Category: Car Assembly

After some careful measurements I  think I need to lower the engine mounts by 15mm to make the engine and carburetors fit.

To accomplish this a number of modifications were made to brackets. First step was to weld up the mounting holes in the brackets (holes that mount them to wooden chassis). Grind welds flat and re-drill holes 15mm higher.

The second stage was to carefully mark the bracket and use a 1mm cutting disk in a grinder to remove 15mm section of the bracket. The two sections were than welded back together. photos below show me removing a section with the grinder and  a bracket I’ve tack welded together.

Have sort of finalized on the engine setup I want in the car. Have decided I want to keep the car looking relatively original but want the larger capacity of the later crossflow engine. The solution is to build a bit of a hybrid engine that uses the latter 711M block but fit the early crossflow head onto it. This is almost dimensional the same apart from the block is about 10mm taller.

Having made the decision I acquired a 711M block along with a new inlet manifold as I wasn’t happy with the quality of the one I had to assemble the parts to see if it would all fit.

Not really surprised at outcome it all fits together but the bonnet no longer closes! Looks like some modifications will be required as I always knew fitting twin Weber’s would be a challenge.

 

Started making some new joining brackets for window frames. The old ones are badly corroded and the majority of screws are sheared off on the brackets. Not worth the effort to try and drill out and re-tap the screws so started to make new ones.

Had a couple of attempts to bend steel but couldn’t get a sharp enough bend so in the end the solution was to tig weld two pieces of metal together.

After that spent a load of money buying all the different screws required to resemble the window frame and fit it to the door (was surprised just how many different screws required and total cost).

 

Fed up of working on fiber glass so today striped down the door window frames. A lot of the screws were already sheared due to rust in the brackets between the steel brackets and aluminium frames.  The majority of the remaining screws were easily removed by heating them up with a blow torch before trying to remove them. Did have a couple of screws that had to be drilled out. Picture below show the frame parts once they had been disassembled.

Spent the day modifying my RVI tacho as it was positive earth and they don’t like working with electronic ignition.  After a bit of research found a company that makes a board to convert the RVI tach. www.spiyda.com and it costs £42 if your wiling to install it yourself.

If you can solder a couple of wires its a relatively simple conversion, biggest challenge is getting the tacho apart due to years of rust and the bezel seal turning solid.

Movement is now converted to negative earth and calibrated so just need to find time to clean up the metal case and repaint it before I can complete the reassembly.