Category: Past Indiscretions (Page 5 of 25)

[Insert bird, plane joke here.] Here’s how this rather heavy rear suspension assembly was taken off my work table and put into the car. (I decided in the end to just go with standard bleed nipples, it’s not really all that difficult a task to bleed the brakes if you take the front shock off either side, and that only takes a few minutes.)
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Well, almost finished, I have to put a couple of grease plugs in and finish engineering my remote bleeders for the brakes. It was only through the good graces of my friends at Autosport Seattle that it came together at all, though. When I tried to assemble the right hub to the lower link, it became clear that the lower link was way too narrow. This is a big cast iron piece, so that takes some doing.
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I took the car off the cart it’s been sitting on for a decade tonight, and it’s now on jack stands…sort of. (I had this same issue with my red FHC years ago!) The car is only touching three of the four stands. I wouldn’t be surprised if the floor is uneven; I also wouldn’t be surprised if the car is uneven. I suspect the car is just pretty stiff. It also doesn’t have a lot of heavy components attached yet, which might make it more inclined to flex onto the stands.
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I have the pedal box and brake servo rebuilt and in the car; I’m still waiting on the re-sleeved master cylinders, so it’s not quite together, obviously. Still, another bunch of fiddly bits all back where they should be…I think. The brake reservoirs, their shield and the bracket holding them are all new, none of that made it through to the other side, alas. The hardware is original. The shield comes with small holes for the bolts, but no allowance in the insulating material for the steel spacers. I chucked a 3/4″ spade bit in the drill press and that worked well for machining the material away.
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If you’ve never had the pleasure, putting the fuel tank back in an E-Type is a genuine challenge, especially if you want things to have paint on them when you’re done. There’s only one very exact position it will “slide” into place (if you define sliding as one of the labors of Hercules). In any case, it’s done, with the new in-tank fuel pump and sender as well.

One of the things you note when putting a car back together from scratch is just how many places there are for fluids to leak from.
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And you thought fitting the frames together was a challenge. Refitting the front suspension was genuinely difficult. Especially so because I put a couple of crucial pieces on backwards the first time. A cautionary tale within! Continue reading

This was a lot more “exciting” than I had hoped, or anticipated. The car was painted with the framework in place, though that’s not how early cars were painted–a decision we arrived at as the bonnet was shimmed and fit nicely. Plan was, I would later removed the temporary frame bolts one at a time, replace them with the refinished bolts, and no one would be the wiser. Ah, had it been so easy.
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Most of my fasteners have been re-plated–I’ve now finished the tedium of sorting the various items back into their proper place. Above and below are photos of that process. I took (bad) digital photos of each baggie’s contents back in 2002, before dumping the stuff into one big box for the platers. This turns out to have been barely enough information, and I should have recorded much more. Continue reading

I’ve been blasting and painting those parts I didn’t prepare a decade ago, and sending off large orders to the various specialists, while I wait for the fasteners to come back from the platers. Above you can see my replica of the crayon body-number scrawled onto the body when the car was new. It’s pretty close to the original in appearance; I may have finally found my calling.
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