The light at the end of the tunnel

After a very fruitful trip to Maidstone meeting family and friends, I came back with Christmas pressies and crackers and bits for the car; soft top, new longer wishbones, a couple of LED rear lights and a few other small odd and ends. I then had to make the painful decision to get the car up on stands and start the long list of jobs instead of taking it out for “just one more drive”

Drove down to  Burgess Hill to meet James and finally see his car. (in the picture Andy not James)

First job was to start stripping. I have kind of decided to start at the rear, concentrating on preparing and removing the panels ready for painting. I’m still not actually sure whether the rear panel will come off.

Quick check of the soft top - poppers have to be rivited on.

Bought a couple of LED lamps to replace the rectangular ones. Will sort out how to fix them later.

Enoyingly enough my MC jack packed up just as I got the car on the stands. Will have to fix it if I'm ever going to get it down again!

Fuel tank removed.

It was very difficult bending the top edges of the rear panel without getting a bumpy finish so I'll need to file the rough parts and finish off with fine sandpaper.

Hopefully once the rivets are removed from around  the base of the panel it should just be a case of lifting the panel over the frame - I hope! Just for fun I found a reversing sensor kit on ebay and started drilling holes in the base of the rear panel to house the sensors. Hopefully the fog and reverse lights won't interfere.

A 22,5mm drill is included in the kit. The holes need cleaning up with a file before the powder coating.

The rear looks very bare. I’ll try and find some smaller diameter LED lights to replace the square fog and spot lights.

Not sure how to solve this (taken off) side panel as I made a real dogs ear of  it while bending. I'll chat with the powder coat chap and see what he suggests. 

See you in 2012!

Finally succumbed to the winter!

Well it finally happened. It's not that it's too cold, more like it's a bit wet and slippery. This video was taken on Sunday 11th while there was at least some light. The weather hasn't been this mild in years which is great. Another positive point is the fact that the days start getting longer in another 10 days!

There should be snow everywhere at this time of year! There also seems to be a distinct lack of a passenger too - where are all the vikings?

There was a loud scraping sound coming from the rear passenger side and when I investigated it turned out to be the end of the handbrake cable scraping on the inside of the wheel! I'm  not totally sure what has happened but as a temporary thinking outside the box fix I put a wheel spacer on either side of the car. This brought the wheel away from the offending cable - problems solved! 

Doesn't look very nice with all the rust. I'll definitely do something about this over the winter.

The offending cable ending. I knew this wasn't right when I put it in but there hasn't been a problem until now.

The inside rim shows a little sign of wear.

I'll be going to see Peter at GKD at the weekend to sort a few things out as well as pick up my nice new soft top! May even meet up with James who is having his IVA Registration test tomorrow - good luck!