I went to the Enfield Pagent of Motoring yesterday and came across a stall selling the C45 Dynamator for £125, couldn't resist and thereby spending the rest of the £300 I collected for the 100/6 screen I sold at the weekend, it didn't last long.

I finished the tank and it is nicely painted in black, job done.

I started to dig around the boxes of bits for the throttle linkage and found these, I have no idea what they are for.

This is the throttle linkage, lots of bits and many duplicated which allows me to choose the best.  Lots of rubbing down and painting coming up.  The brass ends to the rods are a work of art, British engineering in lovely detail.

Despite having two complete throttle pedal assemblies I decided to take apart a separate pedal and braze it to a new rod.  My brazing is coming on nicely.  I do however need some new brazing rods now, eBay here I come.

Pedal done and painted along with a few of the rods.   I think I am missing the final link rod to the carbs so will have another hunt around.

eBay action:

I have had some mixed blessings with eBay lately.  I successfully sold the 100/6 windscreen that came with my car all those years ago for £300 and then promptly spent some of the money on 2 tyres that appeared on the site locally in London.  However, the SU fuel pump I bought was the wrong type, oh well.

I now have 3 tyres and 4 really good wheels.  I have 4 not so good wheels so would like one more good one before I send them off for blasting and powder coating.

The two tyres I bought were used but apparently have 7mm of tread on them and the unused tyre I have already has 7mm of tread so I guess they can't be that used.  I think they be a little old though.  All I know is that Longstone Tyres charge £230 each for them or 5 for £1032 and I now have 3 for £180.  If, when the car is eventually on the road I decided that I should have bought new tyres well I can do it then.

It would be good to have the tyres and wheels finished as I can see a time when it would be good to get the car off the trolly.

So I know I have to do two things:

Fit the wiring loom.
Get the engine out, clean it, fit the core plugs, paint it and install it in the car.

For some strange reason I don't want to do either so I am finding other jobs to do, like polish the dashboard.  I saw a a Hundred with a polished dash on a French website which looked lovely and having grown frustrated with the difficulties in getting a paint code for the original blue/silver paint I have decided to go this route.  The main challenge is that there are some substantial scratches in the aluminium from the production process to get rid of.  I have never done this before but know that I need to flat it down then polish with an aluminium polish such as Autosol which I have along with a small polishing wheel acquired from eBay.  I start flatting with 180 wet and dry.  Hours later I have done a small area, and I mean hours.

I get bored of this and got the 80 grit dry paper out and make some substantial progress, then I flatted it again with the 180 wet and dry before polishing.

It is soon clear that I have not got the original production marks out and that I haven't rubbed it down properly.  So, after 6 hours of rubbing, may arms ache, I head for lunch and a few Youtube videos on how to do this properly.  I decided that I need to use the orbital sander with progressively finer grit papers.  I have 120 so I use that to get rid of the production marks which I have now done.  I'll get some finer papers next time I venture out.

I turn my attention back to the tank.  I had to add more brazing rod to the area around the outlet pipe which I did successfully.  I also had one more area to solder and I realised that I was using the oxy-acetylene at too high a temp so reduced the heat and the soldering started to work.

I had a few minutes contemplation on whether or not I should re-do the other solder areas now that I had a better idea of what to do and then decided against it so I rubbed the tank down and painted it.

I ordered a rad from GPI racing a few weeks back on a bit of a whim as I am miles away from needing a radiator.  However, I contacted them directly for a price and they came back to me with a price of £180 delivered which seemed to good to be true and so I ordered it.  A few weeks went by and I emailed them to check on delivery and got a 'it'll be despatched soon' response and then it arrived.  The quality looks amazing.

Back in the garage I fitted the first bit of the electrical system, the starter solenoid.  Then I connected the lead from the battery and felt like I was entering a new phase in the project.

I have no idea why but I then fitted the clutch lever mechanism.

The main thing I did this weekend was to install the heat resistant material and the supplied heat should kit.  I got the self adhesive material because I feared that the fibrous heat panels would actually rattle about if left to their own devoices.

I changed directions to the fuel tank.  I had ordered a rubber bung from China and expected delivery to be weeks away only for it to arrive so it seemed sensible to do the pressure test.

The test revealed many leaks and I have been working on my soldering all afternoon as a result.

I even got to the point of removing the original solder before attempting a repair.

Eventually I gave up and stripped it down to bare metal and then got out the brazing equipment and this was somewhat successful.

Over the past few weeks I have been in the garage a few times.  I started on the brakes and have fitted the brake pipes which were a lot of fun to make.  I kind of liked the puzzles created by the route required, perhaps I'm just a kid after all.

I then went on to the petrol pump which with hindsight was a complete disaster.  I rubbed down the body and painted it, so far so good.  I then started taking it apart when one of the screws came out a few mm then snapped off.  I was a little disturbed by this but got my head round a way forward.  I drilled out the shaft of the snapped bolt and then tapped a new thread when I realised that I would now need to open up some of the electrical connectors that mount on to the bolt.  So I grabbed the drill and went for it however, the drill snagged and the cable was ripped from my hands and wound round the drill and in the process getting detached from the main part of the pump.  Oh well.  I have found a few on eBay since, so I am hoping this will be a cost efficient route forward.







































I eventually got round to deciding that I am going to make the car negative earth.  The main reason is that USB ports will need it.  I know, sad isn't it.  I just think that I may one day want a radio or even a USB port for charging the phone etc.  Anyway, I ordered a set of power cables from Brucom Ltd which are excellent.  A great service from them.







































I finished the weekend by digging out the old windscreen I have which came with the box of bits that is my car.  apparently it is quite rare to get the pillar on it.  Anyway I need some parts for the car so I have to get some cash from somewhere so here goes.

I've had a lot of time in the garage this week, Easter holidays are heaven sent for teachers.

I started by trial fitting the pedals now that I had modified the chassis mounting bracket and it went well.  I then removed them again and cut about 7mm off the chassis tube that the pedal bar goes into and remounted it all again and this time everything lined up well.  I removed it all so that I could paint the bare metal from my modifications and drilled out the end of the master cylinder rod so that it would take a bolt rather than a clevis pin.

It is amazing how dirty the chassis has got in the months since it was painted.

I then turned my attention to the steering box.  Armed with a free set of bearings I loaded them up in grease and went to fit the inner shaft only to discover that it wouldn't go in with the bearings in the way.  So I removed it all and then mounted them onto the shaft and inserted it as a complete unit, amazingly it worked.

It felt good to complete this job.

It seemed sensible to turn my attention to the brakes and so I started by replacing the linings.   I was only able to get brake linings off John rather than new shoes complete but I remember thinking at the time that it would be a new skill for me to master and exciting at that.  I spent some time looking on YouTube for guidance and eventually found a video posted by an American farmer who was doing the same to his tractor.

I made some gaskets for the wheel cylinders using my newly acquired hole punches which was time consuming but fun and then fitted them.

It occurred to me whilst doing this that the new but old stock brake linings were made by a company called Raybestos; surely they must contain asbestos? I decided that I shouldn't dwell on it.  All in all it was great fun doing it and very satisfying.

For no good reason I decided to strip down the wheel boss and paint it.

There are some cracks on the wheel but I have found out a way to repair them, thanks again YouTube.

I then installed the steering shaft and connected up the steering rods, again good fun.  The bar that runs between the steering box and the idler holds two track rod ends and they won't screw into the bar far enough.  It needs a run through with a tap but I don't have the correct size nor the left handed version so I am looking into how I might get that sorted.

Next on the list was to fit the brake shoes and the hubs, but first I needed to fit the wheel bearing into the hub.

Now I realised that I had the shoes on the wrong side as the pins that locate on to the adjusters are the wrong way round, donut.

I also realised that I had forgotten to install the felt bushes over the spacer studs, again I'm acting like a donut.

Eventually I got it all sorted.  I have made progress but it sure takes time.  Onto the brake pipes next when I next get back into the garage.