Catchup, painting and 'little bits'

 And another month gone just like that. To be fair, two weekends were taken up by being on holiday so there's not a lot I could have done about that. Pesky family life getting in the way of important car goings-on...

So there really isn't much left now, hence the 'little bits' in the heading rather than anything substantial. I turned the car around and reversed it in the garage, there seems to be less room now but at least I can get to things on the passenger side now. And as expected it's a bit easier to reverse into the garage given the angle of the drive vs the garage door.

I guess the first thing is the great big green elephant in the room. Paint. Oh boy do I hate paint. I did some trials on a small panel, and everything seemed fine. It went on well, the biggest issue was dust and thinners. The former was just my mistake, I moved a box just after doing the paint and managed to get some dust into the air. The latter was interesting though. The white spirit did not mix with the paint at all, even at only 10% mix it didn't actually thin the paint. The panel was covered in voids and was not going to work on the actual panels. 

This is the test panel, the bit on the left is dusty and the right hand side is thinned;

The first test was to paint the boot panel. It seemed to go on fine, although there was yet more dust. The paint didn't float as well as it did on the first test piece which was a bit disappointing.

I flatted it back ready for the second coat, and realised a couple of things. First was that painting green on green is actually quite challenging, I'd missed a few square inches in the corner were there was no paint! The second was that it was still not cured, so there were a couple of points where I caught it with something pointy and scarred the paint. 

On to the car then, admittedly I probably jumped the gun a bit and in hindsight perhaps should have done a bit more work. But then again, what other work could I have done, it's not as if there was an issue with panel prep and the thinners experiment failed. So I went full in with the bonnet, rear arches and more coats on the boot.

As with most paintjobs, it definitely passes the twenty feet test, but fails when you get closer. The arches do look better in the correct colour so I'm happy about that. There's just a bit too much texture visible. It also didn't cover the filler, as can be seen on the arch above, and in this example;

A second coat was never really in doubt but this just confirmed it. I have now done the second coat, I've not taken pictures as it really went pear shaped...

Warning, rant ahead... So as mentioned I hate paint. I did the second coat yesterday, and it just went from bad to worse. Rubbing down the paint again, the same thing happened and I managed to get back to the base surface. I also scratched it on a few points, and the orange peel is even more pronounced. There's also runs, dust marks, and to cap it all off when I was closing the garage and giving up for the day, I heard something drop on to the car which was the final straw. To say it was a low point in the build was an understatement, I still haven't ventured into the garage but I guess I'll resign myself to it at lunchtime and get some pictures. 

What I have done is order some thinners. I'm not sure whether it's the paint or the temperature here, but the paint is far thicker than what I would expect. It doesn't run, which means it can't flow, which means it won't flatten. I've gone for the proper thinners, I don't know what it's made of but it was clear white spirit wasn't appropriate. Once it arrives and I've thinned the paint I'll have one more go (still on the bonnet obviously, I don't want to venture on to the body until at least the bonnet is sorted).

So that's it for paint for now, the documents suggest 7 days to fully cure so it should be good for next weekend. Of course, when it's fully cured it might be too hard to sand but I'll cross that bridge next week. 

What else is there? Oh yeah, the poor running. I finally managed to get the injectors removed and measure the seal, so I have a kit arriving this week to overhaul the injectors. I also have some carb cleaner and a 12 volt supply to open the injectors and get the internals cleaned. It'll be interesting to see the jet pattern, given that the injectors were the things stopping the engine from running in the first place I reckon they're going to be horrendous. At least this way I don't have to buy replacements though (which at the last time of checking were several hundred pounds even for a second hand set!).

I reprinted some new hub caps, I stopped trying to be clever and just went for a straightforward flat cap. They look fine, they fit well and I don't have to fill, sand, fill, sand, paint, fill, sand etc. 

The seatbelts run smoothly now they're at the right angle, that was fiddly to get them in and out!! There was me thinking that I was being clever not relying on captive nuts, instead I had to contort myself into a very unusual position to get to both sides of the fixing! I've got to do the same three more times to get the other mountings in place, the transmission tunnel side should be fairly simple but the outer one will be a pain in the proverbial.

The seat risers worked well, they now clear the seat belt bolts when sliding back and forth. Again, I need to bolt the seats in place and be in two places at the same time. I think I mentioned before that I had at least 20mm or so before the seat was too high for the seat belt, and the spacers were only 5mm.

Other little bits... battery covers are now printed and clip in place, I haven't permanently added them as I still want to be able to disconnect the battery. Having said that, being able to disconnect the battery is a good long term goal so I've ordered a battery isolator that I'll mount on the bulkhead somewhere. 

Ah, brake bleeding, that's another big topic. So I've tightened up all the connectors (I had forgotten how many I'd just left finger tight), filled up the reservoir and pumped the pedal. As expected, nothing happened. I've bled a completely dry system before (on my bike) and normal bleeding approaches don't seem to work. I need to dig out my Eezibleed and hope it's not degraded over time. It was hard enough to use when it was brand new, all bets are off now it's at least 20 years old!

But I want to get the brakes bled before I add the driveshafts. I always prefer to know that I can stop before I know I can go!