Interior tub work.12-10-2019

Having been a few months since I did any work on the car, I managed to get to the Garage with dad this weekend to do some more interior tub preparation for when we install all the new heat matting/sound insulation to the interior of the car.

When the old interior carpets and matting were stripped out, the fibres from the old material remained glued to the tub so to make sure it doesn't affect the new install, we have started to remove the old stuff from the tub. I began by using a Dewalt drill with a wire brush tool fitted in order to scrub the easiest of the fibres off. 

The transmission tunnel had the same treatment, although I quickly found that a chisel used lightly on this part was very successful in removing the clumps of fibre material. 

Dad and myself both spent some time on this part, as well as dealing with the matting in the gearbox area where we glued this up so that the hole for the Gear stick wasn't impeded in any way. The weather wasn't great, so we covered the dash and the engine up for this process. 

Before too long goes by, I want to get the car back to my fibreglass specialist in order to get the doors and some body work and the bonnet dealt with so that it is effectively ready for prime and respray. Once these elements are done it's the rounding of a major corner in the rebuild as everything else should then be a basic fit-out job, with most of the parts needed already refurbed or needing to be purchased in a small number of cases. the major bits on the to do list are still as follows:

• Re-chroming of the brightworks
• new Exhausts and ceramic coating of Manifolds
• new radiator
• battery and connections
• hoses and connections as well as fuel pump and pressure regulator to setup the fuel system
• new dashboard switches 
• new steering when and steering column refurb. 

  Hopefully have another update for you all in a couple of months. 

Continuation of Bodywork prep. 2019

Hi All,

It has been a while since I've been able to post, so apologies to those who were awaiting another update!  (Pictures will follow as I'm posting opportunistically from another location).

So where were we? well, we had begun by removing all the red paint from the main tub, the doors and the bonnet and boot lid. this has continued and we have removed further paint from the rear quarter on the drivers side using the heat gun gently in all these areas, there was a lot of paint in some areas as opposed to others with bits of filler for where there has been historic damage or fills to any imperfections on the bodywork, again, this has been quite a slow process and we have been down at the garage for a few hours at a time sorting these issues out. I've had some issues getting down to do work on the car recently due to a large volume of commitments both in and outside of work and with funds being restricted to save for the respray which is the major element of what I have left to do here, I've been doing work or got assistance from Dad and friend Terry with other jobs that don't cost too much.

Following some additional paint stripping jobs, we have also been working underneath the car and have completed the rub down, de-grease and repairs to the underside, dad and Terry also totally sprayed the underside of the car with the Anti Stone chip and under-seal resins so that if I drive anywhere I wont get stones damaging the underside.

Following the resin coats, the heat resistant matting has been adhered to the front bulkhead in the engine bay area, the footwell areas within the engine bay and the transmission tunnel (pictures also to follow) these were adhered securely to the panels and have been finished off very nicely indeed, I have also received a delivery of additional powder coated parts that I sent away to be treated and coated so those will join the inventory of bits to be re-fitted to the car when i reach that point.

Dad has also been going through my wiring loom (rather him than me!) and has replaced and upgraded several reams of cable that were either damaged previously whilst in the car, or have been upgraded to cabling that is more 'man enough' for the job, as we found the speedometer cable had begun to melt, so best to go through and upgrade things, avoiding electrical fires and unreliability is key at this stage, Dad has also set about upgrading the types of connectors for joining the front lighting loom the main engine bay loom so that a good quality connection is in place and ensures reliability.

The car has been a rolling chassis now for a few years and we've noticed that some items that have rubber bushes have degraded whilst installed so some parts that haven't even seen the road are needed replacement which is a worry as I don't want to have to go back through renewing everything before we have even moved onto a road! I had intended to have gotten the car on the road by now, but as we all know, life gets in the way with unexpected situations.

Meanwhile in the last month or so, we've returned from a wonderful trip to Luxembourg, as usual impeccably well organised by Paul, Dan and the rest of the Luxembourg team, with additional input from the Swiss Marcos Club. We had a great time touring using dad's Yellow V6 Marcos which for the first time on a Luxembourg Rally, behaved itself and drove like a dream on the continent. I had also not driven on the continent before so I remedied this and started to get used to driving on the 'wrong side of the road!' we did have a solenoid issue the afternoon before we went so thankfully we fixed this before we set out and too far from our own supply of parts, again, there will be more pictures to follow of this great event and soon we hope to begin a blog on the LM500 rebuild, a project that we managed to procure in July 2014 and have so far re-registered, built up a new chassis, rebuilt fully the 5.0 Litre NCK upgraded Rover V8 engine and assembled all the parts required to bolt onto the chassis once treated and reunited with the bodywork the car should be fully rolling within a couple of months.

More from me soon.
Gazza