Very slow rebuild

Very slow rebuild

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Luckyone

Original Poster:

1,047 posts

231 months

Saturday 15th June 2013
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A quick recap, I took the body off the back end of 2010:



I did some welding & then had it all powder coated:



Looked nice for month, but then I spotted this:



So I had to blast & re-spray the bits they hadn’t basted properly myself:



Gave it a good few coats of stone chip:



Then over coated that all in 2K


Ended up with this:




Got distracted for a year or so then had a look at the engine, after a bit of deliberation of some odd noises it was making I decided a new clutch release bearing & re-shim should do. But that didn’t really go to plan, as one of the inlet valves was needing a shim thinner than you can buy I decided a new set after hearing about the failed shims of late.

So heads off:








Looks quite nice in there, although the head gasket looks like it could do with replacing anyway, it seems to be starting to go a bit in the centre of the pic there.


A few years back I corrected the manufacturing faults in the throttle body’s, they had be set off centre when they were machined so left a big lip:





So it was a good time to finish the job with a bit of light port matching:



That head is pretty good as it is, the other is worse.

Then just a few dingle berrys to remove for the hell of it (probably good for 0.5 of a HP!):



But then looking down the exhaust port I wasn’t so happy, all the exhaust valve guides were burnt:



So I quickly ordered a set of valve guides & what started out as setting the valve clearances, ends up being £500 down in parts already...

I got one of the old guides out ok, but then realised the head won’t fit in my oven for getting the new ones back in & the seats will need recutting to match the new guides, so the heads will be off to Powers Performance soon.

pmessling

2,284 posts

202 months

Saturday 15th June 2013
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All well worth it in the end, top job so far. Bet you cant wait to get it back on the road and go for a drive.

ukkid35

6,138 posts

172 months

Saturday 15th June 2013
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I have serious Chassis Envy.

Luckyone

Original Poster:

1,047 posts

231 months

Sunday 16th June 2013
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pmessling said:
All well worth it in the end, top job so far. Bet you cant wait to get it back on the road and go for a drive.
Thanks, yeah really can’t wait, was very tempted to just stick the engine back in, probably would have been fine for quite some time as it was, but I’d have been worried giving it any revs & that kind of defeats the object of a Cerb!

ukkid35 said:
I have serious Chassis Envy.
There’s a winter project for you then wink

The trouble is when I do actually get it back together it’s going to look exactly the same as it did when it was last going (unless you bend down & look in though the spokes of the wheels or under the car). It will most likely drive just the same too as it, it was just about perfect when I took it off the road, I was only poking about at the exhaust trying to get it to stop rubbing & one thing lead to another, then the body was hanging from the garage roof…

The idea it that we will just feel more happy driving it now, I knew it needed the rust looking, so that combined with the odd noises it was making meant it wasn’t getting used any more.

Luckyone

Original Poster:

1,047 posts

231 months

Tuesday 16th July 2013
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I got bored waiting for the heads to come back so thought I’d pull the cold air box out, as with all Cerbs the A/C has always been rubbish, it got cold enough but never blew very air much out. So as the manual says steering column & pedal box out:



The steering column was actually very easy, the pedal box was little more fiddly, I only did it as I already had all the fluids & gasses drained, with the pipes already disconnected.

Under side of the pedal box looking a bit worse for ware, see where the old master cylinder was leaking a little…




Then the cold air box could come out:




I was really expecting to find the evaporator matrix blocked up with leaves & other crap but it was almost spotless in there, just one leaf!



So that’s not the cause of the bad A/C wind speed. I was finding the inside of the screen was getting all oiled up every hundred miles or so I was thinking the matrix may have been starting to rot, but seems not. The condenser up front is totally rotted, just about holds pressure, but when I stripped the car there was no gas left, so I’m hoping that’s where the very fine oil mist was coming from & blowing back up the inner wing.

Many years ago I tried to seal the cover panel back on better to stop those cold drafts you get on your right leg in the winter, but even after my best efforts (with the pedals getting in the way) there was still quite a lot of leakage of air from the high pressure inner wing into the car. I was pleased to find this hole (circled in red):



This is an open gap up to the inner wing that would have been letting air through, so I’ve sealed it up from the inside of the wing. Not all Cerbs will be the same but if yours has this hole too it would be easy to seal with expanding foam, only needing the carpet to be move to get at it.

Ram air effect may be a bit dubious when it comes to tuning engine but for cooling your noggin you need all you can get, if the high pressure (in the summer time hot) air in the inner wing isn’t all being forced though the A/C evaporator it’s just a waist, not only that, hot external air is leaking with some force into the car heating it up as the A/C is trying to cool it.

If it’s still crap after all that I’ll just use my inline fan again:




Luckyone

Original Poster:

1,047 posts

231 months

Saturday 27th July 2013
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Got the heads back with the new better exhaust valve guides in, hopefully these won’t melt! The seats were recut to match the new guides, that cut into the side wall more at out end than the other:






Glad it’s not a 4.2 or that may be encroaching on the fire ring.

Thought I’d check the volume with the slightly differing cut outs:




But they were about as close as I could measure, 51ml to the nearest half a ml. would have been better with a bigger syringe, but I was losing interest by then!


So I assembled the heads back up with new inlet valves & the old shims back in to test, as planned the inlets all now had massive clearances, like about 26thou. Also as expected the exhausts almost all closed up after their seats were recut. So that meant another £90 on shims! They were all very accurately sized shims, I was hoping that would save me time, but checking them with the micrometre I felt a small lip around the inner edge as the mic is a bit thinner than the valve tip, it wouldn’t move smoothly like it would on the ones I took off.



The valve tip is chamfered but the lip measured too big so I turned it down:





I was worried turning the hardened shims would be difficult, but it was worryingly easy, I hope they are hardened! As you can just see the swarf is in little shards rather than ribbons (like the stuff from mild steel in the foreground of the pic), it’s been many years since I did metallurgy but I think that’s a good sign! The tip must be made from very hard stuff as it’s showing no signs of getting blunt, it is at least sixty years old, think they made things better then.

Being very pleased with myself for spotting that I reassembled the heads I checked the clearances only to find most the inlets were far too tight. So all apart again double check my measurements & calculations, nothing wrong. Then I noticed witness marks on the bottom half the chamfers, on sides of the new black inlet valves. So I felt the side walls of the shims & sure enough there was a lip on the side wall as well. So back onto the lathe...

I’m getting very adept at taking the cams in & out, also getting fed up of looking out of the window at the lovely weather I’m missing!

My new inlet vales are a better quality so hopfully won’t stretch like the old ones, with them in all the shims are now in the 80 – 90 thou range, apart from the one that was completely closed up that is in the 70s, the seat must have been cut deeper on that one. So I don’t think that valve had stretched any more than the others after all! Still If I hadn’t taken the heads off to change the inlet valves I wouldn’t have seen the burnt valve guides, that could have ended up just as bad. Also the head gasket looked like it was about to start leaking coolant out the side of the block too, so not all bad.

Hopefully I’ll actually start making some progress soon.

RFC1

1,107 posts

196 months

Saturday 27th July 2013
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AWW mate, i would follow this thread, but pleeeeze , edit the photos to fit the page before sticking them on the thread.!

ta sandy,. and ps keep up the work !

Rufus Roughcut

532 posts

174 months

Sunday 28th July 2013
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Great read, keep up the good work thumbup

ukkid35

6,138 posts

172 months

Sunday 28th July 2013
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RFC1 said:
edit the photos to fit the page before sticking them on the thread.!
Or try a different browser, Chrome resizes everything nicely for my 1024x600 netbook.

I really like the way you can click on an image and zoom in to see the detail - absolutely ideal when you're trying to understand how these cars are put together.

Luckyone

Original Poster:

1,047 posts

231 months

Sunday 28th July 2013
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Rufus Roughcut said:
Great read, keep up the good work thumbup
Thanks smile



For me both regular IE at work & Firefox at home auto resize the pics, heck even my phone’s browser does.

ukkid35 said:
I really like the way you can click on an image and zoom in to see the detail - absolutely ideal when you're trying to understand how these cars are put together.
Glad you noticed the zoom that was the point of the bigger pics. yes

Luckyone

Original Poster:

1,047 posts

231 months

Sunday 20th October 2013
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Not much of an update, been too busy working on putting it back together to take pics, still here’s a couple of old ones I forgot:




Leak down test to start the engine work had excellent results, but the stretched inlet valves resulted in all the work in the first posts.


Stripped some more bits for paint:




While I was painting I decided as I was going to miss the summer driving I may as well tidy the engine bay & enjoy a bit of the sun that way! Back when it was new I had a slight misshap with the brake fluid cap, it has bugged me ever since. Also I fancied having a go a blending in a pearl repair re-spray.



As well as the brake fluid damage the bonnet stay bracket was cracked & the bottom was always a mess so I cleaned it all up:






Then I only had the old touch up pots that I got from TVR years ago, so chucked them in the gun & went for it:



There are few stages missed out of the photos there but you’ll get the idea. It tuned out quite well, can’t see the join in the pearl half way down the panel. However I did cheat slightly as the whole panel was a little darker yellow than the rest of the car, there were obviously not as many coats of pearl so after blending the new paint I laid a coat of pearl over the whole panel (along with the 2k lacquer of course). That probably helped hide the join a bit.

Luckyone

Original Poster:

1,047 posts

231 months

Sunday 5th January 2014
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It’s amazing how long simple jobs can drag on, still the end is in sight now.

Here is the foot well panel fully sealed back in after I’d taken the AC unit out back up the page:




There is a large gap at the top on mine, so I used a bit of glass shaped to fit with the edges left raw so I could sick it in nicely with a hot glue gun to really seal it. The hot glue should be easy to get out if I ever need to take the panel out again.


Then I got real boost by fitting all the nice shiny bits to the engine, I’d stripped & painted the throttle bodies & rocker covers, the purple powder coated bit were done with the chassis years back:




I had the injectors sonically cleaned, but that removed a lot of the paint so I stripped them too:




Painted & fitted them with the fuel rail & spent a good while balancing the throttle bodies / butterflies.




The clutch release pistons surfaces are very rough, if you run your finger nail over them they make a grating noise, so I polished those up, hopefully that will help the new uprated rubber seals last a little longer:



The inner surfaces that I polished up looked like the outers before.


As I had the pedals out I tested the new clutch out of the car to make sure all was well:




A bit of new heat shielding:




Then drop the engine back in:






Fun when the engine is as far back as the Cerbs! I was glad I had a pit that stopped in just the right place for that...

Mr Cerbera

5,031 posts

229 months

Sunday 5th January 2014
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As I've said already, in my mail, Utterly phenomenal work !
So very impressed !

(However, a c.h.i.n.k. in the 'Superman' badge when I discovered that you have a pit)... laugh

No, seriously, just amazing ! bow

BTW

Did you know that the posting police don't allow the word '' ?
Political Correctness gone mad !

Luckyone

Original Poster:

1,047 posts

231 months

Sunday 5th January 2014
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Mr Cerbera said:
As I've said already, in my mail, Utterly phenomenal work !
So very impressed !

(However, a c.h.i.n.k. in the 'Superman' badge when I discovered that you have a pit)... laugh

No, seriously, just amazing ! bow

BTW

Did you know that the posting police don't allow the word '' ?
Political Correctness gone mad !
Thanks Paul, the pit is only 2 foot deep & 2/3 the length of the car but it does help.

The 2 foot of clearance down one side of the car (with the other hard up against the wall) doesn’t help though...

Mr Cerbera

5,031 posts

229 months

Sunday 5th January 2014
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Luckyone said:
Thanks Paul, the pit is only 2 foot deep & 2/3 the length of the car but it does help.

The 2 foot of clearance down one side of the car (with the other hard up against the wall) doesn’t help though...
Andy, that's one of the reasons why I think this thread is so interesting.
It's been performed in a 'real world' environment and not in some monumentally spacious, 'swing a camel by its tail' workshop which other rebuilds have been lucky enough to have available.

It gives us all hope ! thumbup

scotty_d

6,795 posts

193 months

Sunday 5th January 2014
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Fantastic must be a good felling to get to this point.

Luckyone

Original Poster:

1,047 posts

231 months

Sunday 5th January 2014
quotequote all
scotty_d said:
Fantastic must be a good felling to get to this point.
It does feel good, but also frustrating to be so close, athough the weather is more conducive to staying in the garage at the moment, I don’t really fancy taking it out with all that salt on the road!

Demondad

475 posts

214 months

Sunday 5th January 2014
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Very slow, but truly entertained and fascinated me. A great post, well done and look forward to seeing you out an about enjoying her in 2014, unless you get distracted by another bit that needs looking at!!!

scotty_d

6,795 posts

193 months

Sunday 5th January 2014
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Luckyone said:
scotty_d said:
Fantastic must be a good felling to get to this point.
It does feel good, but also frustrating to be so close, athough the weather is more conducive to staying in the garage at the moment, I don’t really fancy taking it out with all that salt on the road!
I know where you are coming from, i just got the engine and box all back in and now up and running again after a long 14months!! spring is fine for me as well.

jamieduff1981

8,022 posts

139 months

Sunday 5th January 2014
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I first read about this rebuild when I was still deciding to save up for a Cerb. I can relate to long & slow projects! I simply can't do hobby stuff if I'm not in the mood for it. It's a character trait I wish I could change but I reckon I'm stuck with it!

It's fantastic work though and I continue to read with interest.