Beautiful Bonnet

I have some sort of sickness.  I can't seem to resist buying hoods.  I've bought two, and neither was really all that great (one all rusted out, and the other all beat up).

So, I bought another one.

This time, it's near-perfect.  It came from a shop, Greatest Years Sports Cars, in Oregon.  I got a good deal on shipping, too (Greyhound Package Express--who knew?).  It arrived today; I can't wait to see how it fits.  Of course, I've got to fix the hood hinges first because... well, they're crap.

Maybe hood hinges will be my new obsession.

Ooooooooh.

Ahhhhhhhh.

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Doors, Part 2

I spent a little quality time with the Dremel on the mounts for the doors, and it's quite a bit better.

 

I can do a little magic on the edges of the door to make them a tiny bit longer and things will look nice.  I also did a little magic on the top of the A post to make the gap smaller.

The A post on the driver's side is about 4mm too far forward at the top end (3/16" for us commoners).  It's too late to do anything significant about it.  Next time, I'll tack weld everything, then make sure it fits.  (There will NOT be a next time.  Unless it's a Jaguar XKE, and if I buy it in such poor condition, my wife will kill me, then sue me for damages.)  I'm pretty sure I'm the only one that will notice, except for anyone that reads this and then sees the car.

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Doors, Part 1

I hung the doors today.  Hmmm.  They don't fit as well as they did before.

I'm not sure what's wrong yet, but I can only surmise I messed up on the measurement for the driver's door at the top end--there's a 1/4" gap that isn't there on the passenger's side.  I'm not quite sure how to fix that... because if the pillar isn't lined up right, the vent window-to-windshield seal won't be very good and the window itself may not fit properly.  Not only that, the door isn't quite square in the opening.

I mean, it's not that bad... but I think it needs to be better.

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Bumper Cars

The last job for the trunk is to weld in the support brackets that hold the bumper to the car.  They fit pretty quickly, and the holes I made mostly line up properly.  It doesn't take too much to get everything lined up and welded in.  I mount the bumper and it's nice and straight to the body.

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Engine, Part Last

Over the Christmas break, I was able to finish the engine...

 

Water pump powers, ACTIVATE!

 

The finished cylinder head.

 

Almost there...

Done!

Just one can of Moss olive green paint did the job.  That stuff is not cheap.  I bought two because I'm sure I'll need it.  I know a 1275 shouldn't be olive green, but I wanted it to look like what was there before, and the 1098 was an olive green paint job.

Now, I get to put it away for who knows how long while I finish up the body shell.

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Beautiful Back

I'm off of my car break, and back to sheet metal.  There's only one really significant thing left, and that's the back panel.  It's trashed, but I have a replacement.  The replacement is for a 1970-1979, but I'll "make it fit".

Before.

All gone.

 

The old, and the new.

I spend lots of time fitting, and refitting, and adjusting, and refitting.  The most challenging part is mating the panel to the rear fenders cleanly.  I have to do some cutting and welding to make everything line up, but the end result is pretty nice.  I bought "new to me" tail light assemblies off of eBay and make sure everything fits.  It takes a long time; the driver's rear quarter had been smacked in pretty good.  I do lots of pulling and straightening and fitting.  It's not perfect; I'll have to do a little filling to make things look right, but it will be 99% less filler than before.

Final test fit...

And all done.

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Engine, Part 2

I assembled my engine stand and mounted the engine on it before I couldn't dead lift it.  It's not super heavy, but once the head's on there it's out of my comfort zone.

I wrap everything up in plastic to keep crud out of the innards that are so beautifully clean.

 

Pistons installed.

The bottom end.

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Engine, Part 1

I'm still not quite ready to get back to sheet metal, so I figure I can begin assembling Old 99.  Everything looks good and all the tolerances check out, so here we go!

Bare block.

 

In goes the crank.

Cam installed and timing set.

]

Front plate and pulley.

Pistons and connecting rods, ready for installation.

The pistons were fun.    In the 1275, the pin is an interference fit in the connecting rod.  I used the power of the Internet and found a way to make my own press.  A long, thick threaded bolt with two washers and grade 8 nuts, and a deep well socket (or a piece of pipe, but a 22mm works perfectly).  Some assembly lube and a 1/2" socket, a couple of hours, and voila!

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Parts, Parts, Parts

Since I was taking an enforced car break, I figured I could at least sort through all the parts that have been in the attic for nine years.  All of this was in the attic over the garage.  It's all back in there, but packed up a bit better.

 

  

Actually, I had an ulterior motive.  I needed to find the hood hinges.  I found them after digging through every box, not finding them, then remembering that there was one last box in the attic, which is of course where they were.

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Old 99

Back in 2010 or so, I bought an engine for 99 cents on eBay.  That's right, ninety-nine cents.  It was a 1275 that had been sitting for a couple of decades.  It was in Queen Creek, AZ, so it was an easy drive from Peoria.

The engine was definitely not in good shape.  The pistons were frozen to the bores.  The head had been sitting in water at some point.  But it was complete and salvageable.  I disassembled it and sent it to Standard Machine in Glendale, AZ, with the understanding that they'd fit it in 'when they had time'.  I gave it to them in August of 2012... I got everything back in fall of 2015.  So it worked out ok.  Roger knows his stuff too, and as far as I know is one of the only shops in the Valley that works on these types of engines.  He cut me a fair deal.

Fortunately, the crank was ok and the cylinders cleaned up at +.030.  The block wasn't cracked and cleaned up fine.  I found another head (the one I had wasn't looking too good) and Standard Machine cleaned up and rebuilt it.

I bought a cam, oil pump and bearings from MED Engineering in the UK.  It's nothing hot, just a 256 duration reground cam.  I bought a set of County pistons (AE design, but you can't get the originals any more).

I also found that at some point in the past I had bought an engine stand.  Yay for me!

Here's everything but the head on the work bench.  Eventually, this becomes an engine.

 

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