28 March 2016

Easter Bank Holiday Working.

Another great weekends work which began with a lovely day on Good Friday.....good sunshine which meant we could potter around in and around the Garage.

The first items on the list to sort out were the various plates for the engine and gearbox mounting areas, and the sumps for both the reserve and original engines. The reserve engine is going to be used for the moment to put my car back on the road as the budget i have is to finish the car and not to rebuild the original at this current time so that one has been coated in protective oil and wrapped.

We then started by painting the reserve block in a satin black still gives it some shine but its the part of the engine that isn't going to be seen much anyway I'll go more for colouring on the proper engine once it has been rebuilt as I'll most likely specify a ford blue for the block during/after rebuild.


The block is now painted in its first coat of satin enamel paint and since this set of pictures were taken, the engine has had the current timing wheel taken off and the front plate removed also, so we were able to get in and finish the paint up on the front too. Our next job with this engine will be to get the heads machined for unleaded and cleaned with new valve guides installed also. Into view on the right is dads V6 Marcos which we also swapped the old solenoid out for a brand new one, for a long period of time now it has suffered with niggly starting from cold and restarting after use Id often go to fill up at a petrol station and embarrassingly it would fail to start again so this is another electrical item we have sorted only thing next to do is swap her over to electric ignition which it still doesnt have we also have an oil change and sump plug repair/replacement to do as currently a larger than average volume of oil is seeping out and onto the floor which is requiring a great deal of cement powder to soak up.



Anyway, moving on, I have turned my attention to getting the gearbox sorted so the main body of it has a section that is more prone to rust than the rest of it so I have decided to give that a nice glossy coat of Hammerite to protect and make it look great for the re-installation when eventually that part happens it all depends on how much longer the bodywork repair takes.

Below picture shows the paintwork (Black) that has been done, the remaining silver areas will be thoroughly cleaned through and remaining dust removed.



There is also a large gear shift knob that we have to modify also, it originally had a standard gear knob with a cable coming out of the gearbox for the overdrive, we have decided to buy a triumph Gear knob that has the overdrive selector on the knob itself to avoid having to put your fingers elsewhere during driving this means a hole will need to be drilled down through the top of the gear stalk and a further hole drilled diagonally to let the cable in to go up to the switch. it will also make for a tidier appearance.

In addition we have a series of plates to go around the engine and the gearbox mounting area these are all a bit grubby and are going to be re-powder coated to ensure that everything is loooking new for re-assembly all in the aid of working through the to do list while the car is away so that we can just fit everything together when it returns I'll degrease those next weekend.



Well, that's about it for this weekend more next time! ;) Thanks for reading.





22 March 2016

Work 2015-March 2016

Hello all!
Apologies it has been a verrrrrry long time since I posted, not a great deal to talk about except that the Marcos is still away with the fibreglasser being worked on (It has to be right so there's no rush there! coupled with a House renovation project also (Im a glutton for punishment) I've had my hands full.

I have managed to have some fun at times too, most recently having an educational test drive in Tesla's latest offering the Model S P90D arranged through Tesla of Birmingham, what an experience! 0-60 in 2.6 secs coupled with Auto pilot and auto parking I was truly amazed by the wealth of features onboard, it took a while to sink in that the car I was driving costs nearly £120,000!!!




So towards the Tail end of last year my roof was fully bonded to the rest of the bodywork all of the glazing and dorrs were used in the process to get the height right and a series of formers were used to get the locations right, The good news here is that anyone who has the same problem can either use the moulds I have for this, or arrange for a copy of them to be made and sent.

Also since the end of last year I collected my brand new Aluminium fuel tank which looks wonderful! and is a hell of a lot lighter too!

The Fibreglass work as I say is ongoing, and with the Easter weekend approaching I plan on getting a fair bit done, so we plan to do some electrical work on dads V6 and also to final degrease and start repainting the Reserve Essex V6 engine we have on a work stand in the Garage, so gradually we shall get it looking gorgeous again. We will be doing this one black and it will have chrome rocker covers and front timing cover too. I am yet to have the heads sent away but that will occur over the next couple of weeks. The engine block and area where the rocker gasket will go has been smoothed down with a wire brush attachment on our power drill so it is flake and dirt free now. (She is looking very dusty at the moment so I warn you all it doesnt look pretty quite yet!!




Bit of a rapid blog to write  but figured I need to get SOME info out there for those who are following.

Some pictures are pasted below for explanation of work and to get an idea of the bits in progress.




Big thanks to Alan from my local area meet the Midlands Marcos Meet who kindly donated a brand spanking new set of Magnecor style Spark plug leads to me after selling his wonderful Mantaray V8 to pursue his interest in Mercedes SL's. These leads are V8 ones but all I have to do is take the extra couple of leads out, no biggie.
The old blue chassis is still for sale and is advertised on both Pistonheads.com through the CMI Club Magazine and on the MarcosSportscarenthusiasts page too. anyone requiring a ready made, ready restored solution to a refurbishment job they have taken on is welcome to contact me to discuss.

The Marcos is currently having its rear arches worked on as we found that the current ones are not made of any fibreglass ones at all its a load of carefully sculpted 'Filler'  so moulds have been taken and the new fit ones are being added at this time.

The good news also is that my car has a new Marcos Stablemate there! a friend through the Club has elected to have his Marcos fibreglass work carried out there too, this particular example is a wood chassis 1600 type so a bit earlier vintage to mine and has the shorter 'non power bulged' bonnet

left the 1600 Marcos and right mine, note the new Arch guide moulds in place.