Some more slow progress....
I've finished off the drivetrain and suspension components that I started, rear drum back plates are now rust free, given them a coat of POR15 to keep them that way until they go off to be powder coated.
Other parts painted with Frosts extreme chassis black, seems to be very hard wearing and gives a nice satin black finish....
Top arm re-build kit from mini spares came with some less than perfect looking roller bearings so I purchased some more expensive items from Rimmer Brothers, I think you can see from the photo's why I did this, on the left MS and the right RB....
Rest of the kit seems good though and now fully built up and set to one side....
Also new bearings and studs fitted to the rear hubs, caps only lightly fitted into place as they'll need to come off but they'll keep the bearing in place for the time being which I packed with good quality grease...
Then onto fabricating a bonnet catch, I'm going to start with one side for now and hope that it holds the bonnet in place on it's own, but if not then I'll have to revert to my original thinking of a dual sided arrangement, the other side will be more tricky if I have to do it.
The guys at Carbon Weezel have had to start from scratch with a new bonnet which is clearly costly for them but fair play, they've just got on with it which is all you can really ask for, mistakes happen, how they are dealt with is what's most important and I cannot fault these guys for that!
Anyway, after a bit of experimentation I came up with this....
I've cut the lug of a normal bonnet catch and fabricated the rest, which it is welded to, from a small section of 20mm tube and some 2mm plate steel, I have had to compromise a little on the angle the cable runs in at 90 degrees means the cable runs into the bonnet space in a way that wouldn't work well around the other components so I angled it towards the inner wing, that's as far as I could take it before it became too bent as the cable exits it's covering.
Anyway it opens and closes nicely and doesn't look too shabby, lets hope this is sufficient!
Now onto some bad news!
I've been struggling to get the drivers side door to fit well, to the point that I decided I'd rebuilt the door badly and it was the problem, so I made use of the sell off of stock at DSN classics to buy a bunch of stuff I was going to need plus a new door (not cheap), sadly, all this did was confirm that I'd really not done such a bad job of remanufacturing the door after all, it's pretty well close to the same as the new one and the problem is just the same, here you can see what the problem is...
Compared with the other side which fits really nicely....
So while it fits reasonably square inside the frame the top rear pushes too far in by approximately 10mm, I've spent a lot of time scratching my head on this but I think I know where the route cause lives, and it goes way back to me fitting the new floor, I now recall having to adjust one of the closing plates between rear arch and seat pan which at the time I wasn't sure was the right thing to do to make the whole thing fit properly across the width of the car, I now think that. what this is doing is causing the car to be misshaped slightly at the B post on the passenger side so I'm going to have to do some major surgery to correct it; off with the rear wings, unpick the welds along the seat pan / heal board, and re-fit with a new closing panel on the side that I adjusted :-(
All in all a costly mistake but hopefully I can remedy it myself...
