9 January 2021 Spent today tidying up and preparing for the kit delivery on Tuesday. Swept and generally cleaned up the floor, and bench areas, my airline and blower is proving really helpful with this. Moved a few more redundant things over to the shed. The TVR was moved out on to the drive as I think, initially at least I will need all the space. Looking at options for putting it into temporary storage seeing as I won't be driving it in the near future with lockdown in full effect. 10 January 2021 More cleaning up, I never imagined that I would be mopping the garage floor, but that is what I did today. Just getting the worst of the muck off before the build up starts in earnest in the hope that I can keep the build clean. Once I had finished with the floor I officially started the build by getting the control arms down and pressed in the new ball joints to the front upper arms with my press tool which worked a treat. I also pressed in the new polybushes to the control arms. It was a fiddly task, I warmed the bushes up in some hot water to make them a bit more pliable. Greased the tubes where the bushes go with some red rubber grease. I used my vice and some of the adaptors from my pressing kit to push them, even so, the bush seemed to go anywhere but into the tubes. Had to hold the bush, control arm, and the two adaptors with my hand and at the same time tighten up the vice. Once the lip of the bush was in I liberally applied grease to the bush and pressed it fully in, hitting it with a rubber mallet to the final bit. After many attempts I finished the top control arms. Only the lower front control arms and all the rear ones to go. With hindsight it might have been better to fit the ball joints after I had got the bushes in, but it's progress and the build has started! 12 January 2021 Kit delivery day! Dunt Barn logistics did a great job of collecting the kit and delivering it safely to me. They didn't get back until late so it was a case of unpacking it from their trailer and storing it safely in the garage. Andy had left the wheel arch returns untrimmed so he could drill a hole in them to secure the body to the chassis to stop it moving around during transport. All the panels where secured in place with tape that I removed the same evening to prevent it bonding too much. On Andy's advice I removed any tape residue with some WD40 and a soft cloth. 16 January 2021
I was hoping to get the bodyshell up into the roof out of the way today but the ladder I need to get into the roof and mount the pulleys hasn't been delivered yet. So I contented myself with wiping the body over with some quick detailer to remove the traces of WD40. I also applied grey Tiger Seal to some of the welds, especially the stitch welded ones along the transmission tunnel, as Andy had advised me. I've wrapped the doors in bubble wrap, just need to find a safe place to store them. I took reference pictures of the kit contents. 17 January 2021 As my ladder is still missing in transit I decide to get on with pressing in the bushes. To be honest I wasn't looking forward to this given the problems I'd encountered with the front lower control arm and the other front control arm didn't disappoint. It didn't seem to matter what I did I could not get them started. After a lot of messing about I found the best way was to squeeze the bush into an ever so slightly larger tube which I found in one of my press kits and then use it as a guide to pull the bush into the control arm with a long bolt and a nut. I also found a second use for my ultrasonic cleaner, as it has a heater element for the bath I could put some water in it, drop the bushes in there and keep them nice and warm (the heater operates separately from the ultrasonic function). After finishing off the second front control arm all the other bushes went a lot easier, when warm they were quite pliable and I was able to push most of them in by hand. I was able to get all the control arm bushes and the rear hub bushes fitted in the afternoon.
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AuthorThis is my first kit car although I've messed about with cars all my life. Archives
November 2023
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