Type49

Great progress today. About 6 hours of work and the dash finally fits nicely together. Just needs some light sanding and painting.

To these. Far from perfect but perfect from a far...

I have ordered and received new fibreglass bumpers from MS Fibreglass in Hamilton. Awesome quality. I couldn't find anyone to plate them so I decided to get them wrapped in chrome. Here's the before pic

Now to dummy up most of the external parts

It's amazing how effective an industrial fan pointing out a window and an air duster can be for de-dusting a shed.

You'll have to excuse the 4x4 look, standard suspension and a bare shell make for a terrible stance.

So as there will be no more sanding dust or painting happening in the shed, and I need the Escort mobile to get it to the painters. The Today was a bit of a mission. Remove the slave suspension from my Mk1 Van and fit it to the Rally car and move it outside.

Here's a pic of today's purchases from the Bolt Shop... Hopefully everything a Mk1 Escort rally car needs to hold it together.

So while I was out today this guy came back and put the final 4 coats of high build primer on

It was $34 for all the bolts, washers and calipers. Platemasters in Penrose. Awesome company to deal with.

Bolted up the steering arms and fitted the hubs, springs and roller top mounts.

Cleaned out caliper halves and fitted new seals and pistons

Had some parts come back that I had plated. Pretty happy with the results. Now to start reassembling the calipers with new seal kits and pistons.

I can't believe how good the condition is under that rough white paint.

Half an hour later ...

So about 1 year ago I bought a load of wheels and tyres. The tyres are all rally tyres, some second hand and some new. Most of the alloys had been painted with a rattle can white. So last night I thought I'd have a go at cleaning one of them up with some thinners..

Aaaaaannnnddddddd.... The other thing that happened today was the panelbeater was here for another 8 hours.... The exterior of the shell is now ready for a few coats of high build primer...

These are from a late 60's Vw Beetle/ Kombi. Because I'll be running the speedo from the front wheel, the speedo cable runs through the centre of the axle there is nowhere for the split pin / castle but combo to go ... so the works cars ( and mine ) use these split nuts. Even tho the struts are 5/8 unf and the nuts are M16 x1.5 the thread pitch is so close you can just chase the nuts with a 5/8 unf tap and they are good to go.

For those of you eagle eyed followers that may have spotted the strange nut on the stub axle.....

Have reassembled the struts and are just waiting for all the zinc plating parts to come back.

I sent the Bilstein inserts to Anthony at Alignment Specalists in Penrose for him to rebuild and re-valve them. If anybody needs shocks rebuilding then Anthony is the man. Awesome to deal with and a very reasonable price.