Hi Guys,This week went a bit different than planned. Although I knew that I would not have much progress on the car due to the workshop floor being painted, suddenly I found myself polishing the car to deliver St Nicolaas to his birthday party at the Dutch club here in Adelaide. But the car came up beautifully...
Speakers
The new 10cm / 4" speakers arrived. The shape as you can see in the picture on the left was slightly different where the original have quite small 'ears' for the mounting, and the new ones have staight sides. This was not a problem for the speaker hole next to the steering wheel, but the hole next to the dashboard cupboard was too tight, and I had to cut some of the steel from the new speaker to make it fit.
So if you are looking at replacing yours, make sure they have little 'ears' so they fit quicker.But I'm not really happy with the fit as the hole in the dashboard is larger (vertically) than the speaker (old or new), allowing air to short circuit (semi open baffle). This makes it impossible for a small speaker to produce any kind of base, so I will be addressing this later with some filler and polyethylene tape. Of course you'll never get proper base from such a small speaker, but it will not be that hard to make it produce more low than it does now.
The interior has been hiding underneath factory sheepskin covers possibly since the delivery date in 1978. This means that there was a lot of rubbing and it took quite a while to get it clean, but the result looks as good as new...
The back seats cushions are very flat. Not sure how much padding should be in here, but surely more than it has now...
Also found some rust underneath them. As there is nowhere to go for rain that would have come in at some time, I'm not surprised... I'll treat this later with some rust converter and probably put a drain hole in.
Got some prices. Basically $350 + postage from US, about $600 from Australia and $1000 fitted. Will look at this soon as I am scared by the horror stories of a failing chain, but this will be at least a couple of more weeks before I'll even order the parts. First the suspension, the brakes etc. Oh, and a good number of hoses. I've been told that I should at the very least do all the high pressure petrol hoses. As these go over the engine a burst can have quite disastrous consequences...
Accelerator pedal
It's supposed to be attached to a bracket that is welded onto the floor. Then it hinges from this, while at the top a sliding eye transfers the movements onto the linkage.The bracket is no longer (completely rusted away). This seems a very common problem (remember the car is 33 years old) and a new Steel bracket as per photo on the right is simple to make and can be welded or pop-riveted into the floor. As the floor mats do hold the accelerator pedal enough in place for now, there is no large hurry. Somewhere in the next couple of months is fine.
Polish and clean
This took the biggest part of the Saturday but I am very happy how the car shined up...
What a huge job this was... Although not planned yet, it is actually timely as I expect the new seat covers next week.
Service records
Created a spreadsheet from all the service records and invoices. I was pleased to see that the car was regularly serviced... For fun, I created a chart to see the actual mileage per year as taken from the service records.
The red arrows show when the second owner took ownership and when I did. They both plateaued before the sale.
Next week
I should be receiving the new lambs wool seat covers. The second half of the workshop floor needs to be painted and although a good mate of mine is doing the painting, it stops the process of working on the car. Next weekend is mainly Xmas parties, so I won't promise too much ;)
Cheers,
Marco
