Lagoonblue's MK2 1600 deluxe

[nascar66 74]

I do admire your ability for making panels from scratch.

I'm doing ok on small repair panels but you are making much larger panels which must be a lot harder to get right.

 

How does the jig for making the arch lip work?

 

My car is very similar to yours. Same colour and originally from Finland but is a series 2.

 

Matt.

[LagoonBlue 146]

I do admire your ability for making panels from scratch.

I'm doing ok on small repair panels but you are making much larger panels which must be a lot harder to get right.

 

How does the jig for making the arch lip work?

 

My car is very similar to yours. Same colour and originally from Finland but is a series 2.

 

Matt.

 

Thank you! :cheers: Since this is my first real restoration it helps not knowing what is going to be difficult or near impossible. That way one will give at least a try, might even work sometimes :P Though the real fun starts when doing the final prep for paint.. That i know to be a chore.

 

If you mean the rear arch lip i just cut a suitable hole to a sheet of plywood, attached sheet metal to it with drywall screws through scraps of wood to keep it from moving and hammered it to follow the cut hole, after that i finished it off with hammer and dolly. I used a gauge block to get even spacing to existing upper part of the arch. Would not do that a second time since arches are just about the only reasonable priced panel that can be had for the Mark 2.

[nascar66 74]

Thanks for the explanation. This technique might work on another project I have. It's the rear wheel tubs on a '68 Charger. Everything is expensive on that car and this method might just save me some cash.

Cheers!

[LagoonBlue 146]

If you did not think i was nuts before you will after this (and would not be wrong) :lol:

I have been wanting to try this out for sometime now so on we go;

 

 

Object of desire, Heavy duty shell strut support panel from my parts car. Mine did not come with these originally but since i have it apart i might as well put some on. Almost good enough to use but heavily pitted on the other side and too complex to make by hand.

 

 

Open green sand mold (mix of sand, ground kitty litter and water), made simply by pressing the panel flat on the sand.

Getting the right moisture content for the sand is critical. Too little and it will not hold together, too much and there will be a steam explosion..

 

 

Made this furnace years ago, uses an old oil burner and home heating oil. For casting it is best to use aluminium that was cast originally as it will have the right composition.

 

 

No pictures from casting as i had my hands full at the time :) Part was left to cool for 30 mins or so.

 

 

Excess metal was cast into ingots.

Rinse and repeat for the other side of panel.

 

 

After a bit of cleaning i bolted the castings to some fairly stout pieces of metal with guide rods and oiled everything lightly with motor oil.

Btw. normal metal file will quickly gum up with cast aluminum but farriers rasp was ok.

 

 

Original metal was ca. 1.7mm thick and closest that i had in stock was 2mm hot rolled steel so i went with that. I gave a good 12Tons of force from couple different spots and when both dies were as far as they went i held everything in place with the press and used lower die as a hammer form to make the flanges so that the panel would held it's shape.

Surprisingly the aluminium dies were just fine afterwards :headscratch:

 

 

Not too bad for a first try :thumbup: Dimensions are off by couple mm (my mistake) and lines could be a bit more crisp if i had used the right gauge sheet metal but definitely good enough to use.

 

 

Quick test fit, due to it's shape the panel locates itself quite well.

 

 

Same for the other side when i get around to it. Good thing with this method is that the part can be in a poor shape as the mold and castings can be worked on.

 

All this work for one panel... nuts, i know but as i said i wanted to try out this idea and since it worked ok i will call it a success :)

Edited July 10, 2017 by LagoonBlue

[LagoonBlue 146]

One week into my vacation... Have not had a chance to really work on the project as i have been doing much needed repairs around the house.

 

Did manage to make some new panels though

New strut support panels for both sides. I did not like the hot rolled steel so bought 2mm cold rolled and remade the left side panel. 1,75mm would have been closer to the original but i could a supplier for it.

At the same time i modified my stamping dies to a better tolerance, still not perfect but couple mills off is not too bad for a panel that is not visible

 

Below are couple pics copied from my previous post to show how i made these.

 

Furnace

 

Sand mold, in all four molds were needed

 

Left hand aluminium stamping dies

 

Shame about the whole Photobucket fiasco, i will not be paying up their ransom on principle alone. Btw. had to manually download all my 420 pics since of course the download album function does not work

In future i will upload pics in this thread directly to forum but i am afraid that nothing can be done to edit the image links in older posts

[Pete-H 69]

A Man of many talents excerlent

[LagoonBlue 146]

Most of this years vacation time went towards installing surface water sewers for the gutters i did last year and roof repairs, as a result i had only few days left to work on the car.

Did not help that on the first of those days i promptly went and slit my wrist wide open with a flap disk on a angle grinder whilst doing something utterly stupid

Luckily folks at the ER were able to glue me back together in less than 15 minutes but that was enough for me on that day.

 

Next day i welded the strut reinforcement panels that i had made earlier to both sides.

 

After that i started to go through the bottom panels for any missed spots and sand blast small spots of remaining surface rust. All the areas with temporary grey paint are ok to go and the remaining areas do not look too bad. I still have to sort out some other bits like battery tray and underside of the dash and roof while i still have the chassis on the spit.

When that is done i can lay the final coats of proper paint on the underside and have the heap look more like a car

[nascar66 74]

Shame about your mis-hap. Those flap discs are great and I've used them many times without wearing gloves. Maybe I should take the time to put some gloves on from now on.

[LagoonBlue 146]

Shame about your mis-hap. Those flap discs are great and I've used them many times without wearing gloves. Maybe I should take the time to put some gloves on from now on.

No need to worry, flap discs are perfectly safe if used as intended.

 

Okay, i will come clean about what happened even though i'm quite embarrassed about the incident Maybe it will prevent some other idiot from doing the same...

 

So i was repairing the joint where floor pan and the rear inner wheel well meet above the axle (AKA the mud collecting shelve), a rather inaccessible spot. I needed to linish the welds but could not bother to set up my pneumatic tools, and had this ingenious idea to flip the flap disc on the grinder since that combo fitted just perfectly. And it worked brilliantly on the top part of the joint and i was happy as a pig in shi..p. Until i started to grind the vertical part which is when the disc grabbed the edge of panel, exploded and shot the grinder from my hands to which ever way in less than a blink of an eye. After that i shut the grinder by unplugging it and did the usual counting of fingers etc.

 

So what went wrong?

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Quite simple actually, when i flipped the disk it's direction of rotation changed and caused the flaps to grab to the first possible edge. I knew better but did not stop to think things through which is when accidents happen. End result could of have been much worse though, only cost me a trip to the ER and a perfectly good 40 grit flap disk. I was impressed that my Makita grinder survived without any apparent damage, maybe bearings got a little beat up but that was it.

 

Did not develop a fear of grinders since i knew right away what i had done wrong and will not repeat the same mistake. And the second thing i did when i continued work the next day (first i put the switch on the grinder to off position since i had unplugged it) was to install the blade guard which will stay on for good now

[nascar66 74]

No need to worry, flap discs are perfectly safe if used as intended.

 

Okay, i will come clean about what happened even though i'm quite embarrassed about the incident Maybe it will prevent some other idiot from doing the same...

 

So i was repairing the joint where floor pan and the rear inner wheel well meet above the axle (AKA the mud collecting shelve), a rather inaccessible spot. I needed to linish the welds but could not bother to set up my pneumatic tools, and had this ingenious idea to flip the flap disc on the grinder since that combo fitted just perfectly. And it worked brilliantly on the top part of the joint and i was happy as a pig in shi..p. Until i started to grind the vertical part which is when the disc grabbed the edge of panel, exploded and shot the grinder from my hands to which ever way in less than a blink of an eye. After that i shut the grinder by unplugging it and did the usual counting of fingers etc.

 

So what went wrong?

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Quite simple actually, when i flipped the disk it's direction of rotation changed and caused the flaps to grab to the first possible edge. I knew better but did not stop to think things through which is when accidents happen. End result could of have been much worse though, only cost me a trip to the ER and a perfectly good 40 grit flap disk. I was impressed that my Makita grinder survived without any apparent damage, maybe bearings got a little beat up but that was it.

 

Did not develop a fear of grinders since i knew right away what i had done wrong and will not repeat the same mistake. And the second thing i did when i continued work the next day (first i put the switch on the grinder to off position since i had unplugged it) was to install the blade guard which will stay on for good now

 

Ouch! Thanks for telling us what happened. We've all tried to get something done by doing or using something we shouldn't. Some times we get away with it and some times we don't.

 

That's a good lesson for us all there.

 

Thanks.

 

Keep up the good work by the way.

[mygasser 3]

I can relate to the grinder mishap, I once had a grinder that had a slightly loose guard. If it was not where I needed it I could swivel it to a better position. On one particular day I went to swivel the guard as I had done many times (with the grinder running) and it snatched my left index finger pulling it round with the wheel and out of the other side of the guard. Unfortunately the grinding wheel was new so there was only room between it and the guard for half the thickness of my finger. I had a section now missing about the width of a pencil right down to the bone, not good. I asked the doctor what he intended to do, would he cut the end of the finger off and he replied "only if you want me to, it'll grow back". He was right but I have no feeling in that side of my finger now, good job I'm right handed.

[LagoonBlue 146]

I can relate to the grinder mishap, I once had a grinder that had a slightly loose guard. If it was not where I needed it I could swivel it to a better position. On one particular day I went to swivel the guard as I had done many times (with the grinder running) and it snatched my left index finger pulling it round with the wheel and out of the other side of the guard. Unfortunately the grinding wheel was new so there was only room between it and the guard for half the thickness of my finger. I had a section now missing about the width of a pencil right down to the bone, not good. I asked the doctor what he intended to do, would he cut the end of the finger off and he replied "only if you want me to, it'll grow back". He was right but I have no feeling in that side of my finger now, good job I'm right handed.

Yikes! that sound nasty.

 

I was lucky to escape only with an embarrassing scar.

 

 

Sadly no updates on the Cortina front this time, long hours at work again. Now that weather has taken a turn i might as well start to button everything up for the winter.

 

I did however manage to scrounge enough free time to make a sand blasting cabinet.

 

 

No more sand in my hair :D

 

 

Note the ingenious semi automatic prop stick for the lid.

 

 

Cabinet part is about 90cm wide and 45cm deep and will fit a rim if need be. Will be really useful for doing up all the little bits.

As a special challenge i decided to use only junk i had lying about, nothing but electricity was bought for this thing (also gave an excuse to use some of my "good" junk). Sheet steel is from an electrical cabinet and shelves, legs from a kids swing set, glass from scrapped scanners etc.

Blower motor is from an decommissioned home heating burner and is surprisingly effective, even when using straight silica sand it will keep the dust at bay. Since the cabinet will live in my tent garage the exhaust is directed to the wild outdoors.

 

Confident in my design (15mins at looking pictures on the internet and having once used friends cheap Chinese unit) I painted the cabinet before testing it. Asylum gray/green alkyd paint over 2 pack epoxy primer, despite both being well above their best by date (1999 on the top coat :rolleyes:) the results were acceptable.

 

I installed 60 Watts worth of LED lighting on the lid which seems to be about the right amount.

 

And most importantly the apparatus does work, might do with a better gun and my compressor setup is having hard time keeping up but no complaints on the cabinet part.

 

 

I ought to sort the images in this thread when i have the change but in the meantime this is where i started from;

 

 

At the current pace i think that the car will be ready in the year 2525 :lol:

I hope that i can really crack on with it during the next spring and summer.

[nascar66 74]

Great job on the blasting cabinet. Looks very professional.

I'm also very impressed with your stamping dies.

[LagoonBlue 146]

Spring is here! :)

 

Time to awake from my slumber now that snow has started to melt.

Not much was done during the winter due to cold and work commitments, only little odd jobs here and there.

 

But during the winter the seller came through with his promise and found the V5 for the car (our equivalent document that is)

 

Strictly speaking not need since i have the whole chain of bill of sales all the way from last registered owner to me but will streamline the registering process some when the time comes.

Anyway this gives out little more info on my car. It was last MOT;d in 1985, next MOT would of been in 1986. Car was sold to fella i bought it from in 1988 at which point it was parked in a field and forgotten. Explains some of the issues that the car has..

 

To start the season i thought to start with something simple, as in changing the front oil seal on the gearbox.

 

Mine is of the early (2000E/bullet?) type with the long gear selector lever.

 

Here is the front seal. Was tricky to remove, had to weld a bead to inside face of the seal to shrink it enough to get it off.

Well, as usual one thing led to another and in no time...

 

:(

 

Here is what i found (though bear in mind that all this stuff is new to me, but these were fairly obvious);

 

Third gear had severe rust pitting on two (and only two!) teeth, maybe condensation had dribbed on it?

Burton power had this gear for Type 3 box, seemed similar on the picture so i put one on order, was only a tenner.

 

Pitting on laygear needle bearings.

 

Corresponding pitting on layshaft.

 

At least the laygear assembly and it's bores were ok. Thrust washers seemed also usable.

 

Chipped teeths on reverse gear on the mainshaft, will not matter too much i think?

 

Rust on speedometer drive gear, not critical should mostly brush off.

 

Pitting on the input shaft bearing.

 

Now what the %#!? has happened here? :blink:

Seems that i am not the first one to open this box.. Someone has brazed extensions to 3rd and 4th gear selector fork, will need to figure out what this is about before i decide on what to do here.

 

I have not taken a close look at synchros and other bits and bobs yet but does not seem promising.

Main bearings seemed fine but since i have the box in bits might aswell change them?

Will cost me an arm and a leg before all this is sorted anyway :thumbdown:

[nascar66 74]

Glad to see an update on this.

Not many people will attempt a gearbox rebuild. Another skill you have it seems 👍🏻