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Fuck. Me. Where did the last two months go? A good portion of it was spent doing an engine and gearbox conversion on my daily. I can't tell you how much better it is shifting your own gears and having a silky smooth six pot, up front.
Enough of that jibber jabber, onto some Anglia progress!
Holes drilled for the backing plates. These support the closing panel for the chassis rail.
Repair panel welded in place. What an absolute twat it was to do. The left hand vertical seam, and the top seam were really difficult to weld, as the the old steel was very inconsistent. I've left the biggest holes for when the turret section is ready to go in, once that is covering the inner wing part, I can weld up the parts that blew through, without a problem.
I really like Anglias, there's a blue one in my town. Looks like fun small cars. What are your thoughts on the colour choice?
I always got the biggest smile, whilst driving it. At first I was dead set on re-painting it the original Imperial Maroon, but I've been having second thoughts, recently. I really the pastel blue that you can get on the VW Up.
First things first, Royal Blood released their album today, so all is well with the world. I've not been this excited about an album release since The Arctic Monkeys' debut.
And while I was in the engine bay with the cutting disc, I made a start on the upper turret repair. I didn't necessarily need to cut that big of a hole, but I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone and remove a couple of unwanted holes.
And that my friends, brings you right up to date. Most of that occurred over a three day weekend. I'm just waiting on an e-mail back from the panel supplier, to see how long it'll take for the A pillar repair sections to be made.
Thanks, man. There's plenty more to come, it might take a while though, lol.
A brief update, today. I'm having laptop issues at the moment, and I can't upload photos the I would like. I had a little play with the new time lapse feature on the iPhone and came up with this neat video, it doesn't really show much but I'm pleased with it all the same.
I got bored of spending loads of time grinding shit up, so I decided I'd have a go at fitting the new subframe... what a fucking joke that was. The brackets that mount it to the chassis didn't fit between the chassis rails, I'm talking 5mm per side. So out came the B.F.H.
After that episode I fitted up the struts and the adjustable lower arms. Now, when I ordered the rack conversion kit the guy asked me what struts I was using and I told him I wanted to use the original Anglia ones, 'No problem', he said. No problem? It must've been a fucking problem, because they didn't fucking fit... Turns out he'd built the kit to be used with Capri struts, I could make the Anglia struts work, but it'd involve more custom machining work than I can afford. But, I just so happened to have some MK3 Capri 2.8i Bilstein jobbys propping up another project of mine (don't ask). For some reason I wasn't too Steve McKeen to use them as I wanted to keep as much Anglia stuff on there as possible, but then I thought to myself, I'm the fucking chopping bulkhead out of it for fucks sake, yes it's annoying (seeing as I'd already converted the Anglia struts) but it solved the braking problem, as the original struts required a conversion kit to run disc whereas the Capri struts had vented discs as standard. A no brainer really.
I didn't get many photos of the Capri struts. Here I'm trying to work out where to mount the rear arm tabs, by jacking the wheel up to somewhere near ride height and moving the strut forward to get the caster to a base setting.
Once I got that done I stuck the dummy engine in, and see how much of the bulkhead I'd need to cut out. Looks like quite a bit, but I'm going to re-use the old bulkhead and kind of chop it about to try and make it look original, most people just cut the whole lot out and then weld in a box... it looks fucking awful.
Welded in, things got a bit funky on the bottom edge, so I went over that weld again. In hindsight I should've ground it back before re-welding it, but shit stinks.
I also got the piece that fill that gap up (it goes over it) welded in, but was running short on time so didn't get any photos, I'll uploads those next week.
Other than cleaning back a few welds and laying down some primer, on the bare steel, I can't carry on with the repair work until I get enough money together for the remaining repair panels I need. Even then it'll take about a month or so for them to arrive.
So next weeks update my well contain bulkhead removal content.
So next weeks update my well contain bulkhead removal content.
Well that was a big fucking lie...
I set to the bulkhead with a wire brush, I found a few more areas that needed attention, and thought it better to add put some strength back in to the shell, rather then cutting more away.
With the intention of putting said strength back in to the shell, I made a start on the A pillars...
I was losing momentum on the project, so I started to make a repair piece for the panel forward of the A pillar. After a day of messing around with a sheet of steel, bending it all kinds of ways, it was still nowhere near looking like what I wanted it to, so I gave up. I came to the conclusion that this was never meant to be a concourse restoration, and I figured that I should keep things simple.
One problem that I had in this build was the fact that with the bulkhead mods needed, I'd be losing the heater and I want to be able to drive this car whenever I want, so the need to be able to demist the front screen (and for me to be comfortable) was imperative. That's when I had the idea of placing the a pair of small radiators (one for each side (no shit)) in a void I would be creating by extending the area forward of the A pillars to meet the inside of the front wings, but that meant digging the one piece front end out of storage, so I could know how much space I had to play with. That wasn't going to be easy as there were body moulds of a Mk3 supra drag car draped over it.
At the same time a long project came in the workshop (An Alfa GTV6 for a new gearbox and brake re-build) that needed to be stored in the workspace where I have the Anglia, and my boss had brought the body back for his race car back from the chassis builder. That left with no way of being able to work on the car at all, then it got too cold to do do anything on it (that place is like a fucking freezer, in winter).
Fast forward a couple of months and here we are.
Now in possession of the front end, I could make a start with getting it fitted, sort of. The first step to getting the front end mounted was to modify the A pillars to gain more clearance, as the fibreglass is much thicker then its steel counterpart, first I trimmed the A pillar back as much as I could, I couldn't go too far because I was limited by the hinges.
Also, before I cut out the rest of the pillar, I welded in a strengthening bar.
Now it was somewhere near, I needed a solid reference before I could get it mounted solidly, so I through on the front suspension, let down from the jack. The car isn't sat on the front suspension yet, as I don't have any springs for it.
Right then. With the front sat in position (sort of) I could make a start on getting it mounted. I wanted to make it a flip front, but I was apprehensive, mainly because the trailing edge of the front wings is so close to the front edge of the doors. I was worried about the wings trashing the paint on the doors every time I opened up the front end. After a bit of research I'd learned that so long as the pivot point is lower than the lowest part of the wings, as the front end is lifted up the wings would always be moving forwards away from the door. But I was still unsure, cue a sketch and some of what I could still remember from GCSE Graphic Design...
Using the now redundant anti-roll bar mounts as the pivot point and removing a small section at the lower edge of the wing (this will be made up by extending this sills) brought the pivot point just below the lowest edge of the wing. So according to my hastily drawn diagram it should work.
And now for the fabrication!
This will fit in the void left by the anti-roll bar.
It's bolted in at the moment but will be fibre glassed in at a later date, as I'm going to incorporate some bumper mounts and a radiator duct which should stiffen up the vertical mounting plates, as there is some flex in the area that bends around the opening (mouth, if you will)
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