Decided to hack away the bottom of the doors to get the grot out. I copied the 'Taupe' method of marking out the spotwelds with coloured pens and it shows the pattern that the original welder bloke used. Quite handy for spotting the pattern of welds so that you don't miss any.
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I've got the Hadrian repair panels from ESM but they were damaged in transit and the quality of the pressing has been mentioned as being a bit suspect, presumably due to the age of the tooling. I had to reform the area where the bulge at the front of the door skin meets the flat section towards the rear. On the original it is a very fine, tight bend in the panel but the repair piece has a much softer bend. I'll add a pic of this when I'm done.[
The dashed line is where the repair panel normally goes up to. The circles are where the holes are on later doors and on repair panels, hence the need to re-use more of the original door shell than expected. I joddled the edge of the repair so that, when welded, it will sit flush and be invisible. Don't ya just luv Cleco skin-pins?
Hi
my friend sent your blog to me- because my austin 7 is stuck down at oldfields place in dauntseys and hes had it 22 months and took my money and done nothing. So far he wont give back the car!!
We had a whole bunch of MM club members come to Wilton WIndmill a few years back-80 odd cars I think- did you come? I was there then
So any ideas on you-know-who and how to get my car back?
Good luck with your restoration
Sue
I'm expecting a court summons to go out to him in the next week or two. I used my household insurance to pay for the legal costs of claiming against him. You are the 4th person I've met who has been 'ripped-off' by Oldfield.
I've seen your car there.
Wiltshire trading standards have some details which may help. I'd suggest getting in touch with them.
Quite a bit more adjustment to get the door base sitting correctly. I had the inside grit blasted to remove any last bits of crud in order to allow me to TIG weld it together.[frame][/frame]
I've welded the inner piece in place so as to allow me to use it to line up the outer skin repair once I've cut away the old outer skin. I left the tiniest lip from the old outer skin so as to give me something to line the new bottom piece onto but it was the wrong shape so I had to cut out some spotwelds and shift the angled strip that is at the top of the pic.It seemed the easiest way to keep everything aligned but I'm now not sure that there isn't an easier way to do this. Anyone?
I used the ROLOC discs to scuff up the surface ready for painting and to flatten the new MIG'd spotwelds. I forgot to add the thin strip to the bottom of the other dorr that holds another seal so I'll have to butcher the new paint. Bu66er!
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hi
just had a good look at your project- very interesting: looking good!
Hadnt thought of home insurance legal payments- I think i may try and get most of my money back, he says hes done some work on it, though to what standard? judging by your comments. Anyway, try and get the old lady back first!
sue
No more progress expected this year since we've just bought a new house. Well, actually a garage with a house attached. Well, actually a Garage-Mahal big enough to take a full size aeroplane in it with the wings still on. Hot and cold water, central heating, cavity wall insulation and plenty of electrical sockets, just like the house! Steel girders with hoists hanging from them, loft storage and an 18 foot wide roller shutter door. Parking for about 15 cars, too! There are 4 sheds in the garden and another large double garage tagged onto the other side of the house.
I now have to decant 20 years of hoarded bits into about 200 large cardboard boxes.
While packing up in boxes make a list of what you have so that you will know for the future and when you unpack hopefully on to shelving, label shelving and you will be able to put your hand on the part straight away instead of saying " I think I have that part .....somewhere "
A bit too much stuff to be able to do that! I've filled 40 boxes so far and have only managed about 1/4 of the garage, let alone the 3 large sheds. Hope to be in posession of the new house in about 2 months and we will transfer over to the new place in stages whilst getting the old house ready for sale. I guess I should have hit EBAY a bit earlier in the year and cleared some stuff out.
I've had 3 days of setting-up the car with things like points, timing, carb, tracking, camber etc etc. Lots of door lock adjustment and so on. Biggest problem was not being able to get the carb to run right. No matter what I did I couldn't get the air/fuel ratio down below 12:1 (the sort of rich you'd need flat out) despite the carb being rebuilt from a complete Burlen Services kit. I never thought to check the size of the jet when I assembled it...100 thou instead of 90 thou!! Shoved an old 90 in and it runs as sweet as a nut, albeit rather more loudly than the non-Alta car. Started with an EK needle which seems a bit lean in the middle.
Sadly the nice new leather smell has been replaced by petrol fumes.
On the left side, the hole where the trafficator would have been if LHD, I have put a standard DIN plug to run a mobile phone charger, USB charger and any number of other things. The hole is almost a perfect match for the standard socket which seems to be fitted to every car these days. Fused and wire to the green supply, it runs only when the ignition is on.
The manifolds are flat at the top because I have a stainless steel mesh assembly that goes on top to cook/reheat food, a bit like this. The finished article allows a standard bag of chips of tinfoil-wrapped chocolate croissant to be warmed up in less than five minutes. A smaller frying pan is now part of the toolkit. Once the paint has finished baking off and the fumes die away I will try some fried eggs.
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I really wanted to make up something to heat water for Tea/Coffee, a bit like a thermos flask heat exchanger with radiator water going through the jacket and drinking water inside. Similar principle to a UK central heating system.
