BODY WORK

Had other things to do last week but got around to doing some digging on the body with propane torch and putty knife today. I found what I expected to find. Bondo was 1/2" thick in some areas and rusted out holes underneath it.

The rest of the metal looks to be OK, I hope. I'll use Aircraft stripper to take the paint off and then sand blast to clean it all up. I think that cutting out a 6" wide strip and welding in a new piece will be a good repair and much easier than making a new body.

DASH BOARD

A dash came with the parts but was unfinished and needed to be fitted to the scuttle. That was the job last week. The wood is African Padauk and is a lovely piece of wood. The instrument panel is a reproduction and I sprayed it with wrinkle paint. The paint needed to be cured so I made used a wood box and placed the panel inside and aimed a Harbor Freight heat gun into the open end for 45 minutes to cure it; worked great. It took some filing to fit all the instruments but now is finished. I still have to form up the glovebox.

BODY TEST FIT

With the chassis finished it is time to do a test fit of the body parts since they have never been fitted to the chassis. I'm glad I did this as it took about 6 tries, with trimming here and there, to get it to fit. Also the floors have been painted and bolted in place.

Since there are no drawings for the F type chassis showing the distance from the crosstubes to the crossmembers it is easy to get these off a bit and that happened here. The crosstubes are a bit forward of where they should be but I cannot see that this matters. Everything still fits, with new bolt holes, and you never see the difference.

CARB INTERFERENCE

When I put the engine together and into the car I found that the left wing support panel came right up to the lower part of the front SU carb. I didn't want to cut into the wing or bonnet so I cut a notch to allow clearance for the carb jet. To remove the carb I made it so that the nuts could be removed and the lower stud was replaced with a bolt that could be backed out of the manifold toward the engine. This permitted the carb to be rotated on the top stud until it cleared the wing support. No room for an air cleaner but I think it will work OK.

FLOORING

Oct. is car show month so things have been busy. I finally got around to cutting some plywood floor. I found something called "sheathing" which is a 4 ply sheet, 1/2" thick and reasonably smooth. It just does slide under the torque tube so I don't have to take anything apart to install it. YEA.

Also there was no bulkhead panel behind the seat back. Instead there was a construction made of a box over the gearbox and a bulkhead back about at the rear wheel axle. It was poorly built and lookes awful so I made a new panel and box as it should be done (close as I can tell). You can see in the 2nd pic the angled line where the old bulkhead was located and the unit on the floor in the 1st pic. Nice idea but poorly executed.

FRAME BRACE

I added another frame brace. It has been shown that the frame sides at the bell housing crossmember can crack over time. This bracket is supposed to reinforce this spot. The diagonal straps shown on the bottom of the chassis might be a good addition too.

IT RUNS!!

The past week has been all about finishing all the hookups. Brake bleeding, hot wiring the coil and fuel pump, throttle cable hook up, add fluids, rob chain off the '35 Sports, exhaust and seats. The first big thing is to get oil pressure; I never crank a new engine until I know I have oil pressure. Well I didn't have any. Drop the pan and remove the pump and check it; was OK. Next thing is the valve cover gasket failure so remove carbs and manifolds and remove the side cover. THERE'S YOUR PROBLEM.

The Aquaplane side cover won't work on an E93 block and may not work on an E100 or they are only to be used with a fully modified oil system. The inside of the cover is machined away and won't seal off the oil gallery. I could have easily lost a new engine with that. Here you can see the original next to the Aquaplane.

That finally worked out it was time to crank it up.
First startup

Well that went well so why not take a drive.
First drive
What a great day!!