Adoom

So I removed the drums. The right one was a bit tight, left one was how I expect it to be with the handbrake off. Press brake pedal.... nothing happens at the rear. Well.... shit. Pulled the master cylinder off. Had some crusty brown shit where it fits into the servo. First piston came out with some thrusting. I had to use compressed air to get the second one out. There was a little bit of crunchy stuff that came out. I cleaned it up with some wetndry wrapped around a socket extension in the drill. I'll take it to MP Autoparts tomorrow and see if Greg can find me a kit for it. I think it's off a early 80's corona.... Hopefully nothing else needs rebuilding. I suspect I have never rebuild the master cylinder. Pretty sure I have done the front calipers.

Parked up for almost a year, reg on hold. Went for a wof cause I have the week off. FAIL! Brakes are all over the place making it pull to the right. Handbrake doing sfa on the left side. Foot brake doing sfa at the rear and left front. Of course I got waved down by the police man who was hanging out on the road that everyone speeds down, 2 minutes from my house. Probably because my car looks like shit. He was okay, I opened with "Hi, I've JUST failed my wof and I'm on the way back home". I showed him the wof sheet and he checked my licence and sent me on my way. I'll pull the rear drums off and see if they are rusty and the cylinders still move. And check the front pistons are not stuck. Then I guess I'll try bleed them and go for a test drive.

Did some metal gluing yesterday. This panel was a bit of a bitch. The top profile curve was off by about 10mm in the middle. After extensive bashing, by flattening out a bend and more bashing, I managed to get the top flange closer to the top panel. It didn't sit flush though, so I seam welded the front edge and I'll have to fill up the spot weld holes with weld from the top. I painted all of the inside of the area with some silver por15 that I had. Then marked where the welds were going and removed the por15 from those spots. Once I've finished welding the holes at the top and ground down the welds, I'm going to do my best to flood the seams with more por15. I'll also be seam sealing the whole engine bay later. Triumph were not really into seam sealer at all. A bit pitted here! I think I'll have to cut that spot out.

Do these things have a purpose? There is one on the other side too. Something to do with assembly maybe??

Showed a borrowed S13 rear subframe the the undergarments of my triumph. It looks feasible... I used the diff output flanges as my reference point. The rear mounts on the car just need to be moved back 30mm, shortened and moved further apart, don't even need to cut into the box section the existing mounts are attached to. And make a couple of 'scallops' into the boot floor to clear the rear mounts on the subframe. The front mounts are actually about 50mm lower than the floor, so the floor/sill/inner guard would need some reinforcing and mounts built down to the subframe. Here's a shit picture. The subframe would be 110mm higher than this photo. There is a bracket there preventing me from moving it higher, and I ran out of blocks of wood to stack on the jack. I've drawn in the mount, it would actually be partly in the boot to get it back far enough. Those dashed lines are where I would make a scallop thing into the boot space. Aaaaaand I need to narrow the subframe 200mm, and make custom driveshafts, like @sheepers did. But, first. keep fixing the rust. sigh.

Fully glued in. Much easier to weld without the primer in the way. Started the fun time task of grinding down the welds. Got pissed off with the power file cause the 40 grit belts kept catching on the join and coming apart. I went through 5 of them in about 20 minutes. Mental note not to buy the flexovit ones again. I think the problem is that they butt join it with some backing tape. It would be much stronger if there was an overlap, so there is no join to catch. The bosch ones I had were good, but I can only find the 80 grit ones which take ages to grind down the weld. Has anyone used these? Any better than the flexovit ones? https://www.trademe.co.nz/building-renovation/tools/power-tools/sanders/auction-1420958943.htm

After much cutting, grinding, trimming, filing, bashing and trial fits, I got the firewall patch to fit acceptably. I also cut off the lower flange and bent up a flange on the top of the tunnel so I get rid of the lip that catches water and shit. I used crc zinc weld through primer on both faces where the panel overlapped. I tried some spots and tacks... Weld though primer is only kinda weld through, my welds looked shit as. So I stopped. Today I got a selection of wire brushes and did my best to clean off the primer through the spot holes. There was success. I'll do some more welding on the weekend. I kept getting blinded when doing those spots along the top because that gutter would block the sensors on my helmet.

Hood? You mean a bonnet? Find a similar shape/size bonnet and cut bits off that???

I painted the interior of my Starlet racecar with hammerite smooth white. It seemed to take weeks to properly harden. Otherwise it's okay. It's much more forgiving in the prep than POR15.

That looks simpler than my idea. I'll have to dig around to find a lump of metal thick enough to put a groove in the right size.

Hmmm, it's another thing to try. I think I will just end up unfolding one of the earlier folds when I try do the last one.

I lost you... Can you draw a picture?

So part of the rain gutter is rusted through and I need to replace a 50-100mm section. But I'm not quite sure how to make the section I have circled.... That little bump is what the trim strip clips onto. This was the idea I came up with.... Haven't tried yet. Maybe there is an easier way?

Then I cleaned it with wax and grease remover and warmed it up with the heat gun before putting some zinc weld through primer on. I have done the back of the radiator panel, I just didn't take a photo.

Glued in some bits. Came out well. The flat patch will never be seen once I rebuild the box section that goes over it.

I bought a thingy. Got a $50 voucher for signing up to MachineryHouse, so it was basically free freight. So much easier than using the vice and bits of angle iron. It does up to 1mmX610mm. The majority of stuff I will be doing is 0.8mm, so it's fine.

FYI: I used about 5kg of dry ice to remove the sound deadening in my triumph. If I had to do it again, I'd get a bit more. Near the end, enough of it had disappeared that I didn't have enough to freeze complete sound deadening sheets and had to do them a bit at a time. Much easier at the start when you have enough to just fill up each floor area with dry ice.

Looks like a Field Hospital. 'Cause so much white in a white tent.

I cut out that rust behind the radiator. And made a patch. This took at least an hour to make and it's the second attempt. The first attempt took longer and was all wrong. Those little bends were hard to do so close together. I also don't have a bender. I ended up clamping two bits of plate that were just the right thickness to the bench, then clamping the patch over the 'groove' that created, then hammering it into the groove. Would be a PITA if I end up needing to cut that bit of panel off because it's in the way of something. I also made this patch where there was some rust pitting that went through. Those round things are magnets.

Cracked the uncracked dash I had bought while moving it onto a shelf. sigh. It's a 15mm cracked dent on the top on the dash. The vinyl is so hard and brittle from 40 years of sun.

Dang it. Cheers Autos, is 3 minutes up the road from my house. Buuut, it's only open while I am at work.

I wanted to be able to get my starlet or bike out of the garage. But I was using the wooden ramps/planks as spacers under the axle stands holding the Triumph up. DOH! So I made a tall 'horse'. It's 900 high. Which is higher than it was with the big axle stands under the front. Easier to work on the sills. This meant I could remove the axle stands from the front. Then jack the back up as high as I could and use the big axle stands at the back, with 2X4 jenga style spacers(nailed together) under them. After removing the small axle stands from the rear, I had my ramps back! I wanted to be able to drop the rear sub frame sometime, so the axle stands are not as far back as I'd like. There seems to be sfa at the rear of the car to support a jack or axle stand. With the subframe, diff, etc in the back and nothing in the front, I reckon there is only 10kg on top of the horse. It's REAL easy to lift the front. I had a got at cleaning up the underseal at the front end of the left sill, so I'd be able to weld there. It didn't come off as easy as the inside stuff. The wax and grease remover didn't soften it much. Might need to get a heat gun to warm it up before using the solvent. Made the mistake of using the flappy sanding disc on the grinder where the underseal is... well, that sanding disc is fucked now.

Jack the back up. Start the engine with it in gear. Do a bunch of revs. Push down the clutch pedal, then stab the brakes. Yeh??

Could have a terrible accident with the bonnet pins....

HAAHHH!!! PUZZLE MASTER!!!!!.. I cut the end off the triumph exhaust to get it in there. Now I have to walk all the way down the other end of the garage through my 'living quarters', the storage piles and the 'workshop area' to get the the other side of the car. Might be faster to just crawl through the doors. Motorbike battery was nearly flat, wouldn't start it, same deal for the STARVIA battery. I put the motorbike battery on charge.