Starting to find it a pain to work on the roof panel at such height and getting a little fed up with the small casters on my dollys going any which way and struggling with the load. I need to start hanging panels on to check ive got the shaped up nicely, so it was time for the body to come back down to earth. For this to happen I needed to build up the pan.
I was met with this from my old handbrake cables when I pulled them out, so it was easy to do I put a new pair in.
The new (4 year old less than 1000 miles) axle boots on the offside had both split. Top quality stuff ive bought there!
So that was removed from the car and bench built, fortunately I have a few original drive shafts with nice original boots, which aren't perished and still supple. I removed two of these and installed on the car.
I threaded various other cables through with lots of lovely grease, to get to this point.
This was just a bit of a fun, the earth strap was very grotty, before and after photo here. I put it in a jar of diesel over night, then spray with brake clearer and it looked all nice and coppery again. I know it wont last 5 minutes once it rains, but hell it looks nice for now.
Before I went any further, I wanted to check everything was suitably protected. It was then I noticed the two rubber bungs in the shock towers and realised a that cavity projection wouldn't hurt in there.
My inner chimp took over though as one of them simply wouldn't come out and i ended up pulling it with pliers, which im sure you guess has torn it in two. So if anyone has any of these grommets im happy to buy a few off you, ive been through my stash and I only have the bigger diameter ones. Typical eh!
With my inhibiting completed I set about fitting the pan seal. I arsenal was as follows.
With it all trimmed to the fit the corners I put a few dabs of tiger seal on the contours it didnt want to follow, laid it on and held in place over night with pan washers.
The following day this meant the moment was upon us, I cleaned up the various mounting rubbers, sleeves and fasteners. Then aligned the body and the pan.
I tried to lift the back and manually but I simply hadn't eaten enough wheatbix to be able to do it. So I took a risk and used this block of wood and my trolley jack.
The front was easier as I could lift it manually and lower on to the body.
A couple of hours with a tin of copper grease and a selection of bolts so it all fastened down for the last time, I hope!
I thought it was time that i finished the repairs to the body.
As expected I found a rotten drain pipe, which the previous person who repaired this didn't bother to fix so its rotten through again.
With this handy hack saw blade I managed to cut the rotten bit out.
I then got carried away, I replaced the rotten section with a piece of house pipe and tried to seal up the panel. But I hasnt worked very well, so I think its all coming back out this evening to be improved.