Working Update April 2017.

Hello! A huge apology first of all for not updating this page as much as I should be, my new years resolution is to do more to this blog this year as I push to get this car more or less complete. As the costs of respray are still being worked on, Im working around all sorts of other jobs with my dad so that once the respray is done therell be just the formality of fitting everything back in. 2016 was full of house decorating, aircraft events to raise funds for the Nimrod Preservation Group I'm part of and generally things being manic at work.

So, when I last posted, we still had the car at the fibreglassers, the engine and Gear box were all being overhauled and repainted with the relevant materials and parts were going off to be powdercoated.

Since the last post around July/August 2016 the main shell of the car was largely completed from the long fibreglass repair process (This had to be right so I wasnt that worried that it took so long to do) Andy @ Westgate Creations has properly sorted out the car and has even made improvements to the structure strengthening in places that are susceptible to stress cracking, this will mean replacing the body back onto the chassis will be a lot less stressful in many ways.
Car was collected in August 2016 and brought home, whereupon we set about carefully sanding off the old paint, this will mean that the body shop doesn't charge me masses for this long laborius job the less we leave for them to do im sure this will help the spray bill!!! I can recommend taking time on this, being as careful as possible and dont stay in one area for too long as you will flatten an area thankfully weve been careful and weve maintained the curves.

below are some pictures of the sand down work we have carried out on the bootlid and the doors, we still have the bonnet to do and some areas of the body tub (Although so much old paint has been taken off already from the tub during the repair process there really isnt that much paint left to take away). I'm not going with red on the respray (as I mention to everyone over and over again!) im looking for a lovely dark blue, there are plenty of old Red, Orange and Yellow Marcos out there already!

My Friend Bob's Wood chassis 1600 Marcos (Left)  Next to mine (Right) in the workshop before the fibreglassing on mine was done

another shot from inside.

view of my Cars Home coming on the trailer note the extensive wheel arch repair.

Front quarter view showing under front bonnet repairs to remove the stress cracking and flashing from old 70's 'Snowplough' spoilers

Another side shot showing exactly the same wheel arch repairs to the right side.

Rear view when the car was at the works showing the new arches in place.

As i mentioned before and to update this time round, the car had modified arches as it was the previous owners intention to run a wider axle, but this mod was never completed and as I wanted the nice 3.09 ratio axle and already had a wide one with the Marcos brackets already mounted I fixed that on once overhauled and then got the fibreglasser to modify the arches to how the car was set up this way the typical problem of the wheels being set too far forward or back in the arch was overcome. the original modification was bodged by someone else making the arch 100% out of filler!!! 6kg's of the stuff was cut out of the sides of the car (Each side) which removes a bit of nasty unnecessary extra weight, and also means that the cracks where the filler was starting to part company with the rest of tub were removed my fibreglasser then set to with creating and setting up new moulds as he had a number of wheelarch configurations that would suit. problem with a Marcos is the part between trailing edge of the drivers door and the rear arch is a different distance on each side (Shorter on the drivers side) so subtle changes had to be made to sculpt these in. (Im told the Body tubs were made in two halves and  each half was made by two people who werent speaking to each other at the time!!!! Helpful!! :/

So, now back home the car has been sanded down (Doors and bootlid) with the fun of the bonnet to come, so I think a trip to screwfix to acquire some tressle stands to evenly prop the body on them flat whilst sanding is coming up shortly. Ive put some pictures below of the door sanding process, it took a while to bed into the 47 year old paint and start to take it off you can really see that the car used to be yellow at one point or other!! Pictured next to dads Marcos. A word of warning to the uninitiated, please do cover up when doing this! Masks, goggles etc. as this stuff gets everywhere and the mixture of fibreglass and old paint dust is probably pretty nasty it gets everywhere too so my chassis is going to have to be air blasted clean with a compressor now.

The flat sections arent too bad as these will take less time but the curved bits a bit of a challenge!! not for the faint hearted but it saves the bodyshop time and effort and saves you money! There are still some repairs and strengthening work to be done on the doors, as the area the hinge and the check strap goes through needs some metal glassed into it to beef it up, thisll mean when the door continually is opened and closed over time that the cracking doesnt occurr from stress. I have to get a new aluminium or stainless steel thin plate made to the rear of the interior door panel for the handles to bolt to as the old one is not serviceable and I might as well do it now whilst in bits.

The bootlid is also now done, there is a low spot where there is yellow paint still left but im pretty sure we arent going to get this off in a hurry so will leave as it can be 2 Pack primed over and then covered.

Other work that has been acheived so far, are the engine jobs, now at the point of writing the last blog, the heads were about to go away, these came back having been machined and having new valve seats added for Unleaded fuels, the head blocks were then painted with a nice black satin enamel paint to go back onto the car. we then made sure all the other items such as crank and cam shafts were in good order, the push rods were all good and the timing wheel was changed. there were numerous bearings that we replaced and I also invested in a full set of Stainless steel rebuild bolts (Allen headed ones) got those from Retro bolts UK they are on Ebay and they are well worth buying as they look awesome! so we replaced all the original bolts with those. Also to note, we installed a Steel timing gear wheel, normally  Essex V6's are fitted with either a composite wheel with fibre teeth, or a totally fibre one the problem with these wheels (Which is fairly well documented)  is their tendancy to shred themselves to pieces when Oil temperatures are low and revs are high so under those wheels, its recommended that you dont push the engine until it and the oil have reached an acceptable temp. however, these new wheels also having a side effect of being slightly noisier when running, they are infinitely stronger and wont damage your engine from being shredded! The engine being used is the spare as my original needs so much machining its currently cost prohibitive and will seriously dent the budget. (I had a quote from Burton power of nearly £10,000 to do the whole thing!!!)

here are some visuals of the engine work taken over the last year with footnotes.

Steel timing wheel and now chrom powdercoated timing cover back seal plate

Proper Gear box gaitor in place instead of the cut off section of duckhams oil container that someone had placed there before!

A collection of all the shiny refurbished parts and the shiny bits I had acquired. I invested in two spare sets of Red rocker covers as our green ones from this engine were screwed! so we shotblast and powdercoated my original ones to chrome as well as the timing cover and the back plates and the other parts such as pulley wheels and the sump were black powdercoated. the results are gorgeous!! Thoroughly recommend my Heros Redditch shotblast for any powdercoating you want done, its absolutely first class and really tough wearing too.

The Chrome Powdercoating is not only beautiful to see, it is also not going to bankrupt you like chrome electroplating eventually will! There are parts yes, that I have to be sent away to be chromium plated such as the door frames as these are a shiny external piece that has to be bling! Its however far you want to take it, eventually I may chrome various bits bit by bit.

I bought a new inlet manifold as although we have 4 of them, they are all slightly different, and all come with their various idiosynchrases so I grabbed a bargain on ebay and the new shiny bit of awesome turned up shortly afterwards now installed on the engine in yet again, an earlier picture taken late last year.

Chrome Rockers placed on the engine before the Inlet manifold was purchased.

Stainless Steel bolts put in place to show detail Oil pump just coming into view at the bottom right of the picture.

Rockers, Inlet manifold, refurbished Distributor, pulleys, water pump all in place.

I have also started restoring old parts that I no longer require as these are useful for generating some much needed cash to buy the things I am missing from the car, for example, a rad, which I am getting quoted up for a brand new ally construction ally cored one, have initially tapped up Coolex Radiators for that so I shall see what happens other items include the red top Facet fuel pump, Walnut dashboard, steering wheel boss and wheel horn etc.

At the point of writing we have now put the engine back together fully and are about to do a flush out of both the water system and the oil sytem to ensure there is no swarf, dirt or otherwise within this engine. A picture of the virtually complete configuration will follow shortly. I have just returned from Stoneleigh classic and kit car show so have added a few more bits to my inventory, namely a new thermostat housing which is lovely and powdercoated silver just like the rest of the engine. I also bought the catches for the check straps for the doors and now need to source a nice checkstrap in the same colour leather as my interior. I will be following up this post very shortly with more pictures of further work as and when it is done.

I'll leave you this time with a picture or two of our latest gathering at Stoneleigh Classics show. See you all next time.