Kapunda - week 4

Straight after the election we must get this dear car going again.

GARY'S HOSPITAL NOTES.

WHEN YOUR EXHAUST TAIL PIPE CORRODES THROUGH Unlike a conventional car exhaust system, the body’s exhaust tail pipe does not hang below the chassis body unit. Your tail pipe known as the colon, passes through your sump area, and when a small hole or series of ruptures occurs this allows hot exhaust gasses, ( farts ) and combustion waste by products, (sh#t) to escape into your lower body cavities (sump area) and cause considerable pain, discomfort and swelling. Unlike your car, with holes in its exhaust system, your exhaust note does not become louder or more sporty, but more smelly. If you are in bed at the time of the leakage I suggest you pull your knees up under your chin to try and stop the pain. Rolling from side to side all the time and panting like they taught your wife to do during labour may also help. While doing all this, kick off the doona, as you will now be overheating. Your wife will most likely have already woken and left the love nest, to ask if she can assist in any way. The best thing she can do is phone for an ambulance. When you settle down a bit in hospital with the help of your new best friend, Mr. Morphine, best injected straight into your belly, close to the area of pain you can relax a bit and start to find out what has been going on. The roof over the tool shed is bulging a bit more and appears reddish in colour and very tender to the touch. Your cooling system, ( water works) seems to be over pressurised and your radiator overflow pipe is used more often and with great care as the area below your oil level filler plug (belly button) is now swollen and sore. If the above is happening to you or your car a visit to your friendly car repairer (The Healey Factory) or any good hospital should put yours or your cars tail pipe back to good working order by simply patching the holes or installing a new pipe to your car or in your body’s case their care three options. Option 1, do nothing, and I suspect, have a painful death. 2. A visit to hospital for some pain relief and a dose of antibiotics and intravenous feeding to give your tail pipe a rest and hopefully the holes will heal over. 3. If the holes are irreparable the damaged section can be cut out and a new exhaust outlet can be created into a colostomy bag. This will have serious effect on your exhaust note until what’s left of your tail pipe can heal and the operation be reversed. When the above is all completed and every thing is back to normal I am sure with a little practice you will have your special exhaust note back in fine tune once more. Do not forget to chew your food properly and drink plenty of water to keep your exhaust tail pipe in good working order. If you do not follow this advice you may, one day, feel like you are trying to pass golf balls wrapped in barbed wire whilst having severe stomach cramps. Gary Allen. Dandenong Hospital North Ward Bed 7C 29/7/10

GET WELL SOON GARY.

More JWF Italia

Remember Rob Suttie proudly showing us the pictures of the almost finished Italia of his dad, David's. I say "almost" because it doesn't have the reconditioned original Vauxhall 6 engine installed yet. It's running a red Holden at the moment. Anyway, here's a few before and after shots. There's been a fair bit of elbow grease expended here! Looking at the white car being winched off the trailer I can't help thinking of one of the Bolwell Mark 3s.No wonder Neil wants to get down to Sydney to see this car really.

Another JWF Italia

Here's another Italia, a coupe this time. It belongs to Neil T in Brisbane.Neil bought it in Northern NSW and it is earmarked for restoration as soon as he has finished his Jowett Jupiter sports. Neil is a keen member of the Jowett Club (publicity officer I think) and no doubt what attracted him to the Italia is that it's on a Jowett Jupiter chassis with the boxer Jowett motor.

LHD? Don't worry I'll fix it.

Just had to show you this.Thanks Rob.

McArlus Cars - 5

Next episode - exhaust system.

Picked up the new exhaust the other day and it has come up a real treat.

I always knew that the revisions made to the rear half of the chassis were going to make the exhaust even trickier than the first car, but it wasn’t until I unpacked all of the pieces and then tried to assemble it in the chassis that I realized just how hard I had made it!

Anyway the pieces all fit together well and the overall result is very pleasing.

I took the extra option of this time having the exhaust HPC coated. It certainly looks a million dollars and should provide a bit of extra protection to the exhaust as well as some heat benefits.

I decide to get this done this time since the exhaust on the yellow car has always looked ratty. At one stage I pulled it all out, wire brushed and carefully cleaned the whole lot, before giving it a couple of coats of “quality” exhaust paint.

I think it started to peel in front of my eyes as I warmed the engine for the first time, so this time the HPC coating is getting a try out.

So far two complete sets of headers have been made up to the muffler join, and only one set is complete including the muffler. The second set will be finalized and detail fitted to Ken’s chassis as soon as he is ready.

Regards

Simon

McArlus Cars - 4

Painted components fitted - see text previous post.

McArlus Cars - 3

Next episode - Painted components.

I’ve picked the car up from having the exhaust made, although I can’t show it yet as it is still to arrive from the ceramic coating.

In the meantime I have been painting what seems like a million suspension and other moving pieces that will fit to the chassis. At first I used a high pressure siphon spray gun, but when that gave up I bought a low pressure high volume gun and the reduction in overspray in my garage is most welcome.

With the chassis back, I reset it in the jig so that I could do at least a rough wheel alignment in the jig. Each corner is bolted together and using laser levels and plumb bobs is then adjusted to align with my design suspension marks on the table.

This is a time consuming and laborious task.

An adjustment on one link might need separate adjustment on another, all of which needs to be checked each step of the way.

I have tried to get align of the lower ball joints in as close to their design specs as I can, I thought that if I have at least got those in the correct spot, I will know that the car is square and parallel to start with.

Once the cars arte finished it will give us a solid point to start with.

Now that this is done, the large immovable table that one chassis was built on can be dismantled after having walked around it for years.

The first few pictures show a few of the moving parts that fit into the chassis, and the last few show how they look assembled.

The reason why the yellow level is in the picture is because the parts on the LHS are custom made or modified from standard, while those on the RHS are straight from the donor car.

Regards

Simon

McArlus Cars - 2

See text, previous post.

McArlus Cars

For some time now Simon Wells (as opposed to Simon Wills) has been building an orange Group A type sports car (McArlus), taking lots of photos along the way and sending the story out bit by bit to his friends. This has been happening for a while now, and there's lots of interesting material here. It would be a bit tricky going back to the start, there'd be volumes, but I'll go back over the last month because it's getting interesting.

This is the second car, the previous one, a yellow car now owned by Kenny Rowland is getting the occasional update, drawing on the experience gained along the way with the new one. I see in results on the internet that this car is posting really good times in Victorian sprint meetings.

Anyway, here's the first instalment and I'll include these two photos because they are of the yellow car's engine bay. I'll include the orange car's photos shortly so read the text and remember the photos are to follow.

A major milestone took place a week or so ago when I actually had the chassis sit on its’ wheels for the first time!

Finally I was ready to have extractors made, which required sending the car away as a rolling chassis with the rear bodywork fitted and the engine and some other items that would be critical to exhaust clearance. I fitted the front body panel too, since it seemed as good a place as any to store it, and of course I wanted to see how it looked!

I even got the chance to “drive” it up my driveway, with Sarah towing me of course! I think I will have to change the home made chipboard mota- lita steering wheel though!

I’m really pleased with the results. The lower and wider rollbar looks much more in keeping with the car and all of the work on the body has really nicely tidied up the areas around the engine bay and rollbar, giving the whole body a much more complete and professional look. In the rear pictures there is a section of body missing as it requires the air cleaner to be removed and there was no need for it to be there for the exhaust to be made.

The work underneath has paid great dividends as well.

The whole body tilts up and done easily and smoothly without twisting or binding, without the underbody support, the first, yellow car is a real wrestle to open and close the body work, and the as the pictures show, the fit is less than satisfactory.

Sitting the doors in place was nice too. The gaps are still the 1mm of the grinder blade from when the body was cut, so clearly it has been will worth getting as much of the fitting as possible, including making the hinging brackets and alignment pins done, before the body was cut up.

When the car comes back I need to finish drilling my aluminium panels, as well as make two more for my car and then the chassis will be ready to paint! I am already painting a lot of the removable parts while the chassis is away. Once that’s done a lot of the assembly can take place!

There are still a million things to be done, but who would have ever believed that this project might finally come to an end!

Regards

Simon

The yellow Mark 7 mystery.

Well, it's not really a mystery I guess. Remember a month ago Tim posed the question about which Mark 7 this one was? It's an old photo taken at Lakeland hillclimb.My answer, and I'm sure I'm right, is that it is the former Royce Marion car and here it is competing at a later Calder 6-hour.This car has rather distinctive rear treatment.Colin cast doubts based on a different rego number and different door handles. The car in the original photo had the number KTO-325 and Colin had a photo of Royce's car with the number JYU-731 and the different door handles. Well, here is a picture of KTO-325 and JYU-731 taken together at the previous 6-Hour. As you can see, KTO-325 has the distinctive rear treatment.Maybe the other car is Frank Rushton's (below), in the same team that year and , note the different door handles.Sadly, Frank's Mark 7, along with the white one of Johnny Szabo, was lost forever in the Victorian bushfires last year.

More MX5

Chris G found another MX5 transformation, this time a commercial one by Custom Automotive Restyling in Stafford in Queensland. They have an agent in California as well. They're making little Astons. They're great aren't they? www.amx07.com