Ownership Verified: My Brooklands Green sports saloon...

[captain_70s]

That must be the ultimate drug trafficking car

Highly undesirable that your cocaine falls out of the sills through the rust holes though...

Engine is now back out. There were setbacks...

Yes that is my nice new 30w breaking in oil making it's escape. I'll do a proper post about the state of the engine build later when I can be arsed...

In happier news the Mk2 Golf inner arches arrived and are working well with a bit of adjusting.

Obviously it all needs to sit a touch further back but we were waiting on this arriving before that occurred...

Half of a rocking horse shit repair panel. £60 that cost, they used to be £40 a pair. Worth it though, it'll save a lot of work, I also purchased enough sheet steel to make two new sills...

 

[captain_70s]

Update!

Been hammering away on this most weekends, progress is steady.

Firstly, the front of the car has been covered in primer to protect it while we tackle other rot. The whole car still need to be stripped back to bare metal and the bodywork finalised but a single colour of paint helps to show how the shape is coming along...

The Mk2 Golf inner arch was finalised and the outer repair panels welded on...

Quite a bit of action from the dent puller and hammer and dolly to remove heat distortion but it went in remarkably cleanly.

Naturally I didn't do that. Hence why it's not all utterly fucked. I was cutting out the other side...

Filler over rot over patches over rot over filler over holes. Glorious.

I did at least get to try out my newly purchased MIG welder and put some of the boot floor back in.

So. To the engine.

You may recall it'd pissed it's oil everywhere? My fault, I'd missed an oil gallery plug.

However after removal I went to turn it and found the engine locked solid... This was concerning. Much scratching of heads occurred, then it was suggest to tap the crank pulley with a hammer. This was done, engine turned freely. Bar behind the pulley and levered against the block. Locked solid. Shit.

Much discussion was had between myself, the chap helping who's already built a Triumph 1300 engine and the chap who built the bottom end of my new engine until we came up with the reason for the engine locking. In brief:

At the front of the crankshaft on a Triumph SC engine are two half-moon shaped thrust washers which take up the fore/aft movement in the crank. These are notorious for wearing away and being steel with a bronze face once the bronze is gone the steel bites into the crank surface and ruins it. Worst case scenario the washers get so thin they rotate around and squeeze past the end cap, dropping into the sump. Your crank is now also eating into your engine block...

My engine had already had thrust washer damage at some point in the past and was running oversized thrust washers, the biggest you could get at +10thou. On testing this seemed fine with use pressing the crank back as far as it'd go and then me pulling it forwards with a micrometer against the pulley to measure the travel.

However, what we hadn't counted on was that when the crank was re-ground by the machine shop they'd filleted the edges of the journals for strength. Common on a lot of cars, but not Triumph SC engines. When I'd pried the crank back in testing the end float I'd run it up against the fillets - making it appear fine, on removing the engine and heaving on it we'd driven the crank further back with more force and the fillets were now binding against the block...

Essentially this meant that the crank float was actually worse than we'd thought and running the largest available thrust washers there was no easy solution. Usually the way ahead at this point would simply be to build another engine but I figured we were this far in and had nothing to lose from experimenting a bit.

What you see here are generic shims... The rearward face side of the thrust washer (seen at the top of the above picture) doesn't see any wear, and is also buried under the washer behind the end cap. Thusly we figured if we were to simply insert a shim down that side of one of the washers we could decrease the end float with no ill side effect. The washer wouldn't wear away, and it wouldn't be able to escape unless the thrust washer itself had already fallen out.
We also found that the second set of +10thou thrust washers I'd bought were slightly thicker than the last set. Seemingly the production tolerances for them are seriously sketchy, handy for such a crucial component.

Anyway, we shimmed the fucker right down to the minimum acceptable tolerance. Fuck it. This motor is on a 30thou overbore and the crank is 30thou over on the big ends and 20thou over on the mains. It can't be machined any further so we've got nothing to loose by trying to get some life out of it.

The engine was installed (again) and the various ancillaries were bolted up, oil pressure was run up with a drill and was good. Went to start it up, nothing. Not a cough. We had fuel, had spark but no bang...

Compression tester was deployed. 20psi per cylinder. Now, that suggests either the cam timing was well out or somebody had stolen the pistons overnight. Bastard.

Turns out we had managed to get the timing 1 1/2 teeth out, enough to be losing vast amounts of compression, not enough to be mashing the valves into the pistons.

Right, so ready to go... All fluids filled, fuel from an IV drip. Initial break in procedure for these engines is to fill it with 30w break-in oil and once it's started take it straight up to around 2,500rpm and hold it there for 20mins while mildly varying the engine speed from around 2,000rpm to 3,000rpm... If anything major is going to go wrong it'll be at this point.

Fuck yeah.

After this the 30w oil was dumped, the filer changed and she was filled with regular 20w50 and run back up to temp.

We're running 150psi per cylinder. Hot oil pressure is around 20psi at idle gaining 10psi per 1,000rpm. Crank float under clutch use is at 4thou, bang on the minimum per the factory specs.

All the baffles have escaped the rear silence and it sounds fruity...

I need to replace the dizzy springs as there is a lot of slop in the rotor arm and the carb could also do with a rebuild but for the first time in two years I have a running, driving Dolomite! The new motor sounds sweet as a nut, I can't wait to get it run-in on the road.

That'll be a while mind, a rough to-do list is as thus:


Fabricating and welding both sills
Finish the boot floor
Finish outer arch on OSR
Inner and outer arch on NSR
Fabricate and weld in all four jacking points
Lower trailing edge of both front wings
Repair any rot in the floorpan
Bits of the chassis legs to finish
Pulling out the dent in the rear panel
Straightening the bootlid

We're estimating the car'll be ready for paint around March 2021...

 

[killpanda]

You may have mentioned it somewhere already, but will you rebuild the front with the original square headlights or with the (in my opinion, better looking) round quad-headlights like on the yellow one?

 

[Crazyjeeper]

I have to say, this thread really delivers. Keep it up Captain!

 

[93Flareside]

So at what point does this change from Bad Obsession Motorsport web show to "More Bad Obsession?"

You're one to persevere, I am excited for the end result.

 

[captain_70s]

You may have mentioned it somewhere already, but will you rebuild the front with the original square headlights or with the (in my opinion, better looking) round quad-headlights like on the yellow one?

Getting rebuilt with the stock square lights. Quads do look better in general but it's also the mod everybody wants to do (and usually don't because the panels are very different, so I'm not doing it. I reckon the car will be about 90% stock in appearance when we're finished, I may swap the wheels, paint the C pillar satin black and fit a chin spoiler from a fancier model but other than that it'll be as it was when it rolled out the factory.

Sitrep:

My second hand MIG welder was collected. So me and Mr Herald can now work on the car simultaniously (previously we were exchanging the welding and cutting/fabricating jobs).

We discovered loads of rot in the inner front wheel arch area, all the way up to the bulkhead... The lip that the splash guard bolts to was also rotten though.

Highly unattractive welding on my part but access up at the top was a nightmare as you could get the welding torch in, and your head, but not if you were wearing the welding helmet. Giving you the option of firing blind or applying safety squints and setting your own face on fire while blinding yourself. I also had to pull out the front carpets, wheel well trims, dash, parcel shelf, etc to prevent setting the interior on fire...

I also started working on the sill.

Deviation from the original design here, mostly for ease of welding and to avoid excess seams. Form factory they go together like this and are spot welded at the bottom:

I'm putting them together like this and will be seam welding them:

We also modified the way the jacking points are under the car. From the factory they are an exposed box section with a plate sitting inside, presumably to give somewhere obvious to put the jack, as such:

Obviously this recess fills with mud and rots out, so we've made the box section slightly shorter and enclosed it inside the sill, like this:

Not a major deviation but one less rust trap. Its also still obvious where the jack goes as it's immediately behind the front wheels for the front two and immediately after the rear wheels at the back.

Essentially the same work was carried out at the other side (the sill cap was salvaged on this side, I managed to loose the one on my side and had to make one...):

We moved the car out of the garage/driveway to get the Volvo in for prodding (and condemning) so I managed to get some proper pictures of the whole car.

Starting to come together. Needless to say we have months of bodywork ahead of us once the welding is complete to make sure everything is straight... The NOS wheelarch repair panels were fairly terrible, 0.8mm steel when the rest of the car is 1.2mm and badly pressed + twisted from years of storage. They're all that you can buy these days (at around £120 a side!) so we just had to make do.

Obviously with the new engine the car is... Still an utter pig to start.

Yes, despite all the attention we still have to sometimes resort to pushing the thing out of the garage. It has new points and condenser, and clean plugs so we suspect the carb is just shagged. A rebuild kit shall be acquired.

Currently the project is on hold as the Acclaim is getting worked on in anticipation for the upcoming MOT. The goal is to have all the welding done on that so I don't have to worry about it for a few years. We've all Winter/Spring to work on the Dolly...

 

[captain_70s]

So, uh, work stopped on this in December to get the Acclaim done and simply never restarted.

My posting the work carried out on the Dolly in various places online caused a flurry of interest in having my mate weld up their cars - For actual money.

Long story short a '66 Ford Galaxie went in for floorpans and transpired to actually be completely fucked. No floors, no boot floor, double door skins, dents in every panel buried in filler, body mounts rotten through. It was held together with paint, hopes, dreams and a quarter inch of filler over the whole car.

8 months down the line it's nearly finished. Well, the bodywork is at least actually metal and solid, painted in a custom blue to emulate a stock '66 colour as best as possible. All the pot metal trim is fucked, as is the interior, and it only runs on 4.

I went over to plan out some custom rad mounts for the Acclaim and actually saw the Dolly for the first time since February. Fires up first turn of the key and despite being wet and mouldy it hasn't rusted except a bit of surface shit where paint has scrubbed off from being under a cover in a tight driveway.

It'll be done by summer. Which summer is yet to be confirmed.

 

[Perc]

You mentioned that you couldn’t get in there with a welding mask on. There’s a solution for that, fyi. It’s probably sweaty and terrible but good for tight spaces.

 

[captain_70s]

You mentioned that you couldn’t get in there with a welding mask on. There’s a solution for that, fyi. It’s probably sweaty and terrible but good for tight spaces.

View attachment 3563045

Have gimp masks gone too far?

That would actually have been quite handy, if unpleasant.

 

[captain_70s]

It is time.

After the Galaxie there was a Manta in the workshop, then a 2007 Mustang arrived for a 5 day tart up and is still there over a month down the line because every single part of it looks like it was salvaged from the Titanic. The Dolly has been sat in a neighbour's driveway waiting for a space that was never opening as my car isn't paid work (although it's obviously worked as advertising as all the current works are from the Autoshite forum where I was posting most of the progress ) ...

Booked a week off work to really get fired into finishing this to try and get it into a state where I could drive it home and complete it without it cluttering up other people's lives...

Thankfully the welding was all complete...

Fucking thing. The whole "rotting from the inside out" is getting old now. Anyway, this was welded up on both sides with a bit more work also being needed along the bottom of one sill.

Then finalising the filler work and scuffing the paint back for primer along with removing the last of the trim and door hardware (and doors themselves) commenced.

Various bits of car then saw a coat of stonechip.

Then the door checks, backs of door and back of the bonnet saw the first of the primer and new top coat.

Then we both got COVID. So I've been sat at home cleaning up door cards...

They're all pretty sun faded, the front doors have been butchered for speakers, the O/S backing boards have seen some moisture damage and the glue is failing across the board but they are at least presentable for now...

 

[Cowboy]

Wait? You still have that POS highly valuable historical classic?

 

[captain_70s]

Fo' sho'.

Aint' nobody got nowhere by giving up in the face of overwhelming negative odds. I'm so delusional optimistic I'm planning to take it to a car show 300 miles away later in the summer, potentially at the end of a week long roadtrip of the north of England...

The body is now in primer.

Here is some BL quality* found while disassembling.

The car was also slightly longer on one side front the A pillar forwards. No sign of any accident damage, it was just something like 3/4 of an inch too long on one side, presumably from new.

 

[Redliner]

it was just something like 3/4 of an inch too long on one side, presumably from new.

So, within BL spec.

 

[captain_70s]

So, within BL spec.

By miles.

Plans are afoot. Optimism abound.

 

[93Flareside]

That's a long-ass way...

 

[captain_70s]

That's a long-ass way...

 

[Matt2000]

Plans are on foot.

FTFY

I really come to this if you're going to bring it all the way down here, I wanted to go last year actually. My dad had unexceptional Fords and Vauxhalls for years so would be right at home and I like old shite.

Edit: The place the show is held at is actually on one of my driving routes as it happens, so it's really bloody close. I would be able to bring Geoff and a tow rope.

 

[Alasondro Alegré]

View attachment 3564540

Excellent! I expect vlogs.

 

[captain_70s]

The curse continues:

Now. You may be wondering things like "dude, why is your engine full of coffee?". Good question.

Remember I mentioned the coolant freezing 2 winters ago and ejecting a core plug? To be fair I might not have, I'm not reading back through this whole fucking thread. Anyway, for running in the engine we rigged up the rad and with no coolant to hand just filled it with water, intending to flush the system through and refill it anyway.

So yeah, we forgot that in the excitement of having the engine running, so come the first frost of the year with the car sat outside due to the Acclaim hogging it's spot the fucker froze solid. Since then the car has sat empty of coolant and with the rad out, because it's only ever run to move it in/out of the driveway to clear the path to the garage doors.
Roll on t'other week where the rad and cooling system was rigged back up and I came over for some final reassembly and while swapping the fuel pump noticed the oil looked... Not good.
Pulled the dipstick. BROWN.
Pulled the sump plug to find my fresh 30w had turned to 5w and was the colour of a healthy cup of tea.

Two potential causes:

A: The cylinder head has raised slightly with the pressure from the coolant icing and blown the head gasket.
B: The block is cracked internally somewhere.

So the inevitable happened:

No obvious disaster visible along the water jackets bordering the cylinders, which is a potential weak point as the bore has been punched out by 20thou.

The head seemed... Not slack but certainly not as tight as I'd think. Gasket looked grim, peeling apart in various places, despite being a good quality one from a reputable supplier. Some of the head studs were also finger tight once the nuts were off, which seems very odd considering the whole thing was torqued down.

So, the rad/heater outputs were blocked off the block was filled with water and left overnight, none leaked. A gasket was purchased and thrown on and the engine is now back together with decent compression across the board and fires but won't run. Likely as the valve clearance will be all over the shop with head having been off, however the feeler gauges had gone missing.

If it fills it's sump with coolant once run up to temp it'll be the block. So the block would effectively be scrap with under 2hrs run time on it since being rebuilt. Dream = Not being lived.

Naturally as the block and crank have been ground back as far as they'll go the pistons, crank and bearings will likely be over machined for a replacement block (Good luck finding a repairable small crank journal crank for reasonable money). So if the leak is anywhere that can be accessed we'll try welding it up or gunging it with leak blocking gunk. Because there is nothing to lose at that point.

In slightly happier news...

New paint is on and looks great, polishes up really nicely after just a quick going over with 1500 grit. Some of the trim is back on, the headlights have been positioned and afixed, as have the rear lights and numberplates and the bumpers tested for fit.

IF the engine doesn't once again fill itself with coffee (a 76.94969324% chance it will), it'll be ready to be driven back to my place for the remaining reassembly, a full strip and clean of the interior and panel fit tweaking this coming weekend...

 

[captain_70s]

Engine back together, oil staying oily, coolant staying in the coolant places.

Electrical systems all back up and running, with the exception of the indicators, which illuminate but don't flash (hazards flash just fine) and one headlight which did work on low beam and now doesn't work at all. Probably a blown bulb.

All the panels are bolted on, if not lined up properly yet. One wheel even has a hubcap...

Now the only problem is fuelling.

So, the car has been gravity fed straight to the carb ever since the engine was put back in. With the tank rigged back up we got nothing through the pipe. Fitted a brand new mechanical pump. Nothing. Fitted an electric pump. Nothing. Pulled the hose off the bottom of the tank, got covered in fuel. Right, so the line is blocked.

Blew the line out with the air gun. Now getting petrol up but also loads of air. Spend ages fucking about tightening hose clamps and shit. No fuel at all again.

Blew out the fuel line again. Now there is petrol dripping all over the floor. Seems that there are a few rubber hoses in amongst the hard pipe running under the car and the air blew them apart. Right, well I assumed it was all hard line down there, so it's either where rotten bits have been cut out and bodged or to make installation easier.

Pulled the whole fuel line out and replaced with a new single piece copper line from tank to pump.

Also syphoned and pulled the fuel tank. It's contents contained a lot of shite and a not insubstantial amount of water. Swilled it out with acid, let it dry overnight. Chucked it back in with fresh fuel.

Now we have fuel up at the carb. Way too much fuel. At idle it'll run for about 2mins and then the pressure blasts petrol out of the end of the hose at the carb end. If you rev the engine it does this instantly, at 2,000rpm it fucking gushes out all over the exhaust. Ideal.

This was especially fun as I accidentally wired the ignition switch to the constant live side of the fusebox after cleaning the connections, meaning the ignition was on regardless of the key position. So the car is running, gushing petrol everywhere and won't turn off via the key. I pull the negative battery cable off and it still doesn't stop because at 2,000rpm it can now just run off the alternator output. Ended up choking it to death by blocking the carb intake with my hand.

Now the fuel pump should be rated for around 3psi max and is driven by a lobe on the cam via a lever. The cam pushing the lever up pumps fuel to the carb and then a spring inside the carb operates a diaphragm to pump it onwards to the carb. Once the carb float bowl is full the pressure should be too great for the spring to overcome so the output side of the pump should effectively stall until the float bowl drains and the spring can overcome the pressure again. It's a dead head system, there is no excess fuel return system, it's supposed to just take what it needs.

So, my thinking is the problem is either:

A: The new pump is using a spring that's too strong, so the pressure of the float needle isn't enough to stop the diaphragm. This isn't unreasonable to consider as, although the pump is brand new, reproduction parts are genuinely awful in terms of quality and the concept of it just being made with whatever spring would fit isn't beyond the realms of possibility.

B: The diaphragm is somehow stuck to the lever actuated side of things, resulting in 100% pumping all of the time.

We have the Dolly's old fuel pump which it was running before it came off the road. It was assumed to be dead due to it not being able to pump fuel, but given the other findings that may well have been due to blocked lines/air leaks in the system. So we can give that a try. My mate also has a fuel pressure regulator on his Herald which is running bike carbs and an electric pump. So that could be borrowed to find out what pressure the pump is actually putting out.

Needless to say I did not drive it home this weekend as intended, due to there being a 100% chance of it catching fire. It really needs to leave my mate's place asap as he is currently at about 150% capacity in terms of cars. The '07 Mustang is living on a neighbour's driveway and needs to move by Weds as he's having his monoblocking repaired...