CLANK X: The light at the end of the tunnel
Friends,
Yesterday I put together a longish post on my latest efforts in repairing
the clankster, all of two or three pages in length. Satisfied with my efforts,
I hit the "send" button, only to be greeted by a "Quickmail Server out of disk
space" message. The bad part is, that my post was EATEN BY THE SYSTEM.
******* ARGHH!!!! **********
So here goes again....
Got the bottom end of the motor all together last week. Installed the
crank, plastigaged the bearings and checked the end float. All OK! Got the
pistons, rods, and cylinder liners in from the machine shop. Put the liners in
to check them out. Urgh, too much protrusion. Spec is .003 to .0055, mine
were more like .008. So I spent all Saturday afternoon sanding down the tops
of the liners. Too much protrusion and you crack the head, not enough and it
leaks. Or so my britcar mechanic friend says.
Having sanded the liners, got the liners, pistons, and rods installed
Saturday night. Then a small garage catastrophe: I accidently kicked over the
can of carburetor cleaner! Had to spend an hour cleaning up, ruined a good
pair of gloves, and the garage stinks to high heaven. :-(
Got out bright and early Sunday morning at 6:30. Reinstalled the oil pump
and oil pan. Installed the crankcase breather tube. Still couldn't put the
engine together: no head. Machine shop's waiting on intake valves.
Proceeded to finish up the wiring harness. Had previously installed most of
it, except for the hard part: the dashboard insert. Wired up the insert: all
stock except for a new cable going from the insert to the speedo, tach, &
heater. This cable I dressed well up out of the way. It should make life
easier when I reinstall the dash insert. Removing it had been a pain, because
of individual wires sailing through midair between the insert and the rest of
the dash.
One interesting electrical item was the heater control rheostat. This I
fully expected to be fried, since it only worked at one spot in its travel.
Pretty common for rheostats, actually. But when I took it apart, it turned out
to be a high-quality ceramic unit, quite resistant to burnout. In fact, the
only problem with it was dirt. I cleaned it out with water and compressed air,
and then hit it with "TV Tuner Cleaner". Now it works fine.
Future plans: ADD MORE FUSES. Most of this wiring harness is UNFUSED.
These guys seemed to be just depending on the kindness of fate to avoid having
their wire harnesses burn up. There's space under the hood for one or two more
original-type fuse blocks. Each block holds two fuses; Should be possible to
get much better protection with four more fuses.... Comments?
My friend Denis tells a good story about TR3 fuses. Seems that they used to
routinely fry the wiring harnesses in shipment. They would bump the car into
the end of its stall, breaking the brake lights, and shorting out the harness
at that point. Then someone would get in the car, and put his foot on the
brake. Denis says: "I've changed hundreds of those harnesses".
Sunday afternoon: Nothing more to be done with the engine: let's proceed
with our quickie paint job. Want a red car, not a white one. Got the new TR2
right front fender out of the junk. This had been acquired at an auction some
years previous, bodyworked and put in storage.
Painted the fender glossy red, inside and out, and left it to dry. Got to
work on the bonnet. This had problems. There was lots of cracking and
chipping paint with rust peeping through. Got the wife to work on the hood
while I did other stuff. She cut through the paint with a metal stripper wheel
at every rust spot, crack, and chip. Then I sanded the entire hood down with
400 grit, and sprayed it with metalprep to condition the bare spots. Rinsed
the hood off well with water, and let it dry for an hour or so.
Making sure the hood was completely dry, I sprayed it with epoxy primer.
Of course the primered hood looked pretty rough, with craters everywhere Marina
had cut through the paint. No problemo. Resprayed the hood with lacquer
primer/surfacer over the epoxy primer, and attacked all the pits and craters
with spot putty. Then sprayed more primer/surfacer over the spot putty, put
more putty over the primer/surfacer... Will give the whole mess a week or so to
dry before I sand it.
While the bonnet lid dried, I sprayed the remaining front wing glossy red.
In general, a busy couple of days. I WILL DRIVE THIS CAR THIS SPRING!
- Jerry
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