Pedals & Pad

Saturday arrived and it was stupid cold on the way to Mustang Maniac, my breath was leaving a mist in front of me as I walked to the car. The sky looked heavy, but I was going to enjoy myself regardless. I arrived after battling through flurries of snow that luckily didn’t settle for too long. As I arrived I was told that a full English breakfast down the local pub was the order of the day to warm us up. Adam kindly treated us all to breakfast. Thank You Adam. We arrived back all warmed up and I was eager to get on with my tasks for the day. Yogi told me what needed to be done, dash pad, brake booster with the brake pedal box fitted inside and throttle link. I was happy apart from the cold.

First job was the dash pad, a thick lining that was attached to the inside of the car to stop the noise of the engine and insulate the inside of the car. The solid pad had cut out holes that were removed depending on the configuration of the car. Things like heater box and heater pipes, wire looms needed to go from the inside to the outside.

front

back

The pad had to be tacked in place with large plastic studs and align the holes correctly. You can also stick the pad down, but as I may need to move bits about to fit them, I will leave that sticky bit till last after all the fire wall fittings have been made.

The next job was the brackets for the brake booster that bolted to the inside the of the car. It sort of goes without saying this was really a two-man job to hold in place while the first couple of bolts held it all together. But, I found out that if you put your hand through the steering column hole you can hold the inside pedal box and bolt the brackets on enough to hold them in place while you do them up tight. The throttle pedal link was a simple three screws through the firewall.

inside

outside

My designated jobs were done, but I was eager for more. Adam turned up just at the right time to see how I was getting on. We had a discussion about the next jobs and he decided that the heater box and steering box could be fitted. Both of these were two-man jobs and Adam stayed to help me with it all. We fitted the heater hoses first the heater box so we didn’t have to fiddle around inside the car at a later date.

inside heater box

from the outside

inside steering post

engine bay fitted.

The end result for the day was a nice looking bit of work so far. The only trouble is that the work took longer than I expected so there aren’t too many pictures to show, but you can see the end results. The photo I forgot to post last week was the shocks fitted in place, so here elusive picture is.

Next week we might be in a position to put the engine in the car!

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Home Made Oven

For various reasons I couldn’t get down to Mustang Maniac this weekend, so I was a Mr Grumpy big time, so the wife was telling me. I’m not so sure she was correct in her statement, but I was at a loose end with myself. OK I was little tiny bit grumpy and that’s all I will admit to. There I have said it and it’s the only part admission I am gonna make. Ahem, moving swiftly on. I decided it was clean up time and spray for a few bits of the car. All day on Saturday I was de-rusting the rear shock absorber mounts that were in a bad way. This was the usual POR15, primer and spray. This is usually a three to four hour gap between the two coats of the paint. I managed to get it done in a single day as my home-made oven was at full temperature. OK, my oven is in fact my man cave, and I didn’t make an oven after all, but it felt like it. I have a temperature gun some readings I took inside the man cave were 25deg to 33deg Celsius. So I painted outside and moved them inside the shed and left them to bake. It certainly done the trick alright. The spraying inside the man cave was just as effective as the spray coats were going of in around ten minutes between coats. Why no pictures? Well the plates are just squares with a hole on the ends at an angle that the bottom of the shock bolts into under the leaf springs. It really is a boring bit of metal to look at, and I don’t say that about too much stuff on a Mustang!

Today was little different though, again the oven was hot as the sun was shinning down and not a cloud in the sky, a beautiful day in fact. Perfect for plonking my stuff in the middle of the lawn and start wire brushing, degreasing, cleaning & painting. For some reason the wife was Mrs Grumpy at this point! I decided to finish the gas pedal spray and add the silver strip at the top of the pedal arm to match the brake pedal assembly. It was sprayed and left inside the oven and it dried pretty quickly. The idea is for the silver to start just after the firewall inside, I think I got it right, I don’t want it to show from the outside. There is no need for the silver edges at all on the pedals, in fact you won’t see them unless you look underneath the dash. I only put them on there for a little detail, just because I could and I know they are there.

finished brake assembly

The other part I stripped down today was the gear selector mechanism. This is the chrome lever with the T-handle on the top. This was pretty bad-looking, but in fact it was only a little rust on the surface. Wire brush got most of it off and the Eastwood Rust Encapsulator applied, in the oven! It all came up well, but I have not assembled it all yet, I wanted the spray to cure properly before I scratched it off while it was still soft. I will post the completed pics next week to show what it looks like. I have added a page for the process so far here, or can be found at the quick links below.

gear mechanism

rubber bung

rusted

before cleaning

cleaned underside

top of the base

before cleaned up

cleaned up parts

first spray

If all goes well I hope to be going to the Enfield Pageant on the 24th – 26th May 2014. I had a great time there last year rummaging through all sorts of old stuff. I did hear that Mustang Maniac will be there again this year, which will be good as last year I managed to grab a hot sausage sandwich from their big American SUV motor home. Pop along to see the guys and see what they are up too. 🙂

Oh, by the way I am not associated with the event in any way, it’s just a good day out. Should I take some photos there?

Quick Links:

Gear Shift Refurbishment click here or go to Photo Menu – Inside the car – Gear Shift Refurbishment.

Enfield Pageant link click here.

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Shocked & A Little Hacked off

The weekend has been busy for me again. The wife is so busy I can hardly get on my PC, so I have resulted in using my Galaxy Note 10.1 tab, bluetooth keyboard and a shared internet connection. Everything takes that bit longer unfortunately, but at least I can still work on my blog only at a lower pace. Anyway, as I hadn’t seen Adam for a few weeks I made my monthly pilgrimage to Mustang Maniac, the excuse I made was, “at least I will be out of your way!” With that the “Day Pass” was issued, gratefully accepted by yours truly and I was off. Once I arrived I was speaking to the guys who were showing me the new improvements that were going on to cope with the demands for their work. I believe a blog will be coming out about it soon. After a good few hours of chatting, meeting people coming into the office and watching a few last-minute repairs on a customers car by fitting of some nice LED bulbs to the side lights on a ’66 coupe. I had a wander round the stock rooms. I spotted some rear shocks that had just arrived so nabbed a pair of them pretty sharpish and immediately decided what was going to be my new project for Sunday.

My current shocks were a gas adjustable pair, the only problem is, there is no plumbing for the right hand side and the left hand side is seized solid. I knew these had to be changed regardless, and as the wife was still working, I took tools along with my new shock absorbers out the garage to get some work done. I have written a full process for changing the shocks under Photos Menu – Rear Shock Replacement or click here for the quick link. To cut a long story short, if you pardon the pun, I ended up having to cut one side of the old shock stem off with a hacksaw, in order for me to get it out of the bracket. Not exactly proper mechanics, but as I wasn’t going to keep the old shocks it didn’t really matter. The trouble is it just doesn’t look good with a pair of legs hanging out the front of a garage with that distinctive sound of a hacksaw on metal. The new shocks were a performance rated pair, and according to Adam they are a lot of shock for not a lot of money. On top of that they looked quite good too being all in white. The only thing I could say was that I was worried yet again by the fact that the previous efforts of the “Herbert” to restore this car were a bit of bodge job to say the least. Spanner points rounded off, nuts loose on top of the shocks and at the bottom, old parts just left in the recesses etc. What else am I going to find? Plenty I expect, but don’t worry, I will let you know when I do find something else!

old shock right side

left side

hacked off

label

old shock not even tightened up

right

incorrect washer plate going on

After all the work was done there is nothing quite like replacing parts that look good and can be seen by somebody else for a change, and above all, these parts will do the job properly. I was well pleased with the weekends work in all. The car no longer bounces like a baby cradle one side and up on stilts the other side. In fact I far from hacked off, even though I had to do some to get the job done. 🙂