Small Axe Racing: Big Healey, BMW E21 & '67 F350

"Paint jail" can be a thing, but I find that more often than not, the owner is partly to blame. NEVER under any circumstances use the works "filler work" or "Spare time" or anything of the ilk that suggest you are not in a hurry. 

Arrange the pick-up date when or before you drop the car off. Make sure that you mention you will be renting the rig to pick up the project on the date.  The project car people get very little respect from the trades because they know how few ever get finished. Make it seem like you are in the small group that is going to be getting this done sooner rather than later.

Good luck.

Pete

In reply to AxeHealey :

Hey that's great news, keep the paint shop close and on their toes. This his will save you many hours and if they have a good reputation doing British cars, you'll be happy in the end. Focus on the fun part of putting everything back together when it returns. What's happening with the 6-cylinder lump? If you're going to track this car, it will need a little extra kick......Keep me posted.

dougie said:

What's happening with the 6-cylinder lump? If you're going to track this car, it will need a little extra kick......Keep me posted.

For now, the lump is cleaned, painted and chucked back in the car. It's going to be a while before it's tracked and anyway, a rebuild isn't in the budget right now. 

Decisions have been made. At least the parts of the chassis that are abused (maybe everything) will get a coat or two of POR followed by seam sealer. On top of that will go the remaining epoxy primer and then a gloss gray. 

Super clean looking, it'll look great with the exterior color and when/if it becomes a race car, it'll already look the part!

EDIT: Along with my vacation job of rebuilding the carbs next week, I'm going to be spending time working out a final parts list and approximate timeline for completion. I can't find my SU rebuild book but I think I've found a PDF of it online.

Last night started out with a big annoyance. I went to Home Depot to pick up some gloss gray, more cheap brushes and other misc things. When I go to open the POR, the can lid was cured shut. I cursed and struggled with the berkeleyer until it finally came off but in doing so it pulled the lip of the can inside out! Great. Back to Home Depot to get an empty gallon can. What a pain. 

In any event, POR on the shrouds is done. There are literally bugs stuck in the paint  but I've plucked most of them out. With it being so damn hot, I had some issues literally dripping sweat onto the panels before and after applying the POR. No bueno but it seems to be OK. 

Since the POR takes some time set, I didn't want to do any painting of the doors, trunk or hood so I started removing hardware from the doors. I then remembered that the passenger-side handle is still missing its spring.

This is what it's supposed to look like.

And here's the new spring.

Three pins have to be punched out. I ended up having to drill one. I think it was put in backwards or something. It was really stuck and I didn't want to heat it.

Getting the new spring in was extremely fiddly so I don't have any pictures. I had to get the two remaining pins started, put the spring in place, compress it, stick screwdrivers and drill bits in various holes to hold things in position and then knock the pins into place. It took a couple tries.

In reality, this spring is sort-of redundant as the latch mechanism makes the handle return anyway, but I bought the spring and now it's right.

Too late for you, but for those reading along at home.

POR is stupid expensive. If you get it on the lid lip, it wont open next time. If you store it on the shelf, it will go hard after the first use.

Solution.

NEVER remove the lid. Punch two small holes and dispense what you need. Clean up the drips. Now, go over to your MIG welder. Flip the wire feed tension so that it does not feed wire. Then, on a table that is not grounded to your welder, place the tip of the mig welder over one of the holes you punched in the POR can. What you are doing is using the heavier than air CO2 to push out the air from the can. When done, put a piece of tape over the holes. I use that metallic tape used to seal air ducts. I think its aluminum.

I keep the can in the beer fridge cause it can't hurt. I think it should keep just as well on the shelf and I have kept half or less full cans for over a year.

Pete

Hm. Interesting technique. 

The most annoying part of this is that it's the third time the can has been opened and I DO wipe out the lip pretty well. I guess not well enough. 

I was a dope last night and started hitting the doors with the wire wheel to clean them up without moving the plastic drop cloth. By the time I realized it, it was too late. There's more dust in the primer than I'd like but I think it'll come out OK.

Now all parts that are going to the painter have been primed, these four just need the gloss gray applied. The rest are ready to go. For reasons entirely out my control, they won't be going to the painter until AFTER my vacation unfortunately. I'll either run over sometime today to put the first coat of gray on or it'll be the weekend of the 20th. Carbs are in the Daddywagen ready to go on vacation with us, need to pick up some carb cleaner today at lunch or something. 

Two HD8 carbs, comin right up!

And here is what carbs look like after being rebuilt 10 years ago, run about 10 times and let sit...

Got a couple hours to work yesterday while my daughter was napping. I'm probably half of the way through one. Should be the same deal today. I never work all that quickly to begin with but beach time is definitely getting to me.

I can honestly say I’ve never taken a carburetor with me on vacation to rebuild.  

Tip on SU float levels.

About five years ago I discovered that the manual's method for setting the fuel level does not always work. I blame random supplier specs for the needle and seat bits.

The way to set fuel level is to remove the bell. Pull the choke all the way down. With the pump running, look down the jet and observe if the fuel is like 1/16" of an inch over the jet. Do this with the jet set down the two specified turns from the bridge.

To check your work or just a quick check in general, get a small piece of tube and blow a small puff of air directly down the jet ( bell still removed) The fuel should bounce down and then jjjuuuusssstttttt slosh back over the top of the bridge. ( assuming you know what "the bridge" is). If it does not make it over the top or seems to flood the carb throat, then adjust as required.

Pete

In reply to NOHOME :

You are a wealth of interesting techniques. I think when I set the the last time I just used the dowel method...

Got a bit more time into it yesterday but still haven't finished the first carb.

In reply to AxeHealey :

And the dowel method SHOULD WORK. At a minimum, when you get them back on, do the air puff thing down the jet to see if they are close or just to develop a visual baseline. It is a trick worth knowing if you are in troubleshooting mode.

Home from vacation. One carb done. Panels ready for the painter. Gallons of sweat lost today. 

I think the color combo is going to look great!

Elmore has been giving me fits recently with ultra slow cranking and sometimes the battery going flat. I was able to spend a very little bit of time this afternoon and found that the charging system seems to be working. The battery seems OK so there's got to be a little drain somewhere. The only thing that has changed this year is that I now have a working fuel gauge and the dome light all of a sudden is functioning after my 1.5 year old was playing with it. Time to track down each and every ground for a baseline...

Also, since I'm the NEOhio Rallycross Chair after all, I decided a little advertising was in order.

Both carbs done and all of the body panels are loaded into the truck. Many blankets and a canvas drop cloth were used but I'll be bringing many more protective supplies when I go to retrieve the finished panels. 

Not a whole lot picture-worthy right now. I had my daughter all to myself all weekend so there was no car time. On Monday I started at the front left and worked my way to the rear left checking all of my welds and fixing things I didn't like. There was one repair on the radiator support that failed. I remember struggling with this fix so terribly a couple years ago and I fixed it very well with no issue. I guess I'm getting better. I then ran out of gas. I moved to trying to get the bolts out of the A Arms. No beans. When I failed at that, I took a few minutes to remove all of the remaining covers, grommets and vents from the firewall.

Today I wasn't able to get to the shop until about 8PM and I hadn't had much physical activity today so I decided instead of finishing the welding I would pull the rest of the front suspension apart. I muscled (and heated) the spring perch bolts loose then pulled everything off the spindle. I forgot to get pictures but they are pretty nasty, especially the passenger side.

Passenger spring perch was pretty gross.

Driver's is in good shape. Even has some black paint on it under where the bump stop was.

And safety wire to the cotter pin rescue again!

It seems that it's not uncommon to have to cut the bolts on either side of the A arm bushing (more like through the bushing) and then press what's left out. Anyone here have a trick (I'm thinking about you Pete...).

Body panels are at the painter, by the way! His expectation is to have them in primer mid-next week so we can come out and give him the go-ahead to lay paint. We'll see!

In reply to AxeHealey :

The inner pivot is a bitch to remove. No room to swing a hammer and heat is not really the answer

Acetone/AOD mix over a few days to try and loosen things up. I don't know why it works, but it does.

A pickle fork on the bolt head end  to pry the bolt out

Sawzall is the go-to method when all else fails.

Not tried it on inner pivot  bushings but one rust buster that has been working for small fasteners is to heat the nut and or bolt up and apply a paraffin candle so that the wax melts into the threads. I think there is some kind of mechanical absorption of the paraffin into the threads, because it works better than it should.

Don't have a Healey at hand to refresh my memory of how much room there is from either side or what side is nut and what side is bolt, so just going from memory from about 5 years ago. 

Pete

There is damn near no room between the arm and either side of the mount. It's not a typical nut-and-bolt set up. The bolt "head" looks like a big flat head screw and has a washer welded on to it. That washer locks into a tab on the mount. The inside, if you will, is the nut side. There is also another washer that locks into a tab on the mount. This is obviously a 100-6 or some 3000 with front drums but the suspension is the same. 

Damn I'm glad it has been 35 years since I did one of those! I remember having to carve away the both sides (after breaking the nut side off) with a ball shape carbide burr until the remains of the bolt was short enough to force out of the bracket with only minor distortion. Be very glad your fenders are off! Once the bolt rusts into the tube within the bush you are berked. This was a problem in the rust belt when Healeys were still available as new cars.

In reply to AxeHealey :

Worth trying the pickle fork at the non-nut end. The only other non-destructive method I can think of would be to fab up a threaded rod driven tool to push from the space between the two nuts. Kinda like one of those porta-power pucks

Yeah, I'd really like to avoid the sawzall technique. Check this method I just found combing ahexp. I'd try to be a bit more artful with the angle grinder. The only thing I'd be worried about is flexing the mounts. They are notoriously weak and if the pins don't release it would be a lot of torque in the wrong direction.

Can you get at the end of the bolt with an air chisel aimed straight at the bolt?  A long rod on the end of the bolt will rattle the bejesus out of the thing and maybe break it loose. I am assuming the nuts will come off? If so, use the middle of the nut to hold the tool from the  air chisel. I have used the air chisel to get Miata hubs off the axle when they are being stubborn on  the splines.

Pete

I can get at the bolt "head" straight on but not the nut side. I also don't have air power. It seems like this needs to change...soon! A good friend of mine runs a British car shop and said an air hammer is one of his techniques for this job as well so I think you're probably on to something. 

I'm going to make a HD run this evening before heading over to the shop to find a bolt or two that fit the bill for the push through method and give it a shot. They have been soaking in PB Blaster over night but this strikes me as a soak every night for a week deal.

berkeleyer.

berkeleyers.

Bastards.

Mayhem.

Persistence paid off. It also looks like you shed some unwanted "dirt" weight.