Flaming Ford

Building a Driveshaft - Part 1

2016-12-08T01:10:00.000-08:00

I often get asked "how do you know what to do and where to start when building a hot rod?"
The truth is I don't. It's a case of asking lots of questions, learning as you go and dare I say it finding out the hard way. It also requires you to just start. Start anywhere and you'll find as you think about that, you can't do that bit until you finish something else....and to do that you need to start on another thing. Before you know it you have a heap of things on the go and they all start to come together.

The driveshaft is a classic case in point. It started with the steering column believe it or not. Ok, how the hell do you go from a steering column to a driveshaft????

I wanted to look at where I might want to run the steering shaft as it affects what I will be doing with the exhaust.
In order to know where I want the steering column though, I need to understand the seating position (incidentally this will also help to decide where to mount the gear shifter and the brake pedal).
To know where I can have the seat I need to know where in the cabin I will sit, as I have to mount a fuel tank behind the seats and this will have the aircon unit mounted on top of it. Obviously the seats need to be forward of that.
So where the fuel tank sits will become quite key to this.
The fuel tank will need to be mounted on a chassis cross member that I need to add.
I am hoping that the cross member can be multi-purpose and also be used to mount the rear stabiliser bar and exhaust pipe hanger brackets
But most importantly I need to know where it can be placed so as not to interfere with the driveshaft.
And there we have it, I need to know where the driveshaft will run and what it will be like. Will it be 2 piece and require a hanger bearing or will it be one piece.
Lastly I have heard a rumour that you now need a safety hoop for the drive shaft rear universal, so that if the rear universal joint fails, the driveshaft can't fall out onto the road and harpoon a following driver.

Once the driveshaft is sorted I will start to work my way back to that steering column.

Another question I get asked is "when will it be finished?" As you can tell from the above, I honestly have no idea.

I also get asked "is it harder to build something from new or from scratch, or is it harder to restore old stuff?" I have to say I do like dealing with new stuff that just bolts on, but the reality is nothing ever really does. In fact when dealing with all new, you are invariably using and modifying old parts to fit. It is better in so far as you aren't rehashing someone else's mess and you don't have all the old grease and oil to deal with, but the trade off is a lot of time is wasted on not only building something that has never existed before in this exact specification, but also having to carry out your own research and development before you can even start building it.

The building of the driveshaft demonstrates this pretty well. Let's just assume for a minute I was restoring an old Camaro....

Unbolt drive shaft
Take to driveshaft guy to pull apart (or do it yourself)
Clean up parts and paint them
Take driveshaft back to guy to reassemble with new joints and balance
Bolt back into car

In comparison this is the story of the driveshaft for the Coupe....

As you know I have a Jag rear.

At the other end I have a Lexus V8 and the factory Trans. The Lexus uses a two piece driveshaft and a large rubber donut that supposedly takes out some of the jarring between shifts and acceleration/deceleration. This front half of the driveshaft is rigid and runs constantly in line with the trans. Take a look at the diagram below. The transmission is on the left. The first part of the Lexus driveshaft (front propshaft) is directly in line with the transmission and it stays like that at all times as it is held at the other end by the "centre support".

Where it is labelled transmission output, that's where the large shock absorbing rubber donut is installed on the Lexus set up. Here is a picture of one.

And here is one installed.

Back to the diagram, you can see that after the centre support (sometimes called the hanger bearing) there is the rear propshaft that takes the drive back to the differential.

I don't want to set mine up like this mostly for ease, but also for aesthetic reasons. To do it like this I would need an additional cross member in the chassis to hold the centre support, I'd also need driveshaft safety hoops around every universal joint which would mean even more ugly cross members.

Instead though, what I will do is create a driveshaft that has a universal joint at each end as there are angles between the trans and the diff that I need to work with. These angles are deliberately there to ensure the universals flex and move. If you don't have these angles the universal joints constantly run in one position and they wear out and seize up.

You can see from this next diagram the set up I am going for.

A much simpler set up, but there is a bit more to it yet. You see a drive shaft universal mounts to a drive flange that looks like this.

But the Lexus one I have that uses the rubber donut, looks like this. So how do I make my three pronged flange (bottom pic) into the round one with 4 studs (as per the pic above)?

Let the fun begin. It went something like this......

Visit my mate Pete Farrant at Auckland Balance and Driveshaft Ltd and ask about the best way to make a three pronged drive into a round flange.
Pete advises there is a conversion you can get and he rings Damian at A1 Turbo (who does these Lexus V8 conversions) to find out what it is I need.
Damian advises to go to Toyotaz Galore and ask for a Toyota Hilux drive flange as they are interchangeable as most of the Hilux ones are quite similar. Take the old 3 pronged one in for comparison.
I visit Toyotaz Galore and ask for a Hilux drive flange.....the conversation went like this

What year?
Don't know, but it needs to replace this 3 pronged one?
What's that off?
Lexus V8 trans
What year?
1994
We don't have any of those.
That's ok I need one off a Hilux to do a conversion
What year?
I don't know, I just need to ensure it is the same fit as this and I gather they are all quite similar across the Toyota range. If we could just have a look at one and count the splines (this is a 23 spline) and measure the machined diameter, I am hoping we can match something up.
No I need to know what year or what part number. You could try Active 4x4 in Onehunga
I wasn't going to get anywhere here it seems.

I drive to Active 4x4 in Onehunga. 30 mins away and only to find they don't open on a Saturday
I give up and decide I will do a bit more research. I find the trans most commonly used on a Hilux is a G52 and these are in a LN106 or LN130 Hilux.
I go back to Toyotaz Galore the following week with this info.
Sorry, we don't have any and even if we did we would want to sell you the whole gearbox. Suggest you try Dodson's wreckers.
I call on Dodson's.
Sorry, don't know we'd have to have a look, leave your number.
I get a phone call later. Sorry, we don't have any.
On my way home I pass Motortech 4x4 so dropped in there on the off chance.
No sorry, don't have anything like that. Why don't you try Toyota, their prices are surprisingly reasonable for genuine parts and they will have full catalogues on what is available. Even if you have to get it ex Japan its only 3 days.
Next day I try Toyota.

Can you supply a Toyota Hilux drive flange that will fit a Lexus V8 Auto?
What's it off?
Lexus V8
What year?
1994
They don't have a drive flange.
I know that's why I need to get a Hilux one. Can we have a look at the Hilux listings and see if there is a flange that will fit the Lexus V8. I am told its been done before and it's a straight swap.
Oh yeah look here's one!
Cool, do you have one so we can compare?
No I need to order it, but that's ok I can do that it will be here tomorrow.
I call back to Toyota next day and the part has arrived, but its 27 spline not 23. Bugger!
Hmm we're a bit stuck now.
You don't have a part number?
No. Is there any way you can check to find out the specs of the parts. Is there any way we can look up all the drive flanges and find out which ones have 23 splines for example.
No.
One of the other guys overhears the conversation. There's a few things we can do leave it with us.
Next day I get a call. We have a solution for you.
I call back into Toyota and they have sourced an adapter. Awesome, it will work. Not what I was after, but it will solve the problem.

This adapter plate from Brendan Dunker at Convert Motorsports is really well made and it just bolts to the three pronged drive that I have, and it gives a round platform to bolt the standard universal to. Woohoo at long last! Whew! What a mission!

This is it after I had it polished and HPC Ceramic coated.

These bushes press into the larger holes.

Here they are pressed into place.

Now the three pronged drive flange I have bolts on. Of course that has also been HPC coated too.

On the other side you can see the 4 smaller holes that the driveshaft universal will bolt to. Nice workaraound.

So now it's back to Pete to find out how to measure up for the driveshaft itself. It has to be a really accurate measurement as the engine and trans are fixed and the diff on the Jag rear is fixed (independent suspension), so the driveshaft has to fit exactly in between.

Apparently it's not that simple though, as even if you could get the measurement millimetre perfect, you'd never be able to install the driveshaft, as you need about 20mm of movement to install it. Pete suggested I get a Hilux driveshaft as they have a slip joint in the shaft that does not require the two piece driveshaft and hanger bearing I mentioned earlier.

They look like this assembled. You can see one end is a smaller diameter. That piece actually goes inside the larger diameter on a spline.

Here is one disassembled. You can see the splines and how the hollow piece would fit over that splined shaft. What this means is the tube part can slide in and out over the splined shaft while still remaining engaged. This will give me about 10 inches of fore and aft movement. Remember I probably only need about 20mm. All good!

I'm not going to go into it, but I had a very similar experience as above when I tried to source the Hilux Driveshaft - What part number? What year? GIVE ME STRENGTH!!!

Anyway, I finally found a second hand Hilux drive shaft with a slip joint for the princely sum of $80. I now, hopefully have all the bits I need.

The adapter and universals having been polished, are now back from HPC. I will reinstall the drive flange, take a measurement between that and the diff drive flange, then get Pete to make and balance the driveshaft for me, using the hilux one I bought to raid that slip joint from.

Pete will source new universals and new tubing then balance it on sensitive and precision machinery to ensure it will run nice and smoothly once installed.

At last I am going forwards and not running around like a headless chicken....well at least until I need to find another non standard part.

Rebuilding Power Steering Rack

2016-11-29T15:01:00.000-08:00

The Power Steering Rack I am using is a GM one from an early Holden Commodore (VK/VL).

The front end had been mocked up using one so it is logical to stick with the same unit. They are fairly reliable, but are prone to leaking after a few years use so it was sensible to take it in for a rebuild before putting into action on the coupe. I also wanted to paint and polish it, so again it made sense to do a rebuild as it meant I could do all the polishing etc once it was disassembled.

So off I went to Porana Power steering and left it with the guys there to pull apart and check out the components.

It turned out this unit had been sitting for a while and had apparently had water in it at some stage so a lot of the components were a bit pitted. Salvageable but there was a possibility it was going to cause issues down the track. It didn't make a lot of sense to spend all the time and effort on something that was marginal especially at this stage when virtually nothing had been invested in it thus far.

I took a trip across to West Auckland to Autolab and was able to source a secondhand unit for $85. Worthwhile investing that now to get what is hopefully a much better unit.

This one was also pulled apart by Porana and yes this one had a clean bill of health. I have since come away with the bits that I wanted to refinish before they reassemble the unit with new seals.

I took these parts off to Hard Chrome Jack for polishing as the main body is Alloy at the ends (with a mild steel centre tube). The other pieces are all steel and I want to get them HPC ceramic coated. Here they are all polished up.

Unfortunately HPC couldn't coat the main body as the alloy ends are press fitted and riveted to the mild steel centre tube. The fear they had was that the heat would expand the alloy at a different rate to the mild steel and when it all cooled down the fit between the alloy and steel might come loose. That was a risk I didn't want to take so I decided I will paint the centre tube.

Similarly the team at HPC weren't keen on coating the tie rods as the swivel joint at the end of the tie rod could have nylon cups pressed into them. Again the heat would cause issues. I will resort to paint for these also.

So here it is the main body all primed and ready for paint.

Likewise the tie rods.

When masking the main tube I masked out the polished areas but left the 'flutes' and hard to get to spots exposed so I could paint them. These are the bits that don't polish up too well as they are so hard to get at. You can leave them like that but I think painting them will give a better finish.

It took a while as the weather was so changeable, but a fine day finally came along and I was able to break out the paint.

Here are the same parts once unmasked.

Then it was off back to Porana Power Steering to have it all reassembled. Here we go with the finished product ready to bolt back onto the chassis. Click on the pic if you want a closer look.

That's another job off the list.

Fitting and rebuilding the Alternator

2016-10-09T00:44:00.000-07:00

The alternator I'll use is the original. These put out 120 Amps so that should be plenty despite all the electrics I'll be running. Of course the electrics like seats, windows, motorised boot lid etc don't run all the time so in theory there wont be too much demand on the battery (or the alternator) at any given point in time.

The original placement for the alternator can't remain as it used to sit very low on the motor and that is now where the output shaft on the steering rack will be. As such, there is no choice but to move it elsewhere.

You can see here the steering rack output shaft....yep that's where the alternator used to go.

So the idea now is to find somewhere else for it to go, but of course it still needs to line up with the other pulleys on the motor as it will still need to be driven by the belt that goes round these. This is where the ponder stool comes in. Its a stool I have in the shed that I will grab and sit on with a beer and just look at the car to try and come up with solutions. I can sometimes sit there for quite a while, move it round looking at things from different angles, jump up and grab a tape measure or a straight edge, do a drawing and even get distracted and start pondering something else. These minutes spent pondering are invaluable....its where the solutions come from and it can save you a lot of heartache, time, effort and money by pondering things first.

This one took a bit of working out not only because of the relocation of the alternator, but also because the only solution I could see was to lift it higher.

That's an issue too though as the Power steering pump sits above the alternator.....not any more though! You see I had heard that these pumps have the reservoir on the pump itself and that they have a tendency to leak down onto the alternator and over time that kills the alternator. So I wasn't too concerned about the potential of losing that. In the end that is what I have decided to do and I will replace it with a remote mounted electric power steer pump. I'll cover that in a future blog.

Anyway, after that pondering I have now made room for the alternator. Next step is to mount it and get it lined up.

There was a mounting lug in the way that I had to do away with. It looked like the top one circled but I ground that away carefully with a cut off wheel on the angle grinder. If you look closely inside the bottom circle you can see a tiny indentation. That's the very end of the hole that was in the lug before I removed it.

With that lug out of the way, there is now room to hang the alternator directly onto a remaining stud and of course I will use the lug above the alternator as well.

Now I have that roughed out, I reached for the pondering stool again to develop an idea as to how I might bracket the alternator. This put me off for ages, I just couldn't get it clear in my head. Now that I have come back to it all these months later....a solution has just presented itself. Actually to be fair, options have been racing around in my head off and on for many weeks/months and an occasional visit to the shed had me pondering these.

It came together though and the rough drawing for the brackets was made.

I then cut them out in cardboard to check for fit. Quite happy with that!

I prepped some line drawings which were sent to the laser cutters to cut these out in 316 stainless.

Before I mounted everything up it was off to the metal polisher to get it all looking good, but first I had to dismantle the alternator. There are some pretty good videos on Youtube if you ever need to embark on something like this....and the hot tip....take lots of pics so you can refer back to them when reassembling.

Here we go....all the bits back from the polisher. Love this stuff. In fact it takes me back to being a kid with a guy I knew in Rotorua (Peter Brown) who was building a 34 Chev Coupe. I used to love being round there when he brought home things like door handles from the electroplater. I just love that attention to detail and seeing something old made to look its best once again!

I then cleaned up the parts to remove the polishing residue. Really don't want any grit getting into something like an alternator.

I then painted where the polisher cant get to, to complete the job.

Ready for assembly....well almost.

First though, I wasn't happy with the huge positive terminal on the alternator. This comes out of the side of the alternator and will be right where the bonnet side will be, so it can't stay. You can see it in this next pic. The big brass coloured threaded rod. The cable that goes on that is linked directly to the battery and carry's all that voltage coming out of the alternator.

Thankfully we have an Auto electrician in the club and it was explained to me that I can rotate the internals of the alternator to move this terminal to a better location....Thanks Graham Weeks! Appreciate that advice.

To rotate these internals......

I also need to rotate the winding that sits inside the body of the alternator. This is known as the stator I believe.

These windings unfortunately have a steel casing and over time the steel casing corrodes and "welds" itself to the aluminium body of the alternator. I have sprayed CRC down the join and will leave that soaking overnight in the hope that it frees up.

While waiting for that to do its thing I broke out the Mothers Carnauba wax and polished the other alloy bits. Believe it or not polished alloy does corrode. Instead of red rust like you get on steel, aluminium forms a white powdery residue when it oxidises, so polish is quite essential. When these items come back from the metal polisher they are not protected at all. He uses cutting compounds and grits to get the item to shine, but there is no wax protection, so it is important to do that when you get the parts home.

Now that I have worked out how far to rotate the internals of the alternator to obtain a better location for the Positive terminal and now that all the parts are polished and painted and the bearings replaced, I am ready to reassemble.

And here it is all mounted.

Nice and square with the the other pulleys too! You can see I've been getting these tidied up with a bit of HPC and chrome also.

In this next shot you can see the alternator fits inside the outer edge of the chassis rail now that the positive terminal has been relocated.

This next pic is looking down onto the top of the alternator. you can see the positive terminal (the grey rubber boot) is now here in a good spot to feed the wiring down from the top of the engine where I plan to hide all the wiring under the engine cover.

Its only taken a year but got there in the end!!!

Aircon - Condensor and compressor

2016-08-24T14:19:00.005-07:00

As you know I have written a few blogs on the aircon/heater now.

These are as follows

Aircon & Heater
One step backwards, two steps forwards
More wiring
Heater Blower Unit
Aircon Core unit
Heater Core and Airflow Control
Its a wrap
It'll be the death of me

To be honest I cannot believe how much time and energy I spent on this aircon.....it better be cold on a hot day and hot on a cold day!

Anyway, with the wiring almost all resolved the actual heater air con and heater box refurbished and adapted for plumbing of the air through the car, its time to start looking at the aircon compressor and evaporator.

The compressor bolts to the engine and is driven by the belt that wraps its way around alternator, crank and power steer. This is made of alloy so will look nice polished.

Here it is before

And after

Well worth the effort. While it was stripped down like this I had the unit reconditioned. Not cheap but worth it also as it will make for a more reliable system later on.

While it was with the aircon specialists I had them take a look at its compatibility with the Celica evaporator. That's the bit that is inside the heater box that provides all the lovely cool air. It turns out the compressor runs on the new "ozone friendly" gas but that the evaporator was set up for the older gas. This has now had a new valve fitted to make it all compatible.

I also took the pulley (along with the others off the front of the engine) for polishing before then taking them to HPC to have them ceramic coated.

Here they are in their raw state.

And once they had been polished ready for coating.

The good news is most of them were able to be coated and here's what they look like, but unfortunately the aircon one couldn't be done. The HPC process is a baked on coating at high temp, and the aircon pulley has a damper between the outer rim and the inner part that attaches to the shaft of the compressor. The damper is made of rubber and it would burn/melt in the HPC process.

Here's the ones that could be HPC'd. Lookin' good!

So what can I do about the aircon pulley. I thought I would have to resort to silver paint (budget chrome), but I learnt something....You can chrome plate a pulley that has rubber in it. The chemicals don't react with the rubber and there is no heat involved.

Another concern was the fact that the pulley has a clutch surface on the back of it that should not be coated/chromed.

A big win here though.....as the name suggests.....electroplating works using electricity. When they chromed the pulley they were able to charge up the front face (and chrome it) but the current didn't flow to the inner part with the clutch surface as the rubber damper acted as insulation. Voila! No chrome on that part.

So here we are, the pulley with a chromed outer face.

You can see here that in behind the inner part (That also has the clutch plate) is still rusty. I decided I'd just paint that black to dress it up a bit. The clutch plate itself will be "dressed" in the lathe by the aircon guys before they reassemble.

Lastly with any new chrome I always bathe it in oil for several days. Chrome is quite porous and has tiny holes that go through to the surface below. By soaking it in oil, the oil goes through and acts as a rust preventative on the surface below. This helps stop the chrome falling off! That's my theory anyway and so far its worked on many parts.

Here I am painting on the oil.

After resting for a few days I wiped off the surplus oil and sent the unit away to be reassembled.

Nice!

The next part will be to have the heater/aircon mounted and a condensor (radiator) for the aircon mounted, at which point I will be able to have the whole unit plumbed and run with the engine to make sure it all plugs in and goes live OK with the compressor cutting in and out as it should and fans cutting in and out as they should. The aircon guy says he can do this with compressed nitrogen as a test bed. Then I'd pull it all apart to carry on with the rest of the build. Once finalised its just a case of reconnecting everything and gassing up with the aircon refrigerant.

Before I get to that stage though I need to;

Get my overall concept design approved by the Certification guys
Make a fuel tank as the heater aircon unit will mount on top of that
Get the chassis rolling properly
Install the radiator which will mean working out the bonnet/grill
Lay out and mount the engine wiring in such a way that a battery can be connected and the engine run without me having to be there to show them how.
Lay out and connect up all the aircon wiring
Map out where I want the lines to run
Deliver the chassis to the aircon guys to do the plumbing and testing

Easy!

Training - Spray Painting - Putting into practice

2016-08-24T14:00:00.000-07:00

As you no doubt know from earlier blogs I attended a couple of painting courses last year.

Spray Painting - Primer course
Spray Painting - Top Coats

Over summer it was time to put it into practice and give Janine's Ford Pop a bit of a birthday!

Here's a few before and after pics. Quite a few other changes too as part of it, but I'm pretty pleased with my first ever effort at painting a car. Not perfect, but pretty happy. As for Janine, lets just say she loves it!

BEFORE

AFTER

Training - Spray Painting - Top Coats

2015-06-29T21:58:00.001-07:00

Okay so we've got our panel to primer stage. See my earlier blog on this click here.

Now that we have the panel completely covered in primer we have in theory completed most of our repairs and hopefully only have a few imperfections to deal with. For anything deeper than a mm or two you will still need to use body filler or bog, but tiny low spots (think stone chip here) you can fill the hole with "fine filler". This comes in two forms....a ready mixed tube.

This is what it looks like once applied.

Or a filler that you mix with a hardener.

This is what it looks like once applied.

Either is successful but in the opinion of Kevin taking the course he'd probably go with the one you mix up. It's a bit quicker setting so makes it a bit more practical when you are trying to progress your job. Also, while the ready mixed one is convenient, it is not as strong and does take longer to set. If you try and rush this stage and don't let the fillers set properly you will end up with the paint sagging at that point or shrinking, so you will still see the low spot you were trying to repair.

Ideally you should let this repair cure for a couple of hours to let the solvents in the filler cure/evaporate.

Once you have made these last few repairs add a guide coat to the panel. In the pic below I've used a guide powder but you can use guide coat spray also.

Knock back the repairs using 180 grit on a sanding block. The 180 grit ensures you cut through the high spot over the repair, while the block ensures the sandpaper is held flat. This means you are taking the excess filler away without sanding down the surrounding primer. When sanding, sand along the length of the car. Bear this in mind especially when sanding a panel off the car.

Once finished the entire surface will be flat and you will be able to see the different colour of the filler sitting in the imperfection that you filled, but you won't be able to feel it if you run your hand over it.

Blow the panel down then guide coat again before sanding with 320 grit on the orbital sander.

Don't go near the edges or any high spots like swage lines, instead you should do these by hand using 400 grit sponge backed sanding squares, just lightly sanding.

Don't use wet sanding on primer as primer is porous and will absorb the water and allow it through to the metal surface. This will slowly rust away under your paint.

Once sanded if you have any spots where you have rubbed through (even if it's through to bare steel) like below and also to cover the filler repairs you have just sanded....

You can touch these up with rub through primer.

First blow the panel down then wipe with prepsol and again with a dry rag.

You can now spray on the rub through primer.

If this goes on nicely you can get away with painting over without further sanding. If it's a big lumpy though, a light sand with the 400 grit sponge backed sandpaper will do the trick.

So now you have a prepared primered panel. Blow it down with the air gun, wipe it with prepsol and a rag. Wipe again with a clean rag. Blow again with the air gun. It's now ready for paint.

WHAT IF THE PANEL I HAVE IS A PANEL THAT HAS ALREADY BEEN PAINTED AND I'M JUST TOUCHING IT UP?
Sand the panel using 320 grit dry sanding. You can use your orbital sander here.This is one of the other participants in action.

Alternatively use 400 to 600 grit if wet sanding. With wet sanding the water provides lubrication and means the sandpaper cuts better, so you need to go to a higher grit count.

For edges (avoid these with your orbital sander) and hard to get places, use the 400 grit sponge sanding pads I showed you earlier.

Check your sanding. You should have removed all signs of gloss from the existing paint. It should look a bit like this.

You are now ready to prepsol, wipe down and paint.

Righto....we are ready for paint now so let's get the gun and the paint ready.

PAINTING AN ACRYLIC LACQUER PLAIN COLOUR (NON METALLIC)
We used Dulon AAA Colour in this example.

This paint can go on over any compatible primer and also over any original sound paint that has been prepared as above. When mixing paint always stir well first.

When using Dulon paint use Dulon AAA thinners (not just generic two way thinners) and stir well again. Mix 1 part colour to 1.5 parts thinners. So that's 500mls paint and 750mls thinners.

Always use a filter when pouring mixed paint into your spray gun.

Now to get the gun ready. Use a 1.5 to 1.8 spray nozzle on your gun. For the demonstration we are using a 1.4mm nozzle and this worked fine, and it is recommended to go to a smaller size if you are a beginner.

Set the spray gun air pressure at 35 to 40psi. For our demo we started at 40psi.

To set the gun open the air control right up.......open the fan control right up.....screw the fluid screw right in then back it off 3 turns. This is all a good place to start but you now need to tune the gun.

Turn your nozzle 90 degrees so that you get a horizontal spray fan. Spray for a few seconds onto a test sheet.

While continuing to hold the test sheet vertically, observe what the paint does. It should sag evenly across the fan spray pattern. In the pic below you can see it is light to the left and heavy (runs) to the right. This needs to be adjusted.

To adjust this try dropping the pressure a bit and try again. We did this by dropping pressure back to about 37psi and the paint was still a little heavy on the right side of the fan.

Kevin now adjusted the fan by closing it up by 1/4 of a turn. When tried again it was improved but still a little heavy on the right, so a further 1/4 on the fan control knob. Here's the end result. Nice and even!

Have you wiped over with prepsol? Wiped it down, blown it down and wiped it again with a clean dry rag?

Good. Now, wipe it again with a tack rag (this is a sticky rag) that will pick up any bits of fluff and lint that might still be on the surface.

Let's go painting!

First up we are painting a Dulon solid colour (as opposed to metallic) that serves as a top coat and does not need a clear over the top.

HOW MUCH SHOULD GO ON?
When painting top coats, you are going to need about 4 to 6 coats to get good cover, depending on colour. For yellows and whites you may even need as many as 10 coats.

When applying the first coats it should go on medium wet. It's far easier to deal with a run that it is to try and cut and polish out dry spray. That said not too wet, as you know from the mix ratio above there are a lot of solvents and these can eat into any fresh primer or fillers.

THE TECHNIQUE
Once again always keep the gun perpendicular to the job. It's okay to lay the gun on its side vertical on a side panel and horizontal on a top panel and keep a constant distance from the panel. For a beginner a good rule to follow is to do the hang loose hand signal. The distance from the tip of your thumb to the tip of your little finger is a good guide for distance away from the job.

You should overlap your strokes by about 50% on the first heavier coats and you can up that to 60% on the heavier finishing coats. To achieve the heavier coats you can either come closer to the surface or alternatively stay the same distance away and just slow down the pace of the strokes.

In the video below you can see the technique in action for a first coat, but note this is the instructor who is much more proficient so he gets away with being a lot closer to the panel than you would if you were a beginner at this. The video gives a good indication though of how to hold the gun perpendicular, the evenness of the strokes and the pace.

This pic with reflection shows you how wet the paint should go on.

And here is my first crack at it! Pretty happy!

Flash time between coats is 2 or 3 minutes. That's the time required for the solvents to evaporate enough in order for another coat to be applied. You can usually tell when it has flashed off as the finish will be more dull than a wet glossy freshly applied coat. You need to apply more coats to allow margin for when it comes time to cut and polish. This will help if there are blemishes to buff out and it also means you have more paint so less risk of polishing through to the paint with the polishing machine when going over swage lines and panel edges.

In this next pic you can see what the finished panel (5 coats) looks like once dried. This was about 5 hours drying time and some of that was in the heated paint booth, so at home you really won't be doing anything with the paint work at least until it's hardened overnight.

You can also see in this pic it is quite glossy but it is quite rippled, what is sometimes referred to as "orange peel" for obvious reasons.

To get a super glossy and glass like finish you first need to sand the panel with 1500 grit wet and dry sandpaper WITH WATER. It's okay to use water now as the top coat is not porous of course and the primer is sealed off completely. Kevin's hot tip is that it helps to put a squirt of detergent in the water.

Use a flexi block (soft sanding block) as bare hands can result in your fingertips pressing harder so you get a striped sanded effect rather than an even pressure across the face of the pad.

Always sand in straight lines. You can go in different directions, but always straight lines. Also take extra care at the edges or on ridges like swage lines. It pays to sand the big areas first then come back and carefully and lightly sand the edges and swages.

Every so often you can use the edge of the sanding block to squeegee off the water so you can check progress. You are looking for a matt finish, no orange peel and no gloss at all.

If you rub through the paint there is no easy fix. It's back to sanding the gloss off and painting all over again. As such you need to be INCREDIBLY PATIENT AND INCREDIBLY CAREFUL WHEN SANDING.

Now you are ready for the cutting part of the cut and polish. For this you really want an electric polisher.

The first phase you use a cutting compound such as this.

And you use a sheepskin buff at this point. The video shows this in action. This should be on a low speed. Half speed is probably too fast. You can go over the edges with the polisher but as with the sanding if you rub through the paint there is no easy fix. It's back to sanding the gloss off and painting all over again. As such you need to be INCREDIBLY PATIENT AND INCREDIBLY CAREFUL WHEN POLISHING.

A tip is to go 'over' edges, not 'into' edges. And yet another tip....you can put tape over sharp edges then go back and take the tape off later and polish the edge by hand.

Once you have done this you then move to a black sponge like soft pad on the machine and use the machine cut polish which is much finer cutting.

Once this is done you can review your work. If there are still fine scratches from the 1500 grit wet and dry, just go back to the lamb skin buff and cutting compound, then repeat the soft pad and machine cut polish.

PATIENCE IS THE KEY. It really pays off if you take the time. These next two pics show the same panel, before and after cut and polish.

Lastly you can wax the panel, but you should wait at least 6 weeks to do this to enable all the solvents to evaporate fully.

PAINTING WITH METALLIC BASE COAT CLEAR COAT
Painting metallic is a bit more complicated versus the Dulon solid colour mentioned above as there is no gloss in a metallic. It goes on flat and you need to put clear coats on top of that. This serves 2 purposes. It gives the paint finish depth and it also protects the paint from harmful UV. Clears can be flat, satin of gloss.

Panel prep for Metallics is the same as mentioned above for Dulon solid colour, and like the solid colour, metallics can go over a newly primered surface or a sound previously painted surface if prepared as outlined earlier.

Here is my prepared panel

With a metallic you should thin it down 1.5 to 1. That's 1.5 thinners to 1 part paint e.g. 500mls paint and 750mls thinners.

This is what you will use for the the first 2 or 3 coats, then you change the ratio to increase the thinners by adding 50% more thinners. That is if you have a litre of mixed paint, add 500mls more thinners. This is for the mist coats that I will talk more about soon.

Remember to stir your paint well.

In this example we used Dulon AAA Basecoat metallic

Remember to always filter your paint into your gun. Also remember before you start painting that the panel should have been blown down, prepsoled with a clean rag, blown down, wiped again with a clean rag, blown down and lastly wiped with a tack cloth. You can also give the job a quick blow down with the spray gun by pulling the trigger lightly so only air comes out and no paint.

Righto lets paint!

The first coats you put on should be fairly heavy to get cover. As mentioned above you need 2 or 3 of these and the flash time between coats should be about 3mins. The paint goes on quite wet and glossy.

But will go quite satin like once flashed off. You can see the difference in this next pic. Ignore the masking I will come back to that soon.

Once you have got your 2 or 3 heavy coats on its time to do the mist coats. The idea of the mist coats is they blend the colour. What you can get with metallic especially is a very striped effect with each pass of the gun. The mist coats help to blend this a little. You'll remember I said above that the mist coats should be the same paint but thinned a further 50%. This makes it very thin.

When applying mist coats there is no need to adjust the gun and you should aim for similar overlap to the earlier coats, but you go very, very fast with your strokes.....a very quick flick....and you can go in all directions.

Once you have done that a couple of times you are ready for clear coat. No sanding in between just a quick wipe with the tack rag. Before we go on though, let's take a quick look at two tone paint.

TWO TONE
We masked the guard up so we could have a go at doing two tone paint, where we masked off the top of the guard after we finished spraying the blue with its 3 heavy coats and 2 mist coats. This was left a while before masking so that the paint had a chance to cure a bit. You probably want to allow an hour or so at home.

To mask up for another colour like this you don't use masking tape as that will leave you with a furry edge. Instead you use Fineline tape which is kind of plasticy like cellotape or electrical tape but it works like masking tape in so far as it doesn't react to the paint and it can be easily removed after painting.

Now while you need to leave it an hour before putting this tape on over fresh paint it is important to note the you MUST PAINT BOTH COLOURS AND THE CLEAR ALL ON THE SAME DAY. This is because painting subsequent coats over previous coats that are still soft will give much better keying as they kind of melt together.

So as soon as you have cleaned your gun, mixed up the new colour, masked up the panel and wiped it down with a tack cloth, you should go again with the new colour.

As you can see we have now painted the red. It's still wet in this next pic, hence the gloss, but it will flash off and go quite dull just as the blue did. This now has 3 coats of red and 2 mist coats.

Soon after you finish applying the paint and it has flashed off, you can remove the masking.

Next up its time to do clear coat.

CLEAR COAT

So we have our colour down. You need to wait about 30mins before applying clear so that the thinners in the clear don't make the colour bleed.

Mix the Dulon AAA clear just as you did the paint. 1 part clear to 1.5 parts thinners, so 500ml clear and 750ml thinners. Remember too to stir well and filter it into your gun.

The first two coats should be medium wet but not too wet as that could lift the fresh paint.

Once these first 2 clear coats go off though they seal the colour so you can go much heavier with the next 2 clear coats to get a good cover for more margin when cutting and polishing but also to get more depth in the paint job. With these two top coats you can be very generous with the clear. Come in closer to the job and make slow stokes with the gun.

On the last coat you can do what is referred to as a "double header". This is where you apply a thick coat and go straight back and do another thick coat over the top without allowing the first one to flash off.

Once this is all applied you can leave it overnight and begin the cut and polish phase. I have covered this earlier of course.

Alternatively you can knock the clear back with 1000 grit (wet) to remove the Orange peel and any gloss, then repeat the clear process again. You can do this a week or two later even. Because you are sanding the earlier clear, there is something for the new coats to adhere to.

This extra clear will give a much better "deeper" result, but of course is more time consuming. This is why you pay big money for hot rod paint jobs as they go to these lengths to get it looking perfect.

SOME OTHER STUFF......

BETWEEN COLOURS AND ALSO WHEN CLEANING UP
Clean out the gun with two way thinners or you can buy gun wash. Fill the cup with thinners and remove gun from compressed air supply. Pull the trigger and thinners will run through. This will clear a good amount of the paint. Hook back up to air and spray the thinners through also. This will leave the gun clean enough if you intend using it again the next day.

Ideally though disassemble the gun and clean it properly especially for long term storage and between colours.

WHAT IF I HAVE A RUN?
Kevin kindly demonstrated what to do here. Oh and by the way it's easier to deal with a run than it is with dry spray, so when painting bear this in mind and try and tend to be a bit more generous with the paint.

In short though, what you do with a run though is let it harden (wait a couple of hours) and using a razor blade on its edge scrape the run away.

This is the tool used.

When scraping the run away (until you have a flat surface again) its very easy for the corner of the blade to dig in. A tip here is to put tape over the outer corners of the blade so that the corners don't damage the paintwork.

If this is Dulon top colour coat (single colour top coat acrylic lacquer no clear required) then you can do this scrapping, sand it with 1500 grit and then use the polisher with cutting compound to finish.

The same goes for clear coat.

If however the run was in a metallic base coat you will need to repair the run as above with the blade, smooth the area with 320 paper and then respray the colour. You can then progress to clear coat as you would normally.

BLENDING PANELS - WHEN TOUCHING UP A SCRATCH ON JUST ONE PANEL
To do this, you complete the repair, then sand the panel being repaired and the adjacent one. You then paint the panel with the scratch in it and a bit of the adjacent one. You then clear the entire panel and all of the adjacent panel.

WHEN YOU GET USED TO USING THE SPRAY GUN BE BRAVE!
Try opening the fluid valve up more and paint faster. Keep the same distance from the job and the same fan and air setting....just go faster with your strokes.

I look forward to seeing the results when I put this into practice!

I had to say goodbye to a friend today

2015-06-23T01:12:00.002-07:00

Through some of my blogs you may recall hearing me talk of Stan "the fibreglass man" Andrews.

Regrettably Stan succumbed to cancer last Friday after an 8 year battle. As long as I have known Stan he has been battling, but you wouldn't have known...a beaming smile and a cheeky chuckle, coupled with his incredibly optimistic outlook on all things, no matter how negative. Stan was an incredibly kind and generous man only too happy to help others out especially if it involved cars and more so if that car was a hot rod.

At many swap meets car shows or hot rod gatherings you'd see Stan and his wife Ange. Stan would invariably be wearing his favourite Ford Blue jersey with Ford logo along with a huge smile as he walked toward you keen to find out how the project was progressing. He took a genuine interest in people and their lives.

Stan completed a huge amount of fibreglass work on my previous 33 Ford Coupe and it is only through talking to Stan, watching him at work and gleaning a few lessons from him along the way that I have been able to tackle the chopping, channeling and sectioning of my current build. Almost everything I know about working with fibreglass I owe to Stan.

Throughout this work on my previous Coupe, Stan would quote unreasonably good prices and would not accept a cent more no matter how much you insisted. A few times there I had to sneak cash into his gear while he was packing up without him knowing.

Stan was not only generous with his work, his time and his charge out rates, but when you asked for a few pointers he would often make recommendations and give you a few materials or fibreglassing consumables to try. He'd even pass on the likes of resin at the trade price he secured owing to the volumes he purchased. None of it was a problem to Stan....generous to a tee!

I am so glad that on one of these occasions Stan gave me a small fibreglass roller to not only use but to keep, again this is so typical of Stan. It has Stan's initials engraved into it and is something I will treasure and remember Stan by every time I break out the fibreglassing gear. Thanks Stan.

The picture above is of Stan's favourite jersey I mentioned earlier and a pic of Stan enjoying a beer with Ange in better times.

Below is a pic of Stan's Ford sedan which he used like a work horse.

Being a Ford man through and through there was only one brand of car to build for Ange his wife. This is her 34 Sedan making an appearance at the funeral service today.

Its fair to say I am feeling pretty down today. I'm gonna miss you Stan! I'm gonna miss you a lot.

Training - Spray Painting

2015-04-26T17:25:00.001-07:00

I was invited by Phil Bradshaw to attend a spray painting course run by the Bodyshop in Wellington. His club (Constructors Car Club) made the approach to The Body Shop to put this on for their club members. I hadn't seen a course like this run in Auckland so leapt at the chance to attend this one in Wellington when Phil invited me. The timing couldn't have been better as I have been thinking about throwing some paint at the Ford Pop not to mention being able to paint the Coupe Chassis and many other parts like the driveshaft and other under body parts that will be mounted.

This first course was about removing the old paint, attending to the bare steel to kill any rust and then onto laying down etch primer, filler primer and surface primer. It also covered the application of body filler for small dents and imperfections.

We turned up on Saturday morning for the course which would be run in Bodyshop's warehouse. They are a panel and paint supplies outlet, supplying the public and the trade. Its a pretty well set up affair with plenty of stock and they even have a spray booth on site.

When we arrived we were greeted with the panels that we would be working on during this first course (one of three) that would cover paint removal, panel prep, priming, primer filling, sanding, and repairing dents.

We were supplied with a safety mask and overalls to wear and there was a good supply of solvent resistant latex gloves on hand. Kevin who ran the course, firstly went over a few tips about the gear and the materials we would be using. The safety mask we were given uses filters and pre filters to screen out the toxic fumes that come off the paints and thinners. He suggested when these masks weren't in use that they should be stored in a plastic bag and preferably away from solvents and paints. If you don't do that the filters will continue to absorb those vapours and be less effective in a shorter time, than if they had been stored correctly. Good advice.

With the paints there are 4 types predominantly used. Acrylic (or water borne) 2 Pack (uses a paint and a hardener) Lacquer (base coat and clear coat system) and Enamel.

Acrylic is being used more and more as it is eco friendly and washes up in water. It requires some fairly good conditions to use it in (ideally a spray booth where the paint can be baked) as it relies on the water in the paint evaporating in order for the paint to dry/harden. For home use this is not impossible but it does make it a little less attractive as an option. It is also more expensive. While this is the safest paint to use it is interesting to note that there is no water based clear coat yet so you still have to use the lacquer based clears.

2 Pack is very quick as it creates a nice shiny finish straight off the gun. It is a really hard finish and doesn't require clear coats over the top, so its quick. Its probably the most common paint these days because it is fast and gives the hardest wearing finish. The issue though is that it is incredibly toxic being full of isocyanites. To be honest I am scared of the stuff so won't use it at home. The consensus is that it is ok if you are spraying outside and not in a confined space, but why would you even risk it.

Lacquer or base coat/clear is just that, a solvent based paint where you first spray the colour on and then spray coats of clear over the top to give a shiny finish. This takes longer and is still toxic so you need a mask, gloves and overalls, but its not carcinogenic like 2 Pack. Given I don't have a spray booth with expensive extraction and filtration equipment and don't have a suit/mask with positive air supply....but I do have time and in fact will probably find it easier to paint the things I am doing in stages, I am more than happy to stick with Lacquer. Lacquer is the next hardest finish after 2 pack.

Enamel is an older style paint and is quite hard wearing when it dries but it is very slow drying and while it is drying remains very soft. It can take weeks for the paint to harden off and when it does it is quite brittle and much less durable that 2 pack or lacquer. Lets just say its old technology and there is no point using enamel when there are much better options available.

A good tip from Kevin was to ask for the full data sheet for any paints that you buy. It will give you a lot more info than you get on the tin. All of which can be useful as you go about prepping for and using the paint. These sheets tell you things like....

its properties
suitable applications
features and benefits
ideal viscosity for applying (how thin the paint should be)
drying time
temp range to use the paint in
colours available
ratio to mix with thinners and the type of thinners to use
how many coats to apply and how long between coats
how long it takes to fully harden
how to prep the surface including the grit of sandpaper that should have been used
materials it can be used on
recommended gun type including spray nozzle size and the air pressure to use.
Health and Safety responsibilities

For this course we used only Lacquers as that is what the participants thought they'd be using at home most often if not exclusively.

Its useful when painting a project to know what paint is already there that you are going to remove/paint over. It is especially important if you are going to paint over, as some paints can cover the old paint and others cannot. For example you can put enamel over the top of a lacquer finish but you cannot put lacquer over enamel. It just "fries up" like you have painted it with paint stripper. So if you are painting an old car that might have enamel paint on it you need to know first what you are dealing with.

If it's Lacquer and you rub the painted surface with a rag that has thinners on it.....it will come off and you will see colour on your rag. The surface will be tacky.

If its 2 pack, the thinners won't affect the paint.

If it's enamel it will also come off onto the rag but the paint on the panel will be more adversely affected i.e. it will begin to lift.

PREPARATION

The course would follow a back to bare steel process so we could see what was involved in that. It is a good way of treating any project, but means a lot of work. It's always better to paint over an already painted surface if it is sound as this saves time, but if there are issues like rust, flaking bog, lifting paint, dents etc it's probably just as easy to go back to bare and know what you are dealing with. Be prepared to have to do a lot of work though if you find a heap of nasties under that old paint.

On the course, Kevin took us through the paint stripping process using a chemical stripper rather than mechanical. He likes to have the product do all the work for you rather than spend lots of time and effort with wire wheels, sanding discs etc as it's hard work, makes a mess and uses a lot of consumables. Also these mechanical processes can heat up and distort a panel. Stripper on the other hand is relatively easy, and if handled carefully is safe and makes very little mess.

On the course we used Tergostrip.

This is simply brushed on after roughing up the surface with 40 grit sandpaper and using compressed air to blow the dust off. You need to be very liberal with the product. On a car you need to mask off any joins as you don't want the stripper getting in between panels. You need to be able to remove the stripper and wash any part where the stripper makes contact. You should do just 1 panel at a time right up to primer stage before starting another panel. After stripping and prepping a panel it needs to be primed within 2 hours or it will start to oxidise/rust again in its raw state while exposed to the air.

When using stripper you need latex gloves as it burns on contact with skin. You also need glasses as you wouldn't want any to flick into your eye. Wear your mask too as it is a bit fumey. A hot tip here is to be careful when you finish applying the stripper. Don't remove your glasses or mask if you still have your gloves on and they have stripper on them. You will transfer that to your scalp or face and it burns like a bastard.

After the stripper is applied you cover the surface with a plastic drop sheet to lock in the chemical reaction and vapours. Leave it for 20 mins or so and peel the plastic back. You can now begin removing the blistered paint with a scraper. Let the scrapings drop into the plastic drop sheet for easy disposal.

Once done, if you have a lot of paint that is still hard to remove, just repeat the process. That next layer will be soft so the second coat of stripper will deal with that quickly. Once you have a mostly bare panel, you wash the surface with a wet watery rag which will neutralise the stripper. This should be rinsed and washed several times.

You may still have a few remnants of paint that can be rubbed off with 2 way thinners or may need to be sanded off using an orbital sander. If there is a lot of bog left you may need to use 40 grit paper, otherwise 80 grit will suffice.

Wash the panel down using Prepsol. Prepsol is a cleaning solvent that will remove waxes, grease, finger residue and other contaminants like silicone and polish. It will not affect the surface. It's applied with a lint free cloth. Use it liberally BEFORE sanding and before undercoating. Wipe off excess with a dry cloth. Use SPARINGLY before any topcoat.

DEALING WITH RUST

We asked what we needed to do now to deal with rust particularly inside a panel e.g. an old door where you can't get to and won't be painting. There is a product called Neutra Rust 661 which is a rust converter. This can be brushed on, or for the inside of a panel it can be sprayed on using a spray bottle. In this first pic you can see the milky solution.

In this next pic it has neutralised the rust and converted it to a black carbon like surface. This can now be covered with any commercial internal panel protectant like Tectyl, Fisholine or other wax based protectants.

For the outside of the panel you can use this product also but would probably remove the rust mechanically particularly if it was serious i.e. needed to be cut out and the panel repaired.

For surface rust on the panel though, you can use Deoxidine. Remember to Prepsol first though! Deoxidine is a phosphoric acid metal cleaner and conditioner which removes rust, destroys rusting agents and leaves the metal surface chemically clean and ready for paint. 1 x 500ml bottle will do a whole car. You apply this (mixed 2 parts water 1 part deoxidine) with a scotchbrite pad lightly rubbing across the surface. The rust will be removed. Once done, wash the surface with water (within 3 mins) and quickly dry off with a dry rag and dry compressed air. Dry and blow out any joins. You need to apply paint within 2hrs of this process being completed.

Wipe the panel down with Prepsol. You are now ready for the etch primer. Here is the panel I prepared and treated with deoxidine before cleaning with prepsol.

Cleaner than a clean thing with clean written on it....and in the spray booth ready for etch primer.

ETCH PRIMER

iCoat Etch Primer is an anti-corrosive primer that etches and provides good metal protection. It can be sprayed straight to bare metal in 1 or 2 even wet coats. It can also be brushed in small areas. iCoat is a "Holding Primer" which means it can be left uncoated as a matt paint finish. It prohibits moisture absorption.

You can now do your spot rust repairs and the rest of the panel is protected.

If you get it all right this is the sort of finish you can get...and yes that is what I sprayed! Under close supervision of course.

And here it is once dry.

You CANNOT put lacquer base coat or clear over this. You need to spray on Autothane Primer 1k first.

PRIMER vs. PRIMER FILLER

You can use Autothane Primer 1K Filler as a surface primer (2 parts) or as a filler primer (4 parts) using two way thinners to thin it down. Primer won't fill 150 grit scratches but filler primer will. For Primer you need to sand it with 180/240 grit first.

If your first coats are filler primer you should prep the surface with 80 grit, apply the 3 or 4 coats of filler then wait 2 days before sanding with 120 grit. Then you can repeat or just use one coat of filler and sand using 240 grit and go to surface primer. Always DRY SAND!

Don't have the car in the elements in primer it is very porous and will allow water through particularly if there is no iCoat etch primer underneath it. You will then get bubbles of rust coming from underneath. Top coat is the only truly waterproof layer. Its important to understand this and NEVER use wet and dry sanding techniques with primer. Use dry paper only.

If you have a lot of imperfections to deal with you can spray up to 4 heavy coats of filler primer (2mm or even a 3mm nozzle) at any one time. Guide coat or use guide powder and sand with 120 grit. You can then apply another 4 heavy coats of primer filler if need be. If this isn't dealing with the imperfections you may need to use body filler.

For demo purposes we masked off one side of the panel so we could see how much build up the filler primer would deliver.

Here is the panel with two good coats of filler primer applied. It was quite amazing how thick this was.

SOME EXTRA VALUABLE INFO

SPRAY GUN

You use the following nozzles for the following applications.

1.4m nozzle = Lacquer Topcoat. No good for primer

1.7m nozzle = Chassis or components where you need a good coat of paint but aren't so concerned about finish

2.0m nozzle = Surface primer and lighter filler coats

3.0m nozzle = For heavy primer filler coats

Gravity fed guns atomise better.

A 600ml cup is big enough for most uses.

The gun we were using on the course was available at a reduced price so I grabbed one, knowing that it came recommended and of course having test driven one.

GUN ADJUSTMENTS

The main adjustments on a gun are the fan control and trigger control. The fan control allows for a narrow fan or wide fan spray pattern. A narrow fan will put more paint on in a concentrated area. You need to overlap closely. A wider fan puts paint on more thinly over a wider area. You can go wider with your overlaps. Rather than adjusting fan consider painting closer to the surface or further away to get similar benefits.

The trigger control varies how much paint will feed. Don't open it right up. You'll get too much paint. As a starting point screw it right in and back off 3 turns.

If when you test spray onto one spot with a 2 second spray, and you get an even fan with surplus paint right across the fan you have the gun adjusted correctly. If however the paint is only collecting at each end of the fan and is light in the middle, your pressure is too high.

SPRAYING

When painting hold the gun about 150mm to 180mm from the surface and always with the nozzle at right angles to the surface. Do all edges first. Start by lining up the centre of the nozzle on the edge of the panel being painted to ensure good cover on the edge. For subsequent strokes you should line the nozzle up with the edge of the previous pass, i.e. 50% of the spray goes over the previous paint and 50% over the bare surface. For heavy primers or fillers this can be as little at 30% bare surface and 70% overlap.

Spray what you can reach while maintaining the same distance from the surface and always at right angles, then change position to paint further along. As long as you paint wet to wet edge it will blend ok.

When spraying get primers on wet and even noting that it's easier to sand out a run than it is to sand out "dry spray"

MIXING AND FILLING THE GUN

When mixing paints for your gun, you can use the mix ratio method for primers but for top coats you should use a viscosity cup where you time how long it takes a measured amount of the paint to run though an aperture. Too slow = too thick. Too fast = too thin.

Always stir well and filter your paint into the gun. These disposable filters like this used one sitting in the paint can, are all you need for the job.

Grab a cradle for the gun. Its much easier to fill the cup when you aren't trying to pour paint with one hand and hold the gun with the other.

Ensure the breather on the top of the cup is not blocked. This is a leading cause of spraying issues.

COMPRESSOR

The ideal compressor size is 3hp 12cfm with a 10mm inside diameter hose. Too long a hose will cause pressure drop. You should use a gun regulator so you can regulate the pressure at the gun itself. Always use a good quality moisture and oil trap. Leave the bleed valve on the trap slightly open to relieve moisture.

To clean the gun empty the paint out and add 200ml of thinners to the spray gun cup. Disconnect the gun from air and pull the trigger. Allow the thinners and paint to gravity feed through. Then add another 200ml of thinners and reconnect the gun to the air supply. Spray the 200ml of thinners. For Lacquers this is good enough for a quick clean but you will need to disassemble and clean the gun properly once you finish your project. You can though leave Lacquer primer in the gun, even overnight if need be. 2 pack time pack would harden though so you need to clean every time.

SANDING

Start with 40 grit if there is a lot of bog to remove then move to 80 grit. Can go straight to 80 if panel is in good shape. Apply filler primer and use 120 first up on a block sander as this will go through the high spots. Using a finer paper risks having the sander follow the imperfections rather than cut through.

Move up to 180/240 grit, then you can surface prime.

Use 320/400 on surface primer then you can top coat. If you didn't need filler primer you can go straight 320/400 grit on the surface primer using an orbital sander.

If you get rub through you can touch up with a "Rub through" primer in a spray can. You can sand this and go straight to top coat.

On the course they used a Rupes sanding station. I was so impressed with this as it vacuum's away almost all the dust as you sand. Great for home use as it means all the other tools in your workshop stay clean rather than coat everything with powdered primer and filler!

I decided I'd buy one. I was impressed so much! Here's the one I bought, it came with a trolley as well.

This is the orbital sander...its a 3 which means the oscillations move in 3mm diameter circles. There is a 5 available as well for more aggressive and quicker sanding. I'll make to with the 3 as I reckon I'll get into less trouble by taking things a bit slower.

BOGGING/BODY FILLER

Prepsol before applying body filler. It must always go over primer and never onto bare steel. Use 80 grit to prep. Blow dust off and prepsol. Apply the body filler. Put guide coat or guide powder over the body filler and block sand 120/150 grit. Now filler prime and guide coat again and orbital sand. Get to 180/240 for the surface primer, then 320/400 grit and it can then be top coated.

If the body filler has imperfections like air bubbles don't try and sand them out, use primer filler to fill them and sand again.

SUMMARY

Rough up old paint (40 grit)

Blow dust off

Brush on stripper and leave 20mins

Scrape off old paint. Repeat with more stripper if need be.

Once stripped, neutralise with water and dry the panel

Use two way thinners to remove small amounts of paint that might be left. You may also need to sand using 40 grit if there is a lot of bog. Stripper will not remove bog. If the panel is reasonably good just use 80 grit.

Prepsol the panel

Apply Deoxidine metal conditioner and scrub with scotchbrite

Wash off with water (within 3 mins) and quickly dry the panel with dry cloth and compressed air making sure you dry and blow out any joins.

Prepsol the panel

Apply etch primer to bare steel panel (within 2 hours of deoxidine)

After 180/240 grit use surface primer but after 120/150 grit you should use primer filler.

Use guide coat or guide powder

Sand using 150/180

Blow dust off

Apply bog to any low spots

Apply guide coat or guide powder

Sand using 150/180

Reapply more bog and repeat as required

Apply guide coat or guide powder

Sand using 180/240

Prepsol panel

Apply surface primer

Apply guide coat or guide powder

Sand using 320/400 grit

Prepsol panel

You are now ready for top coat

And that is the next course.......I'll be doing that mid June so watch this space.

In the meantime I have stocked up on supplies of strippers, rust treatments, primers, sand paper, guide coat and the hardware above of course. So I am ready to go with starting on the Pop.

Rear Axle - Jag Rear Overhaul - Part 10

2014-05-18T03:31:00.002-07:00

I took a step backwards this afternoon to take two steps forwards.....

If you go back to the Jag Rear Overhaul Part 3 .......(I still can't quite believe that was way back in 2012).....you will see that the axles and the universal joints were all assembled and ready to be installed. UNFORTUNATELY though I experienced a Muppet moment shortly after this and had to have them all pulled apart again. So why did I go backwards like this?

Well you see I sent the freshly chromed axles and the hubs away to a Jag specialist to be assembled as the bearings in the hubs need to be pressed in to a specific "pre-load". That means they get put in with a tiny bit of play to allow the bearings to run freely without binding up but not so loose that the wheel wobbles about. It is quite a specific measurement that requires special tools. So a Jag specialist seemed like a good idea.

As I mentioned though I ran into a Muppet who was working there and was assigned my job. In his wisdom he put the freshly chromed axles in the vice so he could tighten the big nut on the end of the axle when it was being mounted in the hub! Yep thats right chrome in a vice! Guess what it cracked the chrome....next step would be for rust to form and the chrome to start falling off. What an idiot! Not only once but twice! He did it to both axles!

Thankfully the company came to the party and paid for the axles to be re-chromed, but it meant disassembling them again so that could be done. Grrrr.

Now while they were apart I thought more about the universals. Heres one below. You can see this one has been marked so that each cap goes back onto the right shaft when they are reassembled into the axles.

I decided that while they look okay, that seeing as I had them all apart again, I would paint the universals. They are covered in a plastic clear finish, but over time they could rust especially given they are in quite a hostile environment under the car and near brakes and brake dust in the case of the inner ones. It is a lot easier to paint these now while they are out than it would be when installed. What better way to spend a Sunday afternoon!

So the first thing was to clean all the parts and mask them up. In the case of the centre cross they had a few casting marks that I smoothed off with a Dremel (a small hand held grinder). Here is one all masked up and ready for paint. There are 4 of these and it literally took hours to get to this stage.

Once all were masked I made a board with holes in it to hold the crosses and laid the cups out in a row so I could spray paint them from all angles.

Here is the finished product all painted with the matched cups back on the correct shafts on the centre cross. It doesn't look a whole lot different to what I started with but they are protected from the elements now and won't go all rusty.

Now while I had the paint out I thought I'd also attack the hubs. You can see here what a nice job Jack the metal polisher did for me. These hubs are about 50 years old now and they were peppered with stone chips and grime from all that time being dragged around under a car.

Jack is an absolute wizz. A real nice guy and he charges very reasonable prices. His operation is very old school. He has a tin shed in an industrial area that you'd struggle to find if you didn't know where it was, but his reputation is so good that people come from near and far to get a good job done. Here he is hard at work on someones alternator.

Here's the shed. Very unassuming, but the stuff that comes out of here is nothing short of superb!

Anyway back to those hubs. When Jack polished them I told him not to worry too much about the inside of them as it would have been very difficult to get at to polish but also really difficult for me to get at once assembled in the car to keep the aluminium shiny. Instead I decided to paint this part of them. You can see here how they are still natural aluminium and a bit black from the polishing dust.

So I cleaned these, masked them up, primed them, painted them and gave them a shot of clear coat. Not as good as polished alloy, but they look okay and will be fairly easy to look after once installed.

Thats another weekend shot and quite close to being able to finish reassembling the back end. Keep watching!

Rear Axle - Jag Rear Overhaul - Part 9

2014-05-17T01:30:00.002-07:00

The next step is to start assembling the driveline that goes between the diff head to the wheels. This consists of the axles which I covered in an earlier post (click here to view) and the bottom arms. The bottom arms are something I have never really liked about the Jag rear.....they are okay and once chromed look quite good, but they are a big fat tube that to me is kind of ugly and they are something that lets everyone know that you have a Jag rear in your hot rod. Here's what the jag rear looks like. Either side of the diff head you can see the axles on top and the fat tube bottom arms running from the diff head out to the bottom of the hubs.

I have always been a bit keener on something like these "Heidts" brand rear ends with a 'ladder' type bottom arm. See the difference, just looks a bit more clean and "hot rod like" in my opinion.

While my chassis was being built in Wellington at Juniors Kustom Rides, I asked them to give me a price for building arms something like the Heidts ones but to be fitted to my Jag rear instead of the fat tube bottom arms i.e.swap out the fat tubes and insert the ladder type set up.

Juniors actually went one step further than that and went ahead and made some out of stainless. They looked spectacular and I would have loved to buy them, but I couldn't afford them though at the time and last I heard they were selling them to another guy that had an F100 truck with a Jag rear in it. I was kind of gutted as they looked very good and were really well made, but alas I just didn't have that kind of cash. Not to worry....so I went ahead and had my original Jag ones chromed.

Now some months later Juniors Kustom Rides unfortunately ran into issues and closed down. All their workshop equipment was being sold off on Trademe at $1 reserve. I was interested in what sort of hot rod related tools they might have so I took a look....shrinkers, stretchers, grinders, welders, lathes and bottom arms for a Jag rear......whoah hang on a minute what was that????? Yep thats right stainless steel custom made arms for a Jag rear...$1 reserve auction! I was beside myself and kept a very close eye on the auction. It eventually closed with me winning the arms for $330. YES!!!!

This is what they look like compared to the Jag one at the bottom.

And here you can see how they made the new custom arms with the exact same geometry as the original Jag one. Laid one over the top of the other you can see all the mount points are identical. Nice! Ignore the smeary marks on everything. I am keeping everything smothered in a film of oil as we live close to the sea and I want to keep everything protected through the build process.

Now having the geometry on the new arms identical to the originals means everything bolts up just the same as original. The inner ends pivot on the brackets that are bolted to the side of the diff head (they are the ones I put the safety wires on in my last post). The arms pivot up and down with suspension travel and as such have bearings so they don't wear out. Here you can see I have the two new bearings fresh out of their boxes and the sleeve that runs inside them.

All of this needs to be put inside the hole in the bottom arm that is at the top of the photo. Here is a close up of the bearing. It is what is known as a needle roller bearing. The little needle like pieces inside the bearing are hardened steel and so long as they are clean and well lubricated with grease they will last for a very long time. Excuse the grubby fingers....thats what you get when installing bearings with a lashing of new grease. Lovin' it!

The bearings have what is referred to as an interference fit....in other words the hole they go into is slightly smaller than the bearing. We are talking 0.1mm here so only a tiny fraction but it means they are very tight in the housing. If you had a hydraulic press you'd use that now, but I don't so we have to improvise. By lining the bearings up and threading a bolt through the centre with big diameter washers pressing against the sides of the bearings....its just a case of carefully tightening up the bolt and letting the big washers slowly press the bearings into place. Here you can see it all set up ready to go.

And here is one all finished and pressed into place.

Thats another job ticked off in the reassembly process. Keep watching for more!

Rear Axle - Jag Rear Overhaul - Part 8

2014-05-13T03:48:00.001-07:00

The next job (after the paint and clear lacquer on the diff head hardened) was to colour sand, cut and polish. It does seem strange to have a nice shiny paint job then attack it with sandpaper, but that is exactly what you do.

When you put the clear on it has little fine bumps, stipple or orange peel that makes the finish a little less shiny. To get that real mirror finish shine you have to sand the surface with very fine sandpaper to remove that stipple. You have to be careful though to only take that surface off and to not go through the clear coat to the coloured paint as that would mean starting all over again.

Once the sanding is done its then a case of using a cutting polish to take out the fine little sandpaper scratches. After that its on with a finishing polish. David you might remember giving me a tin of Carnuba wax some years ago....well thats what I used here and it came up really nicely. Sorry the pictures aren't great as they are all taken at night, but here's what it looks like after cutting and polishing. I mounted the brake caliper mounting plates and the diff quick change cover just to see what it was going to look like with a bit of bling.

Its hard to see in this light, but here is a close up so you get an idea of the gloss that is on the paint finish. I have to say I am pretty happy with my first ever attempt at painting.

Now in my last blog you might recall I ran into a bit of an issue with retaining the bolts that hold the brake caliper mount in place and also hold the side covers on the diff head. If one of these came loose it could actually lock the axle up. If that happened at speed it would be disastrous!!!!

You might also recall I was looking at using a safety wire threaded through the bolts to stop them coming loose. This is a safe solution but not so sexy to look at. I came up with another idea though that looks a whole lot nicer and will be just as secure if not better.

I had some lock rings made. In effect they are a bolt on cover that bolts over the top of the caliper mount bolts. Here is one of the covers I had cut from ali and have had polished. Now you can't argue with the fact that this looks much better than a safety wire!

In the next pic you can see the caliper mounting bracket with the 5 main holes that hold it in place. In between those holes there are smaller holes that the lock ring will screw into (thanks Roger for all you help with these)

And here you can see what it will look like with the lock plate mounted. Note I made the lock ring slightly smaller so I can still see the very edge of the main bolts. That way I will be able to see if anything starts to move or loosen.

So to mount it all up I put the main bolts in and used loctite (a type of glue that stops bolts coming undone without significant force) and then I bolted the locking ring on over the top also using loctite.

The theory is that if something did come loose it would either be a small screw and it would just shear off and not lock the axle. You'd hear it and feel it though so you inspect and rectify at that point.

If I was unfortunate enough to have one of the main bolts come undone, it would need to distort the locking ring and if that started making contact it would make a hell of a noise and would slowly grind. It would not cause a catastrophic lock up though.

Here it is all mounted up. Looking good.

Now while we are on the topic of the safety wire there are a few bolts that do need to be wired. Its in the certification rules that they need to be and it makes sense as they are quite integral to the structure of the rear end. Also they are hidden away so you'll never really see the wire anyway.

The first place is the side mounting brackets that the bottom arms pivot on. Just two bolts on each side. I bolted them up....again using loctite....and torqued them up to the factory specs.

Then it was a case of wiring them. My mate Brian had some safety wire pliers which he has kindly loaned to me....thanks Brian. Here's what they look like, and the wire is a stainless wire specifically for the purpose.

I searched on Youtube to find out how to use them and here is the clip I found most useful. If you have trouble viewing the video here, paste this link into your web browser to view. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwkL0qfyFL0

So I had a crack at it and here is my first attempt. Looks okay and it will certainly do the trick. To loosen a bolt you need to turn it anti clockwise. As you can see here if you turn the left bolt anti clockwise (try to loosen it) it will pull the wire and try and pull the right hand bolt in a clockwise direction i.e. to loosen the left bolt the wire will try and tighten the right bolt....outcome is the left bolt can't come undone. Now try and turn the right bolt anti clockwise....same deal it will try and tighten the left hand bolt. Thats it a locking or safety wire doing its thing.

With that all done while I still had access to it, I was now able to start mounting up some of the other hardware.

You might remember from my last post, with the set up I have, that I need to bolt the brake calipers on in their two separate halves. This is because the bolts that need to be tightened to hold them on will be behind the brake disc. So I can't put the caliper on and then the disk. Nor can I put the disc on then the caliper.

Instead I need to bolt the inner half of the caliper on to the mount bracket....then slip the disc on....then bolt the outer half of the caliper on.

Here you can see I have the inner handbrake caliper half slipped onto the mount bracket.

And here is the main footbrake caliper inner half mounted. Note also the drive hub is now bolted on too.

Here is a view of the whole set up just before I slip the brake disc on.

Once the disc was slipped I was able to bolt the outer caliper halves on which effectively clamp the disc in place.

And here we are all buttoned up! The brake pads have been inserted through the slot in the rear of the caliper and that is another step in the assembly process completed!

Pretty happy. Its starting to look good and you'll have to take my word for it, it looks 10 time better in the daylight!

Rear Axle - Jag Rear Overhaul - Part 7

2014-04-26T03:48:00.001-07:00

Ok, we are really making progress in the right direction now. No more stripping of parts and pulling things to bits, its all finishing and reassembly now.

In the last post you will recall I had the final base coat all prepped ready for finished colour......well here it is. These first pics are of the diff head all painted in metallic silver so it should blend nicely with all the HPC ceramic coating, polished alloy, stainless and chrome.

This is how the paint came out straight off the spray gun. Its the first time ever that I have used a spray gun as I never had the gear. I splashed out a while back though and bought a reasonable compressor and an Anest Iwata spray gun. Pretty good items I am told and I have to say I was really impressed with the finish. Totally stoked for a first attempt apart from a couple of rogue sandfly's and a bit of dust.

Next step was to give a good coat of clear which I did soon after these pics. I left the sandfly's and the other two imperfections and came back to them next day. Firstly I sanded the whole diff head with 1200 grit wet and dry and got it ready for more coats of clear, then I sanded out the wee imperfections and touched them up with my airbrush. The silver went on pretty well and matched perfectly, so all good.

Then I broke out the Iwata again and gave it a good few layers of clear. Its amazing no matter how you go about painting the diff head you still seem to miss a bit, there are so many bumps crevices and angles! Not a worry though I'll do that one spot I missed with the airbrush tomorrow, but meantime this is what it came out like with the clear all but finished.

Again this is just straight off the gun so pretty stoked! I did have a bit of drama with the clear going all cloudy though. Quickly shot upstairs and googled that and found it was a temperature thing. Just too cold and the air was damp. The cloudiness is caused by moisture. A quick shot with my hot air gun to warm everything up and the cloudiness disappeared.

I have a couple of runs I'll need to knock back with sandpaper and that one wee touch up, but apart from that its probably good enough to get the final shine using a bit of cutting polish without any need for sanding, especially given it is just a diff head. As my mate Bill says, at least the possums and all other road kill will have a nice view of the car. Very happy indeed.

Actually while I'm talking about the view for road kill.....there is a big square plate that reinforces everything under a jag rear. A lot of guys just don't bother with this but I quite liked this custom one I found and started prepping that for a bit of paint too.

Here it is being masked up. I had the metal polisher shine the flames so I will just paint the background. In this next pic I am trimming the masking tape with a sharp knife.

Heres a close up.

And here it is all primed ready for a first sanding.

Another day dawns and after a couple more coats of primer its time for some colour.

And with the masking tape removed!

Lastly I wanted to add a bit more detail and I have to thank the late Steve Foster here! I first met Steve in October 2009 when I got my white 33 Coupe on the road. Steve had not long gotten his blue one on the road too and below is a pic of that day with the two cars parked side by side.

Steve was incredibly helpful to me with parts and advice for my Coupe and he would become one of the main reasons I joined the Mid West Street Rods club. Steve was a sign writer by trade until he became ill with cancer. That didn't stop him though, he went on to live life to the full, finishing several projects and applying pin striping to many vehicles, not least of which was his own 33 Coupe. You can see the detail on the boot lid in this next pic.

I was fortunate enough to watch Steve do some pin striping on Roger and Ange's 28 Chev sedan and to be able to quiz him for a few pointers and tips along the way. Following that I purchased a pin striping kit and have had a few practice goes. My efforts pale in comparison to Steve's but its fair to say I couldn't have done it without his typically generous attitude in imparting some of his knowledge.

My first real attempt, apart from practices on glass, was this flame work I did on my Grandsons Pedal Car for Christmas last year. I think Jayden was pretty pleased with it!

Anyway back to the diff....I used my wobbly pin striping skills once more to give the bottom plate a bit more definition. It adds a nice touch I think.

Cheers Steve!

Rear Axle - Jag Rear Overhaul - Part 6

2014-04-13T00:21:00.002-07:00

Can you believe it, I am finally getting some shed time again. We have had a really busy life in the past 12 months with major home renovations and repairs. It sapped all our money and our time too. In fact it is still going on but is coming close to an end.

In addition to that I went mad and got involved in road cycling. That takes a bit of time too but I am much better for it, having lost a heap of weight and getting some really good health results too...... actually that was until boxing day! Yes my blood results and reduced need for medicines is all good, but I thought I'd have a crack at mountain biking while on holiday and I came off. In the process I developed another health condition! I smashed my collar bone....no not just a break I smashed it! I am suffering for it still and can't lift a whole lot which again has impacted on shed time. Coming right now though....oh and the internet shopping and parts collection activities have been carrying on so there has been a bit of prep work going on in the background.

Anyway....today I got back onto the Jag rear, namely the diff head. In my last post about the diff I was sanding and painting the head. To date I have spent 45hrs doing that. Fingers have been blistered cracked and bleeding, but it does look pretty good so far.

Before sending the head away with all the new bearings, seals, an appropriate gear set and a limited slip unit, I painted the head in lacquer as this will be a base colour for the silver top coat but it also means the porous primer is protected from the oil and grease during the assembly process.

Its not easy assembling a jag diff and getting all the clearances right so I had to take it in to Diffs R Us to be rebuilt. Even then it cost an arm and a leg as it took him 13hrs to set that up and assemble the hubs. Don't try that at home!

So here it is in all its glory!

It looks pretty good all assembled with the polished brake mounts in place too. The claws out the front will hold the handbrake calipers.

Notice the countersunk screws that hold the shiny mount plate in place. These will soon be a cause for concern!

Once the brake discs go on I won't be able to put a bolt through the brake mounting plate and through the caliper itself, in the next pic you can see the hole is partially obscured here by the edge of the disc. So to overcome that I will need to put the bolts in before putting the disk on. That is a problem too though as I can't slide the calipers on while the disc is in place. Its okay though as the calipers are a 2 piece unit I will be able to split them. Bolt one side on to the mounting plate, then slip the disk on and lastly put the other half of the caliper on.

It means it will be a pain in the backside if I ever need to remove the disc as I will need to split the caliper and bleed the brakes when I reassemble, but that is probably not going to happen very often (if ever) as the back brakes don't do a heap of work and the car wont do too many miles.

Replacing brake pads will still be easy as they come out through a slot in the back.

In this next pic you can see what it will look like once the caliper is mounted. See how it grips around the disc. This is why I can't mount the caliper then put the disc on later. If you look carefully you can see a join down the centre of the caliper where the two halves come apart. That big rectangular opening in the back face is where the brake pads can be removed and replaced.

Here is a side view with the caliper not quite in position so you can see the mount holes.

Actually thats not quite true....its because the caliper wont quite fit yet. The caliper mounting points are about 2 mm too thick so the caliper would be sitting off centre if I plowed ahead now. That would not be ideal!

You can see in this next pic how the mounting lug on the caliper overlaps the mounting plate. Its only 2mm but enough to screw things up. I will get that 2mm machined off, then we will be good to go.

As you saw earlier the mount plate runs pretty close to the brake disc so there is no room to get a bolt head down in there, so I need to use these countersunk bolts. Once I countersink the holes they will sit down almost flush with the mounting plate. Here it is before.....

....and after.....

When I bolt the caliper on I will use spring washers and a locking nut so that there is no chance of this bolt coming loose and fouling the brake disc. It wouldn't be the end of the world if it did....it would just scrape on and probably damage the disc and it would make a horrible noise.

Remember though how I said earlier that I was concerned about the countersunk screws that hold the shiny mount plate in place. While these are countersunk and out of the way, they would be a real problem if one came loose. If you look closely in this next picture you can see the studs that go through the drive flange have a head on them (see the reflection in the shiny brake mount plate) and whats more they are directly in line the countersunk brake mounting plate screws. If one of those countersunk screws came loose it would hit the drive flange stud and stop that axle turning....now imagine what would happen if that occurred at 100kph. One rear wheel locking like that would be catastrophic!

I looked at the other jag diff I have here (now remember these don't have the same clearance issues as they don't use a shiny brake mount plate like I have made for the Wilwood calipers) and I remember now....the original bolts at that point are held in place with locking tabs.

Sooooo, back to the drawing board.

I don't feel I can effectively lock the countersunk screws so I will go for a traditional bolt and use a spring washer under them. I will also drill tiny holes through the heads of the bolts and wire them together. This is overkill but I want to be really certain about this.

Here are some sample pics off the web showing the bolts with their drilled heads and below that a pic of what they look like once wired up.

Another modification will be required though as I don't have room for a bolt head and a spring washer in between the brake mount plate and the flange studs, so I will need to recess them into the brake mount plate. All will be good, just more machining and more bolts required.

Lastly, here is the head all mounted up on a stand ready for me to apply paint.

Next time we should see paint and be able to put the unit back together again!

Suspension - Springs and Shocks

2014-01-20T00:08:00.001-08:00

My new springs have arrived. No less that 6 chrome QA1 springs. 4 for the rear and two for the front. I also have the new shocks for the front too as you can see in the boxes.

For the rear I picked up a matched set of 4 second hand QA1's for a bargain price so while they aren't totally new they will still look pretty good in behind the new springs.

I am putting all the springs in an oil bath tonight as they have a tendency to rust quite quickly as chrome is very porous and the moisture/air gets in under the chrome itself and starts rusting the steel underneath. It may well be an old wives tale but I have heard before that if you bathe them in oil, the oil soaks in and stops the steel from rusting. Certainly worth a try as far as I am concerned. I say this because they aren't cheap at $400 US....add to that another $200 US to ship them, the conversion rate and the GST our local officials add on, and you are soon clicking up a grand! Ahh the price of hot rodding.

Anyway the good news is these bits were all I needed to get the chassis rolling again. As soon as the diff head is reassembled and painted, the chassis will start going back together! That day can't come soon enough and it will be hugely motivating to get me back where I left off almost a year ago!

Wheels - They've arrived

2013-05-26T00:31:00.002-07:00

You may recall a while back I ran some concept pictures of the Coupe with different wheel mock ups so I could try and decide what to buy when the time came.

The two favoured options were as below;

I really liked the modern look of the first style but thought they might be a bit busy....but then again the five spoke wheels in the second pic are a bit cliche. One thing you have to be careful with when building a rod though is not to depart too far from what has already been done as it can look downright odd, so I kept searching and finally came up with an option that I am really happy with.

They are Boze Wheels and are a custom wheel made to order by the team based at Huntington Beach California. I contacted the local agent Dale Clothier from Tradspeed here in NZ and we struck a deal to get tyres, wheels, wheel nuts and concealed valve caps all brought in as one package.

Prior to doing that though I had to strike a deal with Janine that these would be my 50th birthday present.

Allowing time for production shipping and customs clearance, with a bit of a buffer, meant I had to order way back in February......so on Valentines Day, yep thats right, I'm a real romantic....I ordered my wheels!

Two weeks ago they arrived in the country but I wasn't allowed them until the big day came round.

My mate Roger kindly picked them up from Dale and delivered them on my birthday.

I was a bit like a big kid as you can tell from this smile...

No wonder when this is what you see when you open them! They are every bit as good as I had hoped for!

This was the first one I opened. Very nice indeed.

But it was the rear ones that stole the show. Look at the size of these babies! Huge and just gorgeous.

The six spokes aren't as busy as the 10 spoke concept above but are a bit different to the 5 spokes that everyone else has. Also bear in mind there is no brake disc in behind the rear wheels with a Jag rear, so it can look a bit empty if there is too much gap between spokes. This is a nice balance I reckon. It won't be everyones cup of tea but I like em and thats all that matters.

I'll leave you now with a few more pics to enjoy!

That's enough excitement for now....I'm off to bed...

Colin has been distracted.

2013-02-12T01:07:00.002-08:00

Janine here - you might wonder why it has been a while since Colin did a post about any progress on the Coupe. Here I am hijacking/intruding on Colin’s blog to let you know of a little extra project I now have that has completely distracted him.

I have just purchased a 1954 Ford Pop with a 350 Chev, Turbo 350 trans and 9" rear. (Goodness I even have the language and stats down pat now.)

If you want to follow this blog go to this link:

http://grqwla.blogspot.co.nz/

Body - Firewall - Part 2

2013-01-10T01:44:00.004-08:00

Its been a while since I blogged sorry, but while I have been incredibly busy trying to get the car back into a rolling and presentable state so it could go on display on the Koop de Glass stand at Kumeu.....I don't seem to have been able to get anything to come together to a point where it is worth writing about.

A large part of that has been trying to get the Jag rear back together and to get the firewall constructed, but its just not going to happen unfortunately so I have had to let Robin and Lynda Barnes from Koop de Glass down. Sorry guys. It certainly wasn't through lack of trying. I have spent just on 120 hours since we got back from our holiday early October so thats like working an extra 40 hour week each month.

Anyway, I thought in the meantime I'd give you an update on the firewall. You might remember in my last post about the firewall that I need to modify it significantly to go beneath the bonnet/hood line. This is so I can have the bonnet sides run right back to the leading edge of the doors and the top will go right back to the windscreen and hide the parked wipers.

Have a look here for a refresher.

Anyway, last time you saw it it looked like this.

Now its taken a bit of planning in my head for a few reasons.....

It needs to have a recess for the wipers to go down into
It needs to form a mounting point for the wiper motor and the drive units that the wiper arms attach to
It needs to encompass the engine induction (air intake and filter)
It needs to have venting to allow the engine to suck air.

Then on top of that....when all you have got is thin air where a firewall should be.... how do you make a firewall?

I have had thoughts about making a wooden version first then taking a mould off it
I even thought about making a polystyrene one by carving it out of a large block then I'd lay fibreglass over that

None of these seemed to work in my head especially as they need to have the air box cavity incorporated too. There probably is a better and easier way than what I ended up doing but here it is for what its worth.

This is the starting point with the body in place on the chassis and butted up to the engine. This is the view if you stand beside the front wheel looking back to the firewall and bottom of the windscreen.

This is from inside the car looking again at the firewall (back of the engine) and the bottom of the windscreen opening.

This is what you see when you stand in front of the car.

I started by putting in some uprights that I clamped to the chassis. These are where the front face of the firewall will be, right in line with the back of the engine.

Here they are (left and right) again looking from the front of the car.

Now I need to make a firewall front panel. I did this using hardboard, and I stole the shape of the top edge from the old cowl that I cut off. You can see the new firewall is much narrower than the old cowl (remember its all scaled down and narrowed so it sits under the bonnet) you can see here I am just using the curve from each end and tracing that onto my hardboard (supplied courtesy of Roger...thanks Roger).

I cut one side first then used the off cut flipped over to the other side, so I could check I had the same shape both sides.

You can see here the off cut turned over and laid on top of the oposite side.

Here you can see the slight difference.

Once checked and tweaked, I cut the other side. Here is the finished product. Nice & symmetrical.

Now before I could slot that down in behind the engine I needed to cut a large curve in the bottom edge so the panel would fit over the transmission.....and a couple of small curves to clear the exhaust on each side.

Now I forgot to take a photo of this so I stole a later on picture which will give you the idea of the shape.

Ok with those shapes now cut out, the front panel can go down against the back of the engine and line up with the two vertical posts I clamped to the chassis earlier. Now that it is in place, all I needed to do was make some braces that came from the timber framing I already have holding the body together (while I make all these modifications) and screw them to the back of the hardboard panel.

This even took a bit of thinking ahead as once the fibreglass goes over the outside of the hardboard I will only be able to remove it from behind the firewall (inside the car) so its no good screwing the harboard to the frame from the engine bay when this is going to be covered in fibreglass, as I won't be able to get to those screws. That would be a fail!

To overcome that I inserted some blocks and screwed these to the hardboard then the braces were screwed to these from inside the car, where I could access the screws for removal later.

Here it is all in place.

Okay so what about the sides and the top? More templates required. Cardboard this time as there are compound curves (curves that go in all directions) involved and the cardboard bends nicely.

Start first with a rectangle that covers the area.......

.......then after a lot of drawing cutting trimming and standing back to view, here is the drivers side kick panel.

And here is the passengers side one.

Next I needed a panel to come down from the bottom of the screen and in line with the screen i.e. on the same rake/angle as the screen. This is where the wiper motor will be mounted (from the inside) and the spigots that drive the wiper arms will poke through. This needs to be on the same angle as the screen so the wiper geometry will work properly.

Here is another view. You can see how it is in line with the angle of the windscreen.

Lastly (when I say lastly thats just a figure of speech as we have a long way to go yet) here is the panel I will use to form the top of the cowl.

And here is the cowl top cut out and in place.

From this angle we are looking down the windscreen toward the cowl. The gap between the top and the screen is where the wipers will go down into when parked.

Now what about the gaps between the side panels and the front and the gaps between the front and the top.....don't worry you'll see why these are there later.

Oh and here's a look at the mess I made just getting to this point.

With all the templates fitting I now transferred them to a sheet of fibreglass, in fact its a mould that was taken off a late 50's Ford Bonnet I believe. Stan Andrews my fibreglass guy donated it to my cause. Thanks Stan.

It turned out really good as the curve at the back edge of the bonnet fitted the curve I wanted at the top of the two side panels. Perfect!

Here are all the pieces drawn out ready for cutting.

The firewall I cut from a separate flat piece of fibreglass I had on hand.

And here they are cut out and prepped ready for bonding together.

Next step was to tape them all into place ready to fibreglass together. If you look closely in these pics you will see I have put some fibreglass strips in between the bits of tape. Once this sets I can remove the tape and the panels will be bonded together.

Here it is next day with the tape removed. Now remember those gaps....well they are there as I don't want square corners. I want some nice curves.

What I will do now is glass in from behind. This will make a 45 degree join across the corner between the panels. Here you can see the firewall and the side panels are now completely joined. This is looking from inside the car toward the back of the engine.

Now this join as mentioned above is a flat 45 degree angle across between the two panels. From the outside though I want a nice curve. Thats where this magic stuff comes into play. Its called expanded foam. You spray it on and it blows up quicker than a bride does as soon as that wedding ring goes on.

Here it is from the outside. Its basically like polystyrene and cuts easily with a sharp knife and sands nicely as well, so I will be able to make a nice curve here. Once formed I will then start stacking my layers of fibreglass over the top of the foam and the very thin sheets of fibreglass that are basically now just going to be a shape holder for the layers I am adding. These top layers won't have joins (except where they are bonded back to the original body) so they will be quite strong and will form the final outer layer and will be thick enough to create a strong cowl and firewall.

Thats all for now. I will give another update once I have done more on it and that will include the construction of the internal airbox for the engine induction. Watch this space.

Rear Axle - Jag Rear Overhaul - Part 5

2012-11-17T23:47:00.000-08:00

Man what a cool day I just had....actually its been a cool few days as I have been picking up a few parts for the Jag Rear as they are finished at chrome, HPC and the painters. So here's a bit of an update.

Firstly remember these Jag rear tie bars that Bill Dobbin helped me with by drawing them up in CAD so they could be laser cut?

Well they've been chromed now. Nice!

Remember this hub drive flange?

Its been Ceramic coated by HPC now.

Along with a few washers and spacers so they won't rust.

They also coated the diff head drive flanges pictured in the bottom right of this next pic.

They now look like this.

I had the team at HPC coat the centres of the brake discs too.

So now I have a shed full of blingy bits all coming together.

While all this parts finishing has been going on I have also taken the diff head away to be bead blasted and cleaned in a hot tank before going to the painters for a coating of feather fill. Its a really thick and hard filler that fills up imperfections before painting. This is what the diff head looked like before it went away.

And here it is with the feather fill on it.

You can see in this next pic the orange peel finish after the feather fill has been applied over the rough cast surface.

With a bit of sanding though it comes up nice and smooth like this.

I have spent an hour on it this afternoon and I reckon at least another 5 to go. Then I will add a bit of filler to the real low spots, sand it some more, then return it to the painters for another coat of feather fill to cover any spots where I have gone through the current coat to bare metal.

Once thats done, I will sand it again before they then protect it with a coat of white paint. That will seal it so it is no longer porous and at that point it can go back to Bill for reassembly of all the diff head internals. The white paint will mean that any oil or grease that gets on it won't be a problem and it won't matter if Bill accidentally knocks or scratches it as it can easily be touched up.

This is important as when setting up a diff there are a lot of fine tolerances that need to be set so that the diff runs smoothly and doesn't flog out the bearings or the gears but also so that it isn't noisey. To achieve this shims (very thin washers) are put in and measurements taken to check tolerances or what is sometimes referred to as pre-load. To get it right it can take several goes which means unassembling and reassembling several times. Obviously you don't want the finished painted surface getting damaged so thats why they use a cheap coat of white paint.

Once its all assembled it will go back to the painters one last time for its final coat of paint. I'm not gonna tell you what colour just yet, you'll have to wait and see!

Now last and but no means least I got quite a buzz today when I went and saw my mate Pete Clothier. He had some springs he was selling that I needed for my build, so he kindly did a deal on them for me. Thanks Pete, very much appreciated. Here's what they look like mounted on the shock absorbers. Beautiful!

But that wasn't the buzz.....the thrill of the day was going for a ride up the road in his Coupe that he is nearing completion on. This body came out of the same mould as mine. Pete has done a fantastic job getting this car to this point and he does it all himself. Its an absolute credit to him. Going for a ride in it brought back a few memories of my last coupe and has spurred me on even more. I really miss not having a car that's on the road!

Anyway feast your eye's on this. It is a real cool build.

Things I've learnt while building my Hot Rod

2012-11-05T23:41:00.000-08:00

Some of these things are personal experience and others are things I have learned while observing others. All good lessons in life!

If you think it could happen, it probably will. Learnt while holding a part between my legs while using a wire brush on an electric drill. I thought.....ooohhh that could catch on my shorts then I might end up wire brushing my leg.....nah should be all right. Guess what.....I wire brushed my leg.

If you think it could happen, it probably will. Learnt while holding a piece of steel down with my foot while I ground it with an angle grinder. I was only wearing my jandals at the time and thought that grinder could do a bit of damage if I slipped.....nah should be right I'll hold it real tight.....Guess what.....I have a nice chunk out of the side of my jandal and a scar on my foot.

If you think it could happen, it probably will. Learnt while lying on my back under the car tightening a bolt above me. I thought.....ooohhh that spanner would hurt if I slipped and dropped it on my head.....nah should be all right. Guess what.....I got a black eye.

Fibreglass resin doesn't look good on your wedding band.

Fibreglass resin sticks real well to your wedding band.

Wives get mad at husbands who get Fibreglass resin on their wedding band.

Brake parts cleaner gets Fibreglass resin off wedding bands.

Brake parts cleaner stings like a bastard if you get some on the cut on your hand.

Brake parts cleaner in a cut on your hand is nowhere near as bad as when your wife found out you had Fibreglass resin on your wedding band.

You feel like a dick when you come back to your car at a gas station after paying for the gas and you climb into the right hand side of the car and then remember its left hand drive. You feel like even more of a dick when the guy in the next lane says "not your car is it mate"

Never leave your car without the handbrake firmly on even if you believe you have it in Park.

Open car doors and Garage door openings don't agree with one another.

If there is just one rock in your garden and your car is reversing toward that garden without a driver....it will find the rock.

The time you think it will take to build your hotrod should be multiplied by 'X' to the power of 3. The estimated cost of building your hotrod should be multiplied by a similar factor.

You shouldn't wait to get motivated to go in the shed. You should go in the shed to get motivated.

No matter what you build someone won't like it.

Opinions are like bums. Everybody has one.

Trademe is a great source of parts. Make good use of their automated e-mails to send you a list of items to look through everyday related to a key word. This keeps you aware of stuff that is being listed and means you get an early heads up. This is particularly important if the item has a Buy Now.

In hot rodding you make good mates with people when you least expect it.

Good mates are easiest to find when you aren't looking for them.

Just giving people the time of day and having a good chat with them brings you more reward than ignoring people because you are too busy trying to reap reward by working at something.

Spending 10 more minutes pondering your hot rod build and thinking things through will save you hours of wasted effort.

When your wife says ooh yes that is interesting. She is not at all interested.

By taking the time to do even the smallest things slowly and carefully on your hot rod, it will add patience to your approach and the end result will show the extra care you took. For example don't tear that electrical tape , take the time to cut it with scissors.

Chrome rusts. You must keep it protected with polish.
If you don't polish the chrome..... it has a tendency to fall off.

When checking stuff out on Trade Me use the link at the bottom of each listing "More Stuff You May Like" as that takes you to other similar items that might not have found otherwise.

Other people don't work to your time frames.
Never say "oh no hurry mate, just fit it in when you can"

There is more wiring in a car heater/air conditioning unit that there is on the Starship Enterprise.

You can work out any wiring with a lot of patience and a circuit tester. It all comes down to electrons flowing from the positive terminal to the negative terminal.

There is much more reward in doing something on your hot rod yourself than there is in paying someone.

When embarking on something you have never done before, observing and listening to others that have done it is valuable but the real learning is in the doing.

If you are not patient and tenacious don't build a hot rod.

Always search expired listings on Trade Me. This gives you a good idea as to what similar items sell for. It is also a great source for finding an item that you want but is not listed at present. You can often ask the seller to relist the item, then buy it.

There is always someone who can do a nicer job than you can. Accept it and just do the best you can.

If you are looking at building a hot rod start a blog. It helps to keep you motivated when you can look back at all the things you have done so far. Its great keeping friends in the loop with where you are up to. Others offer ideas and encouragement. And by far the best bit is that it is great for keeping a record of the build for your kids and grandkids to read.

If you build a hot rod and join a club you won't suffer from loneliness.

Its more fun building a hot rod than driving one.

By doing one thing on your hot rod every day you will make good progress. It might be researching something, pondering an idea, buying a part or making something. All these things will inevitably get you there. Watching TV won't.

Three drops of hardener per tablespoon of Polyester Resin for Fibregalss. If you want it to harden more quickly or in lower temperatures add an extra drop per tablespoon. If you don't want it to harden at all don't add any hardener. Your shed will stink like fibreglass for weeks and you'll have to scrape off the fibreglass and resin that hasn't set so you can start over. The scraped off fibreglass looks like candy floss. The scraped off fibreglass doesn't taste candy floss.

If you want to see what you will look like in ten years time don't wear a hat when sanding fibreglass and your hair will go grey.

Never do a brown eye while standing on the back of a moving Ford Bonus while cruising at the Beach Hop. When the brakes are applied your butt will continue to travel at the original speed of the truck and go through the back windscreen of the cab. Broken glass and bums are not good friends. Novus....show us your crack!

If you drop your cellphone down a portaloo while at a hot rod event you shouldn't retrieve it as your hand goes blue and it grosses your friends out.

If you retrieve your cellphone from a portaloo and it still works try and remember not to leave the phone in your pants pocket 3 weeks later when they are being washed as this will stuff your phone. Assumption is then that clean water is more harmful to cellphones than raw sewerage.

If while you are at a hot rod event and someone comes to your group trying to sell you something, you should revert to your basic instincts like animals in the wild. You should move away slowly and allow the weakest of the herd to be captured by the salesman so that the rest of you can be spared. Thats right, you bail on your mate. Then you go and watch from afar and giggle like Hyena's at your friends misfortune.

Mates love taking the piss, like the time when a smart arse holding a nut under the car while you tighten the bolt from above, looks up and announces he thinks he can see the weight you thought you had lost.

There are blokes who can clear a six car garage with one fart.

Some bolts are left hand threads. If you try and undo them like a right hand thread bolt you actually tighten it and you will eventually break them or strip them. Either way you are buggered.

Banana skins in the diff do quiten it down but can only ever be a temporary fix. There is no replacement for rebuilding things properly.

Not everyone who charges for their work knows what they are doing.

Not everyone who offers free advice knows what they are doing.

You can drive your hot rod all day well below the speed limit but rest assured that one time when you roar away at the lights there will be a mufty cop watching you.

When you drive a hot rod every man with a big Audi or BMW X5 and a very small pecker, has to show you how fast his car is, by passing you at the earliest opportunity.

When you make friends with other hot rodders, not everything you do will be hot rod related. You will help people shift house, remove spa pools, dismantle buildings, go fishing, have BBQ's and hear about the arguments they just had with their wife.

Some swapmeets are stink. But even the worst swapmeet is better than just lying in bed doing nothing.

People trying to sell stuff at swapmeets must like taking all their crap for a ride on the trailer just so they can cart it all home again.

Cheap Hot Rod parts end up costing you as much as the better quality more expensive one. Its just that you learn a lot more if you buy a cheap part, like how long it takes for a tow truck to arrive at Waitakaruru on a Sunday afternoon.

When torquing down bolts put oil on the threads so you get a more accurate torque reading.

When driving a hot rod you have to be prepared to be friendly as you will be waved to by all sorts of people who are excited to see your car. Some will give a simple wave while others will give you strange salutes like "Westside" or "Yo Homey" while others will hang out their windows with their camera like self appointed paparazzi.

Lifting the body off the chassis of your hot rod is something that happens regularly throughout a hot rod build. Its a good excuse to have your mates round to give you a hand and to have a beer as you all stand around marveling at progress to date.

POR 15 paint is almost as permanent as a tattoo.

POR 15 paint can be removed only by mechanical means when it is dry.

You should not use a disc grinder to try and remove POR 15 paint from yourself as it hurts like a bastard.

There is nothing better than seeing the face on a kid when he goes for his first ride in your hot rod.

You can't rely on memory. Always make to do lists when building a hot rod.

Its a great feeling when your hot rod is featured in a magazine.

Looking at many other hot rods for ideas and clues on how they went about a task can save you lots of time when you embark on the job yourself.

Picking a paint colour is the hardest part of a hot rod build.

If something should happen to your hot rod, remind yourself it is only a car.

If you are having the slightest hint of a charging problem get it sorted. You can rest assured when the damn thing won't start it will be the one time you really need it to start....like when you are holding up every other vehicle who is meant to be filing out of the paddock to join the procession down the main street for the Beach Hop parade!

If you are having the slightest hint of a charging problem get it sorted. You can rest assured when the damn thing won't start it will be the one time you really need it to start....like when you have a mates coffin on the back of your hot rod truck and you are meant to be taking him for his last ride down to the crematorium.

Just cause your passenger mate went into the shop while you pumped the gas, never assume he paid for the petrol while he was in there. It is just as likely that all he did was go to the bathroom. You won't find this out however until you are nearing the next town and there is a police road block.

If a friend in your group doesn't appear to be following you any longer, don't assume he has broken down and don't rush back to see if he is okay. You might just find that his delay was because he had been detained by an officer of the law for speeding......oh and guess what.....in your haste to get back to help your trouble stricken friend.......you get pinged for speeding too!

When you are soldering and have a hot soldering iron, be careful where you put it, they have a tendency to melt anything that gets in their way, including your hands. I have found that improvising with a hook to hang it off the end of the bench is a good idea. Don't forget though (as I did) when you go to work at the end of the bench. Mmmm I can smell sausages!

All wires in a car come prepacked with smoke in them. If you get the connections wrong the wires automatically let the smoke out to tell you, you have it wrong.

When you are really thirsty and take a good gulp of "Lift"lemon drink....first make sure it is "Lift" and not a toxic caustic cleaning solution that instantly dissolves all the lining in your throat.

Rear Axle - Jag Rear Overhaul - Part 4

2012-10-27T23:11:00.000-07:00

Okay more progress here, though not as fast as some might expect. In fact I have had a couple of people say they were a bit disappointed when they saw my last post about the Jag Rear go up as they thought that would be it reconditioned, reassembled and installed in the chassis.

Sorry guys its not quite that easy.

Actually working on this Jag rear its the first time I have really understood the phrase that something has been "over engineered". I have heard that said about a Jag rear before and I certainly know why now. They are way more complicated than they need to be and there are way more components than you'd ever see on a Japanese car. The good bit though is it is all serviceable!

You see this next picture is what all the components look like when taken apart.....and this is just for one side. This is repeated for the other side of the car. Double click on the image to have a closer look.

I have highlighted a few of the parts.....firstly the yellow part is the axle and universals I showed you in the recent blog. This gives you an idea of how much more there is too this back axle.

The orange parts I don't have. Instead of this spindle set up with one big wing nut (called a knock off) I will have a more common set up for attaching the wheels like any other road car where there will be 5 wheel nuts. The next picture shows the drive flange with its 5 studs for the wheel nuts.

Now back to the diagram.....The pink highlighted parts are as follows.....

1. These are just dust covers and detract from the overall look and won't be used.

2. This is what is known as the cage and it basically is a frame that the whole unit bolts into. I won't be using this either as they are bulky and ugly. Instead the diff will bolt straight up to the chassis (first picture below) and the two halves of the rear axle assembly will be tied together by the two tie bars in the second picture below.

3. The third part highlighted pink is a bottom plate that ties everything together underneath. This will be replaced by a new fancier one.

4. Last but not least the 4th part highlighted pink is a control arm. These ugly pressed steel ones will be replaced by a cleaner looking chromed control arm.

As for the rest of the bits though.....and there are about 100 of them......I needed to clean them and inspect them and decide what needs to be replaced. There are a few bits too that I will get chromed or HPC'd to protect them. If I don't they may rust. Some of the bits are barely visible but if I don't protect them they will still deteriorate and drop rust stained water if they get wet etc.

This is the bucket of bits I need to attend to.

And here we are all set to go with a basin, parts cleaning brush, a good supply of rags and Kerosene for breaking down the grease and grime.

So after about two hours of soaking, scrubbing and wiping, here are all the bits laid out.

Now I am all set to make runs to the Jag dealer to replace a few parts, HPC to get a few parts ceramic coated, the electroplater to get some parts chromed and I'll also need to source a few new bearings. That should keep me busy all week.

Now on top of that.....this next drawing shows an exploded view of the Jag diff head. My Diff head has gone across to Bill Dobbin who is going to rebuild the diff head for me. First he'll pull it apart like this diagram so I can get replacement bearings and of course have the diff head all painted up before it goes back together.

You'll se I have highlighted a part orange here too. This is the back cover of the diff head and I will be upgrading that to a more fancy looking alloy one. Thats shown in the next picture but is missing the back cover as it is getting some work done on it. I'll show you more of that later.

So there you go....still plenty to do. Sorry but it won't be getting assembled for a wee while yet, but keep watching!

Metals that react

2012-10-24T01:56:00.001-07:00

You may all have seen a comment posted by a mate Adam Johnson against my last blog on the Rear axle universals.

I am looking at making aluminium caps to cover up the ugly circlips on the universals and Adam was concerned that the metals might react and give cause to ugly corrosion. I have seen this myself where Aluminium forms a nasty white powdery substance when it is in contact with other metals. I have to admit Adams comment did get me thinking, so I made a point of finding out a bit more about it.

After reading a fair bit of material I think it goes something like this……the higher the activity of the metal (faster oxidising) the more the metal will take on an increased rate of corrosion when in contact with a lower activity one. So in other words a faster rusting metal will rust even quicker if it’s put with a slower rusting material.

So what is the order of activity…..faster rusting to slower rusting?

· Francium

· Caesium

· Rubidium

· Potassium

· Sodium

· Lithium

· Strontium

· Calcium

· Magnesium

· Aluminium

· Manganese

· Mild Steel

· Zinc

· Chromium

· Iron

· Cadmium

· Cobalt

· Nickel

· Tin

· Lead

· Copper

· Silver

· Mercury

· Gold

· Platinum

But I hear you say Aluminium is good in the elements and it doesn’t rust, so why is it toward the top of the list? Actually Aluminium corrodes very quickly, in fact as soon as it makes contact with air, but the main reason it isn’t ordinarily destroyed very quickly is a quirk of its oxidation product, aluminium oxide (aluminium rust) adheres with extraordinary tenacity to pure aluminium, so if nothing else is present, an aluminium object will last nearly forever, protected by its own oxide.

In contact with other metals though, aluminium can be destroyed quickly as Adam has witnessed in the past. This will be sped up if there is an acid anywhere nearby like sea water or maybe even rain water that has contaminants.

Apparently in the old days steel ships used to sink at sea as the sea water used to speed up the reaction between the iron rivets and the steel hulls and would literally dissolve the rivets. To overcome this they strapped a block of zinc on the hull which becomes a sacrificial anode. A sacrificial anode is a block of metal that is more reactive than the metal it is protecting. The more reactive a metal is the easier it gives away electrons. This reactive block of metal on ships acts as a source of electrons for the iron. When oxygen takes electrons from the iron during the process of rusting, iron atoms simply take electrons from the reactive metal in this case zinc, so the block of zinc corrodes and the ship and its rivets don’t.

Similarly you might think Chromium is not far down the list either so why doesn't it rust or corrode? Look again at the list though, mild steel which chrome is applied to is toward the more active end of the list, so what happens is the mild steel actually donates its electrons to the chrome. When ever you see a rusty bumper on a car its not the chrome that has corroded its the mild steel underneath.

So yes this does mean the aluminium caps I propose making for my axles could in fact go white and powdery, as they will corrode more quickly than the chrome and the mild steel they are attached to. But....is this a bad thing? Actually no and for two reasons…..its a hot rod and polishing will be regular so should protect things to a great extent but also this faster corroding aluminium will act as a sacrificial anode to the chrome and mild steel axles, so in effect, as I see it, it will stop the chrome rusting.

Now I can afford to replace a few aluminium caps if they start to deteriorate (or maybe even just repolish them), one things for sure though, that’s a whole lot cheaper than re-chroming the rear end.

Thanks Adam for raising the point it made me look into it and I know more now that I did this time yesterday! I guess only time will tell now as to whether or not I am correct in my assumptions. It must be true though I read it on the internet!

Rear Axle - Jag Rear Overhaul - Part 3

2012-10-22T02:13:00.001-07:00

Hi all, I've been away on a long holiday in Europe so there hasn't been any activity for a while, but I guess you will have noticed that.

Anyway I'm back into it now with renewed enthusiasm and the focus is on getting the chassis rolling again as I have been asked to put the project on display at Kumeu January next year. This will be a lot easier to achieve if the whole thing is on wheels, which means finishing off the Jag rear.

You will recall I had many of the components chrome plated (so it should be a real feature of the car when done, but all that bling would be a complete waste of money if the mechanicals weren't rebuilt as well, now its time to start the rebuild/reassembly.

First up I purchased 4 universals via Peter Farrant at Auckland Balance and then had him install these. I have prepared a short video so you can see the part I am talking about, how it works and what is involved.

Now that is very simplified. The reality was quite involved. Its not easy getting press fit parts like this to come apart (thanks to Bill Dobbin for his help with that before I got all the chroming done) and a lot of patience is required when reassembling too. This was made all the more difficult by the fact that the holes where the universals get pressed into had some chrome in them. This is a problem for two reasons, firstly the tolerances are so tight that a layer of chrome means things just don't fit. Secondly chrome peels once its damaged so if the cups being pressed in broke away a piece of the chrome, that tear would just keep running and basically ruin the chrome plated finish.

To overcome this it was necessary to have the holes carefully machined to remove the excess chrome first. Then it was possible for Pete to put all the bits together. The machinist and Pete both did a fantastic job. Here is the final result. Very happy!

The next step will be to have some alloy caps machined to cover the ends of the bearing cups and the circlips. This will dress the axles up even more. Watch for an upcoming blog on this.

Oh well I should go now....potentially a big day tomorrow with the certifier coming for the first inspection and to get the build onto the certification register. I'll let you know how that all went in my next blog.

Memory Accessories - Wiring

2012-08-22T21:56:00.000-07:00

You will recall in my last post that I had discovered the steering column I have is the full memory item that can remember where a driver had it positioned in terms of height (tilt) and in terms of closeness to the driver (tele) and that once I found this out I went on a hunt to get the entire memory setup that went along with this.

This full memory setup also includes the outside wing mirrors, the seatbelt shoulder height adjustment and the drivers seat position (up/down, forward/back, recline and headrest height).

Well after spending 44 hours (the equivalent of a working week and a Saturday morning) last night was it…..the moment of truth.....I finished hooking up wires and decided to go live…….I put fuses on everything and made sure the power pack was within reach so I could kill the power if required. I also had the fire extinguisher at the ready……just in case……..so how did it go?

No worries at all, apart from the drivers seatbelt adjuster which stops and starts and won’t work on memory. It may just need a clean I think and is likely to be more of a mechanical issue than an electrical one I think. Also the drivers headrest is not travelling up and down freely. Again this will be mechanical so will be fairly easy to sort out.

So all in all I am stoked with the outcome.

Here's a couple of video's you can watch to see it all going.

General - Parts Collection - Again!

2012-07-29T02:39:00.002-07:00

I have been doing nothing but wiring lately. Clocking up a fair few hours comparing actual wires with diagrams (that have been kindly supplied by Phil Bradshaw) and painstakingly labeling them all so that when the car starts coming together it is a bit like paint by numbers or join the dots.....well at least thats the theory.

Here's a pic of me trying to sort out the steering column.

It was while doing this and trying to reconcile the wiring for the tilt and telescope function, that I realised the column was the full fruit option. It has position sensors that work by putting out a signal that is read by the steering column computer. This enables a particular position to be memorised and of course this means you can have a couple of settings for different drivers.

I hadn't been that bothered that I didn't have memory seats but now that I have a memory steering column I decided to learn a bit more about it. It turns out that these Lexus had memory drivers seat and memory side mirrors and memory seat belt shoulder positions as well as the memory steering column.

So what all this means is you can adjust your seating position, the sterring wheel position, the side mirrors for your visibility and also the top mount of the seat belts so that they are comfortable and don't rub on your neck etc. You can then have the car memorise this so that if someone else drives the car and changes everything about, you can go back to your own personal preferred settings, without all the hassle of trying to remember how it was and playing around for ages trying to get it just right again.

Now I have to say I was at a point where I kinda couldn't be bothered having to rework the seats and maybe give up on the work I had done with the mirrors. And adjustable shoulder seat belt mounts weren't a big deal really, so why would I go to all the hassle........but this kinda thing eats away at me and I just know if I don't do this now it will be something I wish I had done and that I would regret later on......so the search began for a donor car!

As luck would have it I came across a Lexus LS400 that was about the same years as the donor car that my engine came from, so plans were made to go on a 2 1/2hr drive to Cambridge to see the car and meet Simon, its owner, to see if we could strike a deal for some parts if they were at all suitable.

Well it turned out to be a great find. It had all of the right goodies and a few more that I didn't even know about like mirrors that vibrate to shake the water off them! No I am not kidding!

For those of you that have been reading my blogs for a while you will know I think that the BMW seats I had were a big deal to me as they had electric headrests.....guess what.....this car has them too......only better as they have memory sensors too so they can be set to the drivers preference as well. Yeah okay I am a bit excited now!

Anyway, Simon turned out to be a great guy and gave Roger and I a free reign to grab what we wanted. Whats more the car was in the shed and it was a crap day, so we weren't going to have to fight the weather to get this done. Everything that could go right was going right!

Here is a pic of the donor car. Engine is long gone and so are most of the accessory bits under the bonnet. The dash is gone too but all the auto and memory stuff was in tact.

This is it from the side. It was hard working on it as the suspension had been raided and this meant the car was about 2 inches off the ground and I am getting far too old for groveling around on a concrete garage floor for a whole day. Man am I sore as I write this. It was what it was though and I am immensely grateful for the fact that what I wanted was there and available.

Here's Roger helping me out. He is a bit sore now too and is going back to work tomorrow for a rest he reckons. It took us 6 hours to raid everything so thats 12 hours between us. She's a pretty big job!

This is Simon the owner of the car. A real good bugger! Thanks Simon.

This is the total collection of the bits we got.

Did you see what was there? Yeah that big plastic box there in the foreground.....yes that's right it is another aircon unit. I know, I know....I spent hours on that Celica one, why the hell would I want another one?

Well it isn't any better than the Celica one......but it does mean I have a matching set now though. The aircon core matches the compressor and the wiring matches the looms and diagrams I have. I am hoping this means it will be a lot easier to work out than the Celica one and in the long run I think having everything compatible will be a better proposition.

Whats more the BMW seats and the Celica aircon will be a great start for the next hotrod project which will be a car for Janine, my wife.

Anyway that about sums up how to waste a Sunday.

Thanks Roger, I couldn't have done it without you.

Steering Column - Wiring

2012-07-03T02:58:00.001-07:00

Its been a bit cold lately and the prospect of going outside in the weekend to muck around with more fibreglass wasn't an attractive one......yeah okay I'll admit it, I am a bit sick of doing the fibreglass......but hey the prospect of sitting on the carpet by the heater was a bit of a no brainer.

No brainer decision yeah, but the job at hand wasn't. I have burnt a few brain cells on wiring as you will recall from my blogs about the wiring for the aircon, and I am about to burn some more with the steering column.

The column is out of a Lexus and I have chosen it as it has a few of the high tech options I wanted. It has an electric telescoping action (you can bring the steering wheel closer to you when you are sitting in the car) and it has electronic tilt (you can raise or lower the height of the steering wheel when you are sitting in the car). In addition to that it has tilt away, which means when you turn the car off the steering wheel tilts up and out of the way to make it easier to get in and out of the car. Then when you turn the key back on the steering wheel goes back to where you had it. Pretty cool huh?

Another feature is that it has an auto position on the headlight stalk so that I can have a light sensing unit that will automatically activate the headlight circuit when it gets dark.

Oh and another thing it has the cruise control stalk as I will be hooking up the cruise control too.

All in all there are 36 wires I need to work with.

Here is a pic of the column. It is sitting on its end flat on the steering wheel.

This is another view now laying roughly as it would in the car.

Here you can see a close up of the Ignition key and mechanism. This will all go as it sticks out too much for one, but also I intend to run a push button start.

This is a small electric motor that drives the in and out telescoping motion.

This is the other motor that drives the up and down tilt motion. This tilt function has a position sensor that notes the position of the column before you turn the key off. This is stored in a small computer (yes there is a computer for the steering column) so that it can restore the column back to the same position once the ignition is turned on again.

This next pic shows the cruise control stalk. This is mounted to the steering wheel.....oh and in case you were getting concerned, no I won't be keeping this steering wheel, I have a billet aluminium one I will be using with a half leather wrap. I'll show you that another day, but rest assured it won't be this Toyota/Lexus one.

Here is another view from what would be the driving position. You can see the wiper and indicator/headlight stalks.

Now to help sort out the wiring Phil has given me a number of diagrams from which to try and sort out the circuitry.

As I have found before though, these don't seem to line up with what I have but they share some generic principals. The problem is these are way beyond my wiring experience. This is mostly because the Japs do things so much differently to the old style wiring I was brought up with. It isn't impossible to get your head around but for me at least I need someone to go through it with me so that I can get the gist of what is going on. Its just not so logical.....well at least not until I have it explained to me.

On this note I am forever thankful to Phil Bradshaw who is very knowledgeable about this and also because he has prepped all my engine wiring and incorporated a lot of the ancillary circuitry like lights, indicators etc using Toyota principals. So of course it makes sense to integrate into that which has already been created.

I did have a crack at trying to come up with a wiring diagram for the headlights much to Phils disgust. He has promised to come and smack me around the head and reset my wiring skills to Japanese when he is next in Auckland.

To give you an idea how different it is......my experience is this....

A wire goes from the battery to the light switch. When the switch is in the on position it makes a circuit that allows the power to go down another wire to the light bulb. The bulb is earthed to the chassis as is the battery and thus a complete circuit is made and your light goes.

Now this is the Japanese version of the same thing as provided by Phil.

12 volts from battery goes thru white wires to separate 10 amp fuses for left and right headlights. This is so if one fuse blows you still have the other headlight.

Wire from fuses changes to B and L respectively.

These wires end up in the headlight looms and need to be connected to the common terminal on each headlight bulb. Therefore the headlights always have power to them.

The headlights are turned on depending on what is earthed from the bulb. Dip beam is a white wire (for both left and right) and high beam is a red wire (again for both).

These red and white wires both go to the dip/main change over relay, with the dip wire (white) going to the normally closed terminal, the red wire to the normally open. Thus the default position is low beam.

When the dip switch (separate twin core wire with black over sheath) red wire (connected to your dip/main switch RL1 wire) is switched to ground it trips the relay to switch from low beam to high beam.

The main beam indicator lamp should also light up.

But - Note the lights won’t actually go as yet because the headlight relay(and hence the light bulbs) isn’t connected to ground.

Back to the hi/lo beam relay – the output of that relay is a wire that runs into the normally open terminal of the headlight relay.

This relay is closed when the Green ‘headlight relay trigger to ground’ is connected to the R wire in your headlight switch.

The park lights are also fed via a fuse and relay, with the relay triggered when the Brown ‘park light relay trigger to ground’ wire is connected to the GW park light wire on your light switch.

You won’t have headlights unless the park lights are turned on.

Or in other words

バッテリーから12ボルトは、左右のヘッドライトに10アンペアのヒューズを分離するためにスルー白い線を行く。これは、まだ他のヘッドライトを持つようであれば1ヒューズが切れます。

ヒューズの変更からBとLにそれぞれ配線してください。

これらのワイヤはヘッドライトの織機で終わると、各ヘッドライトの電球の共通端子に接続する必要があります。したがって、ヘッドライトは常に彼らに力を持っています。

ヘッドライトは電球から接地されているものに応じてオンになっています。ディップビームは白い線（左と右の両方）とハイビームでは赤線（再度の両方）です。

これらの赤と白の線が両方のディップ線（白）が正常に閉じられた端末は、通常、オープンに赤線に行くと、リレー上のディップ/主な変更点に移動します。したがって、デフォルトの位置はロービームです。

ディップスイッチ（シース上に黒を持つ別のツインコア線）赤線は（あなたのディップ/私は疑うメインスイッチRL1線に接続されている）、それが旅行のハイビームをロービームに切り替えるためのリレーをグランドに切り替えられたとき。

いくつかのマジックは私の配線内で発生し、メインビームのインジケータランプも点灯します。

しかし - ヘッドライトリレー（したがって、電球）をグランドに接続されていないため、ライトは実際にはまだ行くことはありません注意してください。

バックHI / LOビームリレー - そのリレーの出力は、ヘッドライトリレーのノーマルオープン端子に実行線です。

グリーン地面にヘッドライトリレーのトリガーが"あなたのヘッドライトスイッチでR線に接続されている場合、このリレーは閉じられます。

公園のライトは、ワイヤブラウン"地面に公園のライトリレーのトリガ'はあなたの光スイッチでGW公園光の線に接続されているときにトリガリレーと、ヒューズ、リレーを介して供給されます。

私はそれを正しく配線している場合は、公園のライトがオンになっていない限り、あなたはヘッドライトを持っていません。

Believe it or not Phils description does make sense to me now that I have traced the wires on the column and thought it through in conjunction with his notes, so thanks immensely Phil.

On that note I have committed to Phil to never again try and create a wiring schematic but that instead I will identify which wires are activated by different switch positions and then incorporate that with his explanation as to how that will fit with the wiring he has already prepared for me. One good thing Phil at least its all Toyota so far!!!

Anyway back to my part in all this. I have a circuit tester that is battery powered and is sometimes referred to as a multimeter. It has many uses which I won't go into here, but one of its functions allows it to be switched to give an audible tone when you have a circuit.

So what i can do is touch the black terminal (The black handle with the metal spike coming out of it) to a wire and put the headlight switch to the park light position for example. Then I use the other red terminal from the tester to touch other wires coming from the headlight switch. Once I find a wire that makes a circuit the meter beeps. Thats one circuit found.

You really need more than one pair of hands to be able to hold the two terminals and operate the switches at the same time. The cat is clearly interested. I wonder if I can get him to hold the terminals while I operate the switch.......

Samson.....Saaaamsoooon.....here pussy, pussy!