Part 3
Doddering onwards through acres of uos body panels with a World of existing repaints and filled sections has taken me an age. This is 1 month after I started. Front wings birmabrite rather than plastic and the rebuilt drivers door; prepped, primed, flatted, filled, flatted, primed, flatted, filled, flatted, primed and ready for more primer before paint.
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Drivers side rear wing had been repainted twice already and also had some badly repaired accident damage below the fuel filler. The filler had cracked and in many places had been applied direct to the bare birmabrite. This had then lifted. The opnly way forwards was to prep the solid areas back to remove all scratches and gouges. Then remove all filler from the damaged area, this needs to be done slowly as birmabrite has a very low melt point and I do not wish to further damage the panel. The dents which had been crudely hammered out had to be addressed, I could see the original line of damage and feel that Stevie Wonder may have been involved in the repair. Once I was done the panel went to primer and then filler before flatting and priming again. Ended up with 1mm skim of filler over the area whereas before it was nearly 1cm.
This is the final coat on the panel. it will still need some light 1500 grade cutting before a machine polish
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Bled the brakes through, only one loose union (stupid boy) and they are sorted. BIGGRED rebuilt calipers, new Goodrich aero hoses, new master cylinder on an old servo and new pipework throughout.
New windscreen arrived and went in with only a minor issue that the bulkhead was about 1mm too high. loosened the 4 bolts on each side that secure the a post to the bulkhead and it all popped in.
Did mean that I had to reshim the passenger door though! we live and learn
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drivers side rear wing in place and ready for the door alignment process
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One more time to assemble the panels and confirm gaps and alignment
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that'll do pig
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Then started the process of sanding off the lacquer and most recent coat of paint from the bonnet. the white stuff appears to be a 2k primer. Nice and tough so opted to leave this rather than dig any further. the skin from these bonnets is pressed from a single sheet of steel. Must be a press of many 100s of tonnes. There is undoubtedly some factory prep to get the panel looking half decent and I will leave this all in place. The plan is to seal this in using a 2k acrylic primer and then hand the panel over to Steve the Body for top coat.
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Earlier in the build I found out that the body to chassis height was different depending on whether the car was efi. I believe that the raised height happened in 1986 when the 3.5EFI his production and the fuel lines etc moved to the top of the chassis rails. Here are two mount plates that sit under the gearbox cover and rest on the chassis supporting the front inner corner of the front seat box. As luck would have it
I have one of each
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I am also missing the knob off this unobtainium aux light control. Switch works just fine. Hoping to find a knob... fnarr
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Part 4 on the way