his guidance most everything is to be powder coated, so my week or so work of sand blasting was a waste of time as it is all done by the powder coaters.
The next person I have taken notice of is again Terry Borton, I was going to retain the old bushes, on the grounds of them only doing 35,000 miles and of course expense as I was trying to keep to a £4000 budget. Terry suggested replacing all the bushes while the car is in pieces with Superflex, this works very well with the powder coating as the bushes have to be removed before coating and cooking the metal work.
One other to join the fray is Richard Younger, Chief Engineer from my sister ship. TVR driver and all round piston head who also happens to live only around 5 mile away. I text Richard as I know he loves this sort of thing and he has agreed to help strip and re-build the engine, he also happens to own an engine hoist and engine work station
I have been doing some research on the web for bushes and there seems to be 3 main manufactures, the top of the tree is Superflex, very expensive; Powerflex, moderately expensive and Flo-flex which appear to be at the budget end. I have decided that because I shall only be doing a few thousand miles per year and of course bearing in mind my budget that I shall go for the middle of the road and get the Powerflex. I have been in contact http://www.speedshack.co.uk/ who specialize in 70's 80's cars, giving them the requirements for a Cortina Mk4 and have asked for prices for all 3 makers, so once they get back to me I shall post there quotes as a comparison.
After searching Yell.com and a telephone call I have decided on a powder coater, they are http://www.elitepowdercoatings.co.uk/ and hope to have everything ready to take to them tomorrow.
Finally got to work late in the afternoon and started boxing up everything I could, I have kept the hub's as I am a bit worried about grit getting inside and also the calipers until I have a word and make sure they can do them.
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| Tool set up upper arm |
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| Out she pops, lower arm |
Once set up just tighten the nut on the socket side and it pushes out the old bush.
All of the suspension arm bushes popped out easy then it was the turn of the chassis bushes, the pipe tool was no use here so a bit of brute force was required and a liberal spray of WD40. The brute force came courtesy of my air chisel fitted with the spike tool, I slide a socket over this and attacked the bush, these where pretty tight fits but with the lubrication soon popped out.
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| chassis |
They are surprisingly few bushes to replace as they is no stabiliser bar and drop links fitted as on a Cortina.
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| Selection of bushes |
After searching for what else I could include for powder coating I removed the brackets from the steering rack, the brake hose mounting brackets and the support arms for the front wings. You can see from the photo how badly corroded it is under there, the bolts all sheared while removing.
That was all I could think of for the moment but this is just the first shipment to the powder coater's and shall get there tomorrow.
see ya Paul
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