25th/26th November 2010

Well, it has been a while since I set foot in the garage, owing to other commitments..so here goes. The main focus of work this week was to try disconnecting the electrics and take out as much stuff as I could that would hinder the removal of the bodywork.

Dad came up to help out with this and after a minor hold up with the phone engineers We set to with stripping out a few components that were running through the bodywork to the engine bay.
starting with the steering wheel, this needed to have one clamp removed from it on the other side of the bulkhead, (Engine side) the 5th picture down below shows some of the removal process.
We also took out the gauges and drew up a diagram for the resulting cable removal.
during the process we found that most of the switches have been damagedas the back sections that house the pins for cable connectors have come apart. These cannot be repaired and will need replacing when I hit an autojumble next. Mine in particular are Jaguar. Also removed were the various dials on the dashboard.

You can see tha switches that are damaged (most of them!) except for the third on up from the bottom and the one right at the top which still have pins attached to them. This photo should also be another way but the site seems to change it at will, and won't allow me to rotate!!

Loosening the drivers dash section in order to get the dials out. Another photo the site won't let me change!

I liked the retro appeal of this instrument, it has astalk on it for zero-ing the trip counter! this has an outlet in the lower dashboard for operation by the driver. You can see that this car has racked up an amazingly low mileage in its 40 year lifespan so far!

The leather cone shaped hole is for the stalk on the odometer to go through for the driver to operate. this one isnt pushed to zero like standard ones on a modern car, you turn the stalk to zero the counter.

The centre 'Boss' screw has already been removed from the steering wheel end, at this point detailed in a previous post. once this clamp has been removed, the steering wheel and connected rod will slide out leaving just the column itself  in place.

Steering Rack with larger shaft section removed with the wheel

Below is an illustration showing the shaft attached to the wheel:

Ok so moving from here the Dash now looks like this

Wheel removed, the retaining bolts shown against dashboard have been coated with WD40 to loosen up as these were quite badly rusted.

You can now stare down this centre steering column into the engine bay.

From here I moved on to disconnecting the column with all of its indicator and light lever controls. this took some time as even though I applied WD40 to the bolts holding it in place these were still very tight and there wasn't a lot of room to turn the spanners. It is necessary to loosen the rack before the main dashboard panel shown here is removed.

I was able to remove the dashboard panels and framework at this point, leaving the main bulkhead it all attaches to.

The upright pieces of wood are the mountings for the bulkhead this secures the dashboard in place. a series of small flat headed screws hold this item in place.

With dashboard now seperate from the rest of the car I was able to put them all together to give an impression of what this looks like in its completed form. I will use this as a template for the new veneer dash I will be having made specially to fit.

Rear of the dashboard panel

With this now removed It is now much more simple to get at the wiring and heater unit these items I am still to remove but at this point it was getting on in the day, getting colder, and I had some travelling to do the picture below shows the dash board with the fascia removed completely.

Fascia removed from the main ply dashboard carcass. wiring is still a bit chaotic here but is a lot easier to remove now

Next items on the list to remove are the Heater unit and pipes, the internal wiring loom also pictured above, the wiper motor and arm, and last but certainly not least, the Fuel tank (inclusive of fuel!) this will require a jack up of the car for me to get under and remove the retaining bolts. Thankfully dad has got me a shiny new set of axle stands and a trolley jack as an early Christmas present! : )

So Until Next weekend!