Winging it
I’m happy to report that, short of a final rub down, and an application of clear coat, the long running saga of the wing repairs has just about reached a conclusion. Finally back to college after a half-term break, I was able to apply a last coat of paint to the wings in a still air environment, rather than waiting for the wind to die down outside of the garage as I’d been doing for the initial coats. Needless to say it makes a great difference to the final look and, given it has all been done with aerosols, I’m quite pleased with the results. Of course, the rest of the car now looks crap, the bonnet especially so, meaning that has been added to the ‘To-do’ list.
Once the paint had dried, I turned my attention to the rear of the car, and the small matter of the paintwork that comes off in patches, around the boot aperture. For some reason the paint in the area looks like it only ever formed a bond over the corner radius of the trough, and never actually stuck to it, hence water gets behind, corrodes the panels and pops the paint off. The trough in the rear panel has always looked rough, so taking the bull by the horns I removed the boot lid, then got stuck in with a strip disc, scraper and wire brush. Within an hour or so I’d cleaned up the aperture as best I could, before then applying a liberal dose of paint stripper, to get at the final bits of paint that were proving to be stubborn. With the paint finally removed, and not a lot of the day remaining, I applied some Jenolite rust treatment, then once that had worked its magic, some primer, before heading home. This is more of a ‘get the metal protected’ exercise at this
Given the work has been done with aerosols, I’m pleased with the results
stage, as on 1 June I’m rallying the car in the Blackpalfrey Motor Club’s Hughes Rally in Kent. Run under Motor Sport Association rules, I have to adhere to Rule 18.1.2, which explicitly states that: ‘No primer must be visible.’ Once the rally is out of the way I’ll then strip back the paint again, then attend to the minor corrosion around the top of the boot aperture, all without the time pressure of having to also spray the car.
With a summer rallying hiatus due, I arrived at the garage of good friend, and ex-rallying partner, Philip Shingler, with the 1275cc engine I wanted to rebuild to drop into the A40. This is something I have been planning for a while now, but with no engine building experience, and Phil being a bit of engineering whizz (he built the 1275 in our Mk1 Mini, which was a flyer), I’d asked him to take on the task of rebuilding, while imparting sagely words of advice. After a fascinating afternoon of tearing down an engine, we ended up with a bench full of constituent parts, and a block and cylinder head. The block itself was in reasonable condition, though a bore gauge revealed that a couple of pistons were out of tolerance. The crank was found to be in excellent health, with all dimensions on the pins and journals within tolerance, while the camshaft was worn, and also of an unknown profile. Knowing the camshaft was going to be replaced with a Kent Cams ‘500’ item for ‘Mild Road’ use, this was not quite the bad news it could have been. All that remained was for the block and head to be dropped off at a local engineering shop, with instructions for a skim and a rebore, then conversion to an unleaded head. I just need to start paying for it now…