anglia4

Its been a while since I've been working on any small bikes:

Again, excuse my rotary ignorance… What is the second housing back for?

I hope whoever buys it is still willing to fire up the BBQ for us

The Youtube channel is still catching up to real life. There's not much more to show in photos, imagine the above, but with the rest of the front drums re-assembled, and the right rear drum rebuilt with new shoes and cylinder (hint: it looks the same from the outside). Here is the latest video, enjoy: S

Oooh that blaster looks like a good piece of kit. I’ve got some little bits to tickle up in awkward corners in the Galaxie as well.

Nah I can’t see why you would machine the drum. In the past I would usually dress the pad to the inside of the drum with emery tape, but these ones were so big that I wouldn’t really do it without rocking them and just making it worse. Laying them inside the drum, the radius looked fairly close so I’m crossing my fingers and hoping that they perform ok. Otherwise I’ll have to pull it apart and try again.

I'm still working my way through the front end. So far I've done the bushings and ball joints in the A-arms, reinstalled them with brand new KYB shocks. I've rebuilt the left front brake assembly. The right one I have had to order a new adjuster cable for, so that's on its way across the pacific at the moment. I also jacked up the rear and whipped the drums off to check if any other parts were missing, and there was a broken adjuster cable there too, so that's on its way as well. The adjuster cables were $4 and the shipping was $34, so I went through RockAuto's shopping list for anything else I could think of that could come from the same supplier without bumping the freight up. So also on its way is: Fuel pump Spark plugs (fuck these are insanely cheap in the USA) Plug leads Wheel bearing seals I was also going to get an air filter, but it must have made the box bigger cos it doubled the freight, so that can stay there for now. I've gone back and forth in my head, and decided not to paint things. It would add a massive amount of time to it to do properly, and I'm justifying it by calling it a "survivor car", whereby it can have shiny new mechanical parts but not paint.

That makes a very cool noise.

Most of my rides these days are from home to work and back. Infrequently. I make sure I enjoy every minute of it.

Yeah those are epic pics of a very nice bike. Did you have to clean it when you got to the location?

I’m still doing battle with the suspension. So far have managed to change the bushings in the upper control arms and have started trying to get the rivets out of one of the ball joints. Ball-ache more like. anyway, here’s another YouTube video.

The engine / Intake / Header combo looks sexy.

Slow progress is still progress. When we collected the car from the shipping guys, we had to remove the ramps from the trailer, which meant drifting a bent "pin" (2m long pipe) out of the ramp hinges. It took A LOT of hammer swings. Soooo... now I have tennis elbow from that, and can't swing a hammer to drive in a tent peg (as I found at waitangi weekend). So getting this apart has been a bit of a challenge, I've had to get dad to come around and help me to break all the balljoints. I've just been chipping away at it. Its all apart now though, and I've placed another RockAuto order for the correct ball joints, and a few other bushings, brake hoses and power steering lines. I've got some work to do with the press now. I've also been chipping away at a little side project... I'm stepping way way out of my comfort zone (I'm the guy who avoids the telephone at work) and have started a YouTube channel. I'm quite enjoying it, and am getting more comfortable talking to the camera and less concerned about whether the neighbors think I'm a bit weird talking to no-one while I'm in the garage... If you've got any thoughts, tips, suggestions, I'm all ears!

My trailer (1.5 x 2.4m jobby) has 12mm treated ply from mitre10. It could have done with being 16mm as its got a bit saggy over the years. It is finally giving up on me now at 10 years old, mostly on account of me leaving it for weeks on end with piles of wet grass clippings/sand/dirt etc which have given it an absolute hiding.

If that was a DS shell over a custom chassis, surely it could be "scratch-built" and GVM would be whatever you design it to be? I guess then do you have to prove that all the suspension components are up to that task?

I've been tinkering. Its slow going though. I started by unpacking all the parts I brought, man I had forgotten how much I got! It was like christmas. It looks like I might have got the ball joints wrong, but they are pretty cheap. The front brake shoes are correct, which I'm stoked about as they weren't so cheap and I was worried I might have guessed the wrong size. I've got the lower off on one side, will pull the upper apart next and then go and press the bushes in/out. Its been a while since I've worked on an old car like this, so I'm quite enjoying it. Although I do keep getting tempted to cut corners...

Congrats on moving back. The new shed setup looks great!

Thats no good. I'm in the camp of "make sure you are well insured and carry on doing what you love".

Glad to hear it sounds like you "got away with it".

I took the day off work yesterday and spent a solid 6 hours rebuilding the carb. Most of that time painstakingly removing all the stuck gaskets, silicone and blue RTV. I also fixed the leaking fuel line, pinched the battery out of the mustang again and hit the key. It runs nice and smooth and responsive. I still need to sort a proper banjo for the fuel connection. Next job is to make it turn and stop.

My wife's boss has a personalised plate he didn't want to drill holes in, so has attached it with some 3M adhesive rubber strip stuff. Seems to work well.

Things to do before the next start: New battery New earth strap Wire the ignition back to the key (as opposed to the mystery switch hiding under the dash) - Took a few minutes to figure that one out. Also meant it didn't shut off at the "Shut-er-off mate" qeue. Fix the source of petrol leaking out of the fuel hose Re-kit the carb - the fountain of petrol coming out of the carb being the reason for the "Shut-er-off mate". Fix the lamp/wiring for the oil pressure / water temp warning lamps. It fired up pretty easy once we figured out the couple of little electrical hiccups. Luckily I pre-empted this, and have a carb rebuild kit for it amongst the stash that came over with it.

I get the feeling its going to be largely the same outcome whether I use Boiled Linseed Oil, Penetrol or RIPO, they're probably all basically doing the same thing. What I don't want, is for something that starts flaking off and is hard to maintain. My gut tells me that the BLO might sort of "fade/wear/weather off" and be able to be just re-applied. Where the others sound like they dry a bit harder like clear coat and I've seen some comments about it flaking off. I imagine it might not last as long, but then you just wipe more on. I can't find any definitive answer to that on the internet yet though...

Thats a great video, thanks for that. What he's done there is exactly what I want to achieve, polishing up the good paint and protecting the patina. I like his style too "Great things happen when you cut corners".