Things have taken a new shape in the challenge that they present.  I ordered a pair of shims for the differential that are required to create the correct pre-load for the bearings at the front of the unit.  They arrived with the rest of the axel parts order and I thought nothing more of it until I went to fit them at the weekend only to discover that they are the wrong size.  Not to worry I thought and sent them along with one of the originals back to AH4H.  I received an email today to say that they don't have stock of the parts I need.

Now this may sound glib or even idiotic but it never occurred to me that I wouldn't actually be able to find a part for the car off the shelf.  I realise that there are lots of parts that are sold as reconditioned by the major Healey suppliers but it never occurred to me that I would get caught out by it.  This is mainly because I have the key components with the car and the suppliers have catalogs that have lots and lots of pages of 100 BN1 parts for sale.  Body panels I could make.  Bearings, nuts and bolts are all widely available at the click of a button, and so on.  What could go wrong?  After a look at the main Healey suppliers and a google search it dawned on me that I am hunting a part that doesn't exist anymore and I feel a little stupid.

Falling back into my glib / cocky mode of operation I comfort myself by thinking that it will be alright, won't it?  You see that whilst these shims are important for setting pre-load and therefore the correct operation of a fundamental part of the drive train they are, well, just thin washers aren't they?  Surely I must be able to find somebody that can make two shims, surely?

It feels odd being in the garage at the moment as I am largely faffing about with bits of mechanical stuff that I haven't as yet touched.  On one hand it is really interesting to be doing different things and it is nicely challenging and interesting.  Yet on the other hand it has the potential to be largely frustrating.  I ordered all the bits I need to put the axel together and realised that I had missed a felt washer so was unable to do it.  I ordered this and Ahead 4 Healeys shipped it very quickly only to discover that the nut and bolt set I had bought a year or so ago didn't have the nuts required to fit the wheel cylinder.  I checked with two sources and then ordered BSF nuts from Mamrick only to get them and discover that they are UNF, arrggggghhhhhh.  I had also ordered a set of tap and die in Whitworth before realising that it should have been BSF and then to discover that it should have been UNF.  Basically I am doing a small fortune on nuts, bolts, taps and dies and my axel is still in bits.

Having said that though I am quite chilled about it.  I suspect that this is going to be the territory for the mechanics and if I get stressed then I am going to end up unhappy and that seems daft.

In between the stuff I mentioned above I renovated the brake drums and because I decided to use heat compliant paint from POR15 I got the front wishbones out of storage to renovate those drums to ensure the paint looked the same for the front and the back.

I have decided to leave the rest of the front suspension set up well alone for now as I am not sure what to do with regards to the king pin set up.

The drums look pretty funky though.

The solver bits flying around are the rear brake pad adjusters after a quick paint (for corrosion protection before the car is back together).

I sent this picture to AH4Healeys to check that I had the correct seal for the front of the differential.  They said that I had and that they were made in a more robust way back in the day.  I went to out the diff back together and realised that the shims I had were the wrong size, the diameter was very different, so another thing to go back and wait on, ho hum.

So having realised that I am waiting on the postman I returned to the front wing and did my final bits of panel beating. Trust me, this was just beating.  Anyway, the result was good so I took the wing off and outside for a sandblast prior to a de-rust session and then paint.  I eventually got the new sandblaster working well and was halfway through the job when it started raining.  Oh well.

Another issue is that I have discovered that the sand blasting gets fine grit/sand/dust everywhere and because I don't have anywhere to store stuff I have had to clean the diff out with a jet wash and loads of degreaser.  Even when I sandblast outside the garage still has a fine layer of dust all over it.  Must try harder....

I have worked on two areas in the past few  months, the rear axel and the front wing.

I stripped the brake components off the axel and set about cleaning them up for replacement at a later date.  I was very pleased to see that the differential looks in fine fettle with no obvious defect in the gearing teeth.  It took quiet a while to clean up the edges that mate together with a gasket.

I have been having a battle with myself over the past month about final wing preparation.  I had decided last November at the Classic Car Show that I would get them all dipped and e-coated at an estimated cost of £320 for the four wings.  Recently though I have been having doubts about it, principally around the two main issues I have with it: cost and agro of getting the wings to the stripping company and back again.  I tried to find the name of the company I met at the show last year but haven't managed it yet but the costs of getting it done with the industry leader is prohibitive. I then decided that I should go it myself and buy a sandblasting machine.

I also bought a sandblast cabinet and a whole load of sand/grit.  The machine shown above did a grand job of the axel but used £30 worth of grit in a blink of an eye.  This was the reason I bought the cabinet as it recycles the sand.  I bought fine sand to do the wings with and rough grit for the cabinet only to discover that the cabinet wouldn't work with the grit and the fine sand is too fine.  It feels very frustrating as I have spent over £120 on sand/grit so far and yet to get the right solution.

The axel ready for paint.

And painted:

The brake drums ready for paint.  I ordered hi temp POR15 paint for it and am looking forward to seeing them done.

I have greatly enjoyed working on the rear axel, it makes a fine change to welding, grinding, hitting, removing and refitting and all the other things I have been doing to the panels.  However, I am very close to being finished with the main panel beating which is great.  The passenger side is now sorted out.  I think the the driver side needs some work doing on the sill area to overcome my errors in fitting it too high for the aluminium door shut trim.  I am a little worried about this as this side has been more extensively welded than the passenger side.  I will have to get the car out and swap it round so that I can have a look.

To finish of the passenger side I needed to weld the wheel aperture edge and file it off to get the correct shape and create and fit a return edge for the lower section of the inner wing.  Below you can see the missing section and then the newly fitted section.

I need to look at the sill area on the there side next but am starting to think that I can finally blast the wings and then take care of the rust before I move on to the welding of the chassis.  I have the boot area to create and then I need to run over every weld I have done to make the care solid and ready for painting which is pretty exciting.

Well I have a confession to make, I have been in the garage in the last two months but got our of the habit of updating this blog, sorry.  So when I look back at the photos I have taken I realise I can't remember what I did and when, oops.  When push comes to shove I didn't get in the garage as much as I could have over the last two months but I did do other car stuff like visiting the International Auto-jumble at Beaulieu for the first time (I've been to the museum before but never the jumble) and I couldn't believe how cool it was.  I was lucky enough to go with my wife and the dog on what was a fabulous weekend weather wise.  I visited every stand and only bought some gasket paper which is amusing.  


The dog left in the dog area whilst we look round the museum.

When we return he isn't looking so happy!

Cow challenges on the way home, freaky for a Londoner

I also visited the annual open day at Rawles which again was with my wife and the dog.  It felt amazing to be around so many Healey's although there were only a few 100's in the crowd.  I have pretty much been to both Rawles and Orchard Restorations open days for the past 5 or 6 years and every time I went for the first 2 or 3 years I saw a 100 in pieces being worked on then nothing but 3000's.  Better luck next year.                                                  

So I naturally reviewed the wing after I had taken the section out and decided that I still had work to do on  section above the aperture for the chrome trim which still had a bow on it.  Did a little cutting and welding and that is now better.

Last Monday I visited John from the 100 Register fame to collect my petrol gauge which he has restored for me, it looks lovely:

I then had a discussion with John about the parts I may need before the restoration is complete and we got round to the rear axel.  Now as I have this in my garage as apposed to in my Mother in-law's shed (thanks Avril, still grateful) I was quiet keen to discuss it with him.  He reviewed with me the parts that some times get worn and what I need to look out for.  So I got the axel out and was quite conscious of the state it was in:

So I set about it with with a scraper, some petrol and a wire brush and by the time Spurs were on TV it looked like this:

This afternoon I started the strip down and discovered that apart from a few insects the inside of the drive side of the brake drum was in surprisingly good condition.  The half shaft was perfect and many of the brake components were too.

You can see the half shaft sticking up in the air on the photo below in addition to the wheel bearing which is now exposed.  The eight sided nut that holds the wheel bearing / hub together is showing signs of treatment which suggest that previous mechanics didn't have the correct tools; in other words it has been chiseled to near death.
All the pistons in the brake cylinder are locked solid which may present a challenge but they are quite cheap so it should be manageable.

Having faffed around with the scooter I got down to looking at the Healey.  I did some of the welding that was left over from yesterday and fitted the wing back to the car.  Today is supposed to be the last day of the summer (August still, FFS) with rain due from the afternoon onwards so I decided to get the car out of the garage to look at it.

I know I have posted lots of photos that look all the same but it does actually feel like I am getting closer.   I had spent a while looking all over the car for things to work on when my wife returned from an open water swim.  I made a cup of tea and then the pair of us went round the whole car.  The door gaps are not consistent but other than one of them which I can address by playing with the door skin they are good enough.  One of the front wings, in fact the one I have been working on, had an odd shape in the arch section.  The front shroud is slightly buckled at the front.  The door sill is too low on the driver side for the trim to for correctly.  So all in all not bad.

I am going to deal with the shroud buckle but I don't know how just yet.
I am going to weld a return into the wing that I have been working on and will cut and shut the arch to improve the line down the side of the car.
I will look at the door skin to see if I can improve the door gap.
I am going to ignore the fact that the sill is too high on the driver side.  To do anything about it will require messing with the front and rear wing and the door.  In other words I have reached a point where I acknowledge that enough is enough on that issue.  I will modify the sill cover and be done with it.

I then cut the wing open, extracted a slice of metal and then welded it up again.  I effectively removed the kink or bow in it.

Feeling pretty cool about the car now.  Just need to deal with the shroud, weld a return in for the front wing and I can seriously begin to weld the car up, fit the boot and get on with it.  Exciting times indeed.

So I have just returned from France having spent a month there on the usual summer house exchange.  It was lovely.  In the house opposite where we were staying was this chap called Fay who was clearly a car nut.   I got talking to him and showed him pictures of the Healey.  He invited me to a classic car show in a village called Poussan a couple of weeks ago.  I had the most fabulous time and saw many many fabulous cars.  There were plenty of English cars there and more American cars than I would have expected but the old French cars were the steal of the show, they were just beautiful.  Oh well, summer holidays, happy days.

In the garage and reacquainted with the front wing that I was repairing the rear edge of I felt rather over whelmed by how poor the state of the thing was.

I'd forgotten that I had cut the middle of the wing in a bid to remove the bowed metal.  When I looked along the length of the wing the lines were shocking.  I started welding it up and then set about it with the hammer and dolly.  I finished forming the area to the bottom of the repair and was pleased with the outcome.

Th door gap does increase towards the bottom but overall it looks much better than it did previously.

Got to be happy with that.