Will. I had the image made up by a total stranger on another website who offered to take the photo and turn it into a "Vector Diagram" and then I had it printed onto sticky paper. Pasting acid onto the bare ali left uncovered made it get eaten away until it was deep enough to let in some paint. Once dried I sanded the surface with 1200 grit paper and it left what tooks to be an Enamel inlay.
Hi guys,
Wow! I didn't expect to find this thread tonight.
I have an Alta head sitting in a box in the loft waiting for the rest of the engine and indeed the car to be ready for it. I'm not too sure all the parts have survived two house moves, so I am wondering what parts have been remanufactured and if any are available?
My TIG welder wasn't powerful enough to get the heat into the ali so I had to farm the job out, just as I did for the other one I had here. In the end we decided that it was a better idea to grind almost the entire corner off of the two ends of the head and to fill in the holes from within, working outwards to ensure no corrosion or pinholes. £20 later I had a decent head again. Another £20 of skimming (a total of 3 thou off the face) got the whole lot tidied up and removed the tiny undercut on the end of one of the welds.
Now I need to cut out new, smaller water passages to keep from getting localised boiling. The oval hole is where the current repro gasket puts the water hole but mine will be smaller. The old system permitted water to get trapped between the head and the gasket so that it could boil away and the vapours could erode the head. I'll follow the sage advice from Bob and add some Zinc anodes somehow.
Rob
If you are going to fit anodic protection I can see the ideal place. In the first post in this thread the upper head shows a brass like plug next to the No. 1 head stud location. I would make a stainless plug tapped to accept a zinc anode which can easily be replaced when it becomes knackered. I have attached a pic of one I had on the alloy head when it was fitted. It is only short but you can make yours larger as long as it does not bottom out on the alloy of the head.
Bob
Hard to find sensibly price rods of zinc. turns out that wheel weights are now stamped with the chemical symbol for the material they are made from. Fe, Zn, Pb etc. Off to look for some Zn ones to melt down.
Ah, we've had 'visitors' all week and I've not been playing much. Thanks for the message about yacht chandlers, by the way. Good tip. Nowhere in Wales is more than 40 miles from the coast (How big is Australia??? ) so I can try them if I can't get any wheel weights. Meanwhile, the engine sounds much more smooth with balanced compressions and no valve leakage.
Struggling today to get a good pedal with the Marina brakes. I can't seem to find where that last bubble is resting. The brakes pump up nicely but will drop the bite point to about 80% travel if left to rest for a few seconds. Probably the calipers.
Might have to crack each union at a time. Takes me ages to shuffle round with this back injury.
Marina (or Herald?) calipers. Absolute bu66er to bleed them. I clamped on front hose and the pedal suddenly became much harder and the bite point much higher so I guess there is something going on in the caliper itself. Do you like my new caliper wind-back tool that merely hold the pistons right back in the body?
I had trouble bleeding a m/cycle calliper and found that when it was in situ the air would not naturally find it's way to the top by the bleed nipple. The answer was to remove the calliper and place it in a position that would allow the air to settle to the top by the bleed nipple, with a block of wood in it to stop the pistons from moving of course. Hope this helps
By the way a lot of callipers have the passage to the furthest away piston chamber running horizontal, that does not help with bleeding either
I made a keyfob for the Alta car and then played about etching the registration into a small piece of hard ali so I could then let in some green paint to match the car and then linish it flat. No specific purpose for it but it looked like a fun idea to try.
Yeah, not a great idea to put your own number on your keyring...I was just having fun trying to make new things.
I'm not sure what to make next. I have orders from 'indoors' to make a couple of grille/bumper badges for the car. That'll be nice. I might do them in brass so that they can be chromed before the enamel goes in.
I've got plans to do one of those MG Metro rocker covers again. Shave off the fins, replace the filler with an Aston cap and etch a logo into it.
I would be more concerned that the two gentlemen were not using wing covers.
Smoking whilst undertaking that sort of job was quite normal back then and was still normal when I worked in the garage trade in the late 1960s/early 1970s.
Happy day with not much elf and safety to think about.
That battery does not look too secure.