Roys' Austin-Healey
November 2000
November 06th
The month of October was a busy
one for my family. My son-in-law, the co-author of this site, had an unexpected
trip to New Zealand for three weeks and just arrived back home. I have been
doing some work on the car while he was away so it is time for us to sit down
and do some updating to this site.
Alot of work has been done on the
seats. My first thoughts were to use the original seats, then I changed my mind
and decided to use the seats from a Nissan because they are adjustable and much
more comfortable. Now, I have decided to try to keep the car as original as
possible (where it can be seen) so I have decided to return to my first thoughts
and reuse the original seats. Unfortunatly they seemed to be in REALLY bad
shape. The clothe is mostly destroyed, the metal framing bent and twisted out of
shape and the sliding mechanism has been 'fixed' by some previous attempts at
restoration. I have my hands full.
The first thing I did was find someone who could
recover my seats using the same design and colours as the manufacturer intended.
I lucked out and found a man here in my area of Melbourne (Australia in case you
didn't know). He said to bring what was left of the original seating material
and he could recover my newly rebuilt seats. It sounds very encouraging and much
less expensive then buying new ones, used ones or refurbished ones.
As
you will notice by the pictures below, I am in the process of rebuilding the
seats sliding mechanism and floor brackets. In order for the original seats to
be reused I had to completely dismantle the entire assembly. The ball bearings
were able to be recovered and after they are cleaned up and polished a little
they can be packed in grease and reused. The bolts used to hold the chairs to
the floor were not as useable as the threads were stripped, incorrect bolts were
used in the previous 'attempt' at restoration, and overall everything was in bad
shape. They were inexpensive to replace. The bolts were damaged but reuseable.
After years of being loosely fitted, the seats movement crushed the bolts a
little bit. I just heated them up, ran a bolt through them to reshape them and
then cooled them in water to set the form. I was fortunate to discover that alot
of money was not required to do these seats. Alot of patience, a few replaced
nuts and bolts, some torching, alot of cleaning and polishing and everything
seems to be coming together. I should be done by the end of the week.
Finally, closing off this part
of the month is one more bit of fine tuning on the body work. As I mentioned
last month I have sprayed a coat of primer on the body to show up any
imperfections in my body work. With hand crafted cars, not all the body parts
fit like the newer, preformed, assembly-line-parts, vehicles do. Each piece has
to be repaired and made to fit by hand once again and even if you buy a whole
new shroud or wing you will find some fine tuning will still be needed. As I
have stated before, I am positive that some parts of my car were from another
vehicle. Even taking into consideration the car was rolled I find it hard to
beleive that the shroud and wings don't fit together better than they do. After
many frustrating hours of trying to fit the panels together I proceeded to dry
fit some of the accessories to see how my work was. Overall I was pleased but
some elements still stick out. As you can see by the pictures below some of the
front grill fits perfectlly yet there is still some bodywork around the grills
edges that need adjusting. One or two of my trusty panel beating tools will need
to be brought out again to do some body-work fine tuning.
Well, that is about it for this week. I
will try to do another update before the month is over. Summer is coming fast in
this part of Australia so I can see myself spending alot more time in my garage
compared to the winter time.
Thursday, November 9th
I
finished repairing the seat tracking system. To replace them would have cost a
couple hundred dollars but I got lucky and only needed to buy a few ball
bearings and a few bolts for a total of $12.00.
As you can see by the
pictures below, the actual seats themselves are in good shape. The clothe has to
be replaced but the skeleton is in fine shape. There was some cracking along the
bottom portion of the seats but I welded an extra plate top and bottom to
strengthen it. I figured it started to crack from the seat bending each time the
person was getting in and out of the car. The new clothe will cover the minor
repair and the plates at the top and bottom will prevent any more tearing. The
back seats just need some sandblasting and a protective coat of rust inhibitor
paint before getting recovered.
I also did a minor alteration to the
transmission cover. I noticed that there is practically no space around the
parking/emergency brake handle and the transmission shroud. I know that there is
about 4" of space (about 10 cms) so I panel beated in a small groove. When the
carpetting goes in there still wont be a large space to comfortably grab onto
the handle but at least there is a lot more space now compared to before.
November 19th
The wiring for the dash is
finally complete. While I was rebuilding the dash I had accidentally switched
the speedometer and the tachometer (as some of you might have noticed from
previous pictures). That has been fixed and all the wiring connected.
I have installed the heater under the dash. With the new
heater valve in place I discovered that the little modification I created to
strengthen the shelf was now in the way (when I switched the vehicle from left
hand drive to right hand drive I noticed that the shelf was no longer supported
since there was nothing to screw it into so I made up a bracket and used it to
support the corner of the shelf). I had to modify my modification by putting it
on an angle.
I needed
some hose for the cool and warm air. I purchased some wire-enforced ducted
accordian rubber hose that JUST fits into the holes in the firewall. For the
cool air hose I purchased 4" ducted hosing. The warm air is 4" from the intake
right to the fan and 3 3/4" from the fan through the firewall and to the heater.
Actually, my son Shaun and I had to measure precisely how much we needed inside
the car because we had to litterally screw it through the firewall. A nice tight
fit. The new piping is very durable and strong and can easily be twisted to any
shape.
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