Early Javelin Restoration

[Chris Spencer]

I managed to salvage some wheels & stub axles off a scrap trolley and after not to much thought set about fabricating a couple of lengths of box angle steel

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Front steering axle going together

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Rear beam mounted

[Chris Spencer]

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front completed

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Along with the rear

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Now means we can move the shell out of the workshop - We would have had to build something at some stage to mount the body shell onto once it came off the chassis tilter - this set up gives us the flexibility to move the car around the workshop whilst it is axle less - add to that that we have recently acquired another Javelin body shell which we have to collect from a South London lockup in the next few weeks means that the shell trolley is going to be fully employed

[Chris Spencer]

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Sheeted up and loaded to the trailer for its onward journey

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On display at the Basingstoke rally

[Chris Spencer]

With the car now back in the workshop the trolley axles have been removed and the car remounted to the chassis tilter - rear shock absorber mounting were all but hanging off

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I removed the mounting and all unsound metal within the area - this included a section of the upstand panel behind the rear seat which suffered from previous poor repairs

[Chris Spencer]

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I managed to reuse the old mounting but had to replace the steel around it to which it is welded

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I also strengthened the weld beads around the lower suspension mounting points

[PJGD]

Chris,
Seeing your "rear beam mounted" photo reminded me that one of the things that we (that's the Royal "we", as in you and your team!) might consider doing is to measure the torsional stiffness of the Javelin and/or Jupiter chassis. There are plenty of chassis torsional stiffness figures for other vehicles available on the internet, it could be useful to to see where we stand.

It should be possible to attach the lower rear suspension lugs (the ones to which your beam is mounted) to some raised blocks which are themselves firmly attached to the concrete floor with expanding anchor bolts. Then support the front of the chassis with a block under the center of the boxed crossmember and attach another beam having an overhang off to one side to the front suspension lower bracket bolt holes. Now, by applying weight(s) to the end of the overhanging beam and knowing the distance from car centerline to the weights you can calculate the applied torque, and with a simple wire pointer attached to a front engine mounting bracket bolt hole that aligns with a stationary paper protractor, one can get a value of torsional stiffness in lb/ft per degree (or Nm/degree). Generally, the stiffer the chassis, the better the handling.

I am not trying to give you more work, it is just a useful figure to have and I expect the Javelin would come out looking quite good.

Philip

[Forumadmin]

Philip,
Good idea. But we wait till all the welding is done!
I did observe how much the SC chassis twisted when it was bare. But I did not do it quantitively. The Jup is also complicated by the body support steelwork (especially the bulkhead) and minimally by the body itself.

[Srenner]

Let me say how impressive your craftsmanship and progress is. And displaying the car at the rally was brilliant.
Don't forget to do the rally upgrade to the rear shock mounts (putting them in double shear)!
Cheers!!

[Forumadmin]

After the international Kings Langley garage meeting yesterday the reconditioned engine started after help from Brain Hehir from Western Australia, Peter Pfister from Switzerland, Bill Lock from Surbiton and Jack Moon, Amy Clements and Keith Clements from Kings Langley. It still needs some tuning as this was its first run, listen to the comments on the video.



It was noticed that no oil was coming from the nearside rocker so the stud was removed and the silicon sealer extracted!


Prior to that Bill had broken a stud on the water pump so Brain suggested welding a nut on it to extract the remains.

[Forumadmin]

Even though Peter's car was not originally fitted with one, Peter is intending using the car on rallies so Jack sorted and sourced a heater unit.
Below are some pictures of the refurbishment which Jack will annotate.

[Jack]

How to Take Apart and Reassemble Heater Unit

This is common to Javelins and Jupiters, with no difference that I can see between the cars we have. Between the spares it seems common that the elements eventually leak, or the motors give up. If you have one or the other in good working shape you can probably butcher two to make one good one if the elements are similar depth.



The heater box.

To remove from the car, there are three nuts through the bulkhead that have to be undone from under the bonnet, and the heater hoses removed. As the heater is part of the cooling system, you will need to drain a fair bit of water from the system to avoid covering the garage floor in coolant. Easiest route is to undo the little taps on the bottom of the head until you have drained the water from the radiator. You will still get some coolant coming out of the heater itself, and it has to come out through the interior of the car, so be careful to keep it upright and have a rag or two handy.

Luckily, as you will note because there aren't any pictures of this process, Peter's car didn't have a heater, and even if it did it was removed some time ago when we stripped it down. I dragged what looked to be a good heater out of the stores (read Keith's cellar) from a selection of about half a dozen rusty old heaters. I have no idea what he plans to do with the other ones, perhaps start a Jowett heater empire.

These are the components of the heater, left to right they are, heater motor, fan (below it), mounting bolts, rear cover (below), heater element, securing clips (below), front cover, connector for hoses.



It would appear there isn't much to a heater, and indeed there isn't. But it is very easy to take it apart, and then spend quite a lot of time putting it back together again remembering which way round everything goes if you don't have another one to look at, or missing a couple of details that will cost you a lot of time. So I thought I'd write it down, just in case anyone ends up in the same position.



Taking the heater apart is fairly simple, but be careful. Cover your eyes, because these can release at quite a rate of knots, particularly the first one, and they are made of metal. Pop off the three retaining clips from the outside edge. You may need to use a screwdriver to get these off, particularly if they are a bit rusty. Avoid damaging the paint around the outside if possible by covering the screwdriver with something soft, like one of Keith's old t-shirts. You should find that the front cover (the side with the vents in it) now comes off very easily.

You will need to rest the heater with the hoses pointing downwards, so worth making sure you really have completely emptied it before doing this.

Next job is to remove the grub screw behind the fan blades - this is on the side of the assembly, visible here:



Now the fan blades will come off, which will allow you to remove the heater element.

Once this is off, you will be left with a motor and the bolts that secure the heater to the car. Undo all the nuts attaching these to the backplate.

Now you have all the bits apart, you can either send your element to be repaired, find a replacement element in your massive box of spares, or attempt to fix the element somehow. I am told that the element is a fairly expensive thing to get repaired, so if you see a good one it is probably worth having.

We tested our element using a gentle vacuum, and no leaks were detected. Which sped things up a great deal. All the other bits that were readily paintable went off to get painted so they look nice, because Peter wants a nice car at the end of this, and the heater being in good shape is one of those little details that is worth getting right.

Now on to one of those minor details that will really make a difference. The below are the three bolts that attach the heater to the car. You may not see it immediately, but one of them is shorter than the other two. This is to offset the angle of the heater on the car, so it is important or your heater will be wonky when refitted. Note that you cannot swap these bolts around once you clip up the heater, so get it right first time.



The short bolt goes opposite the cut-out in the back plate, opposite the two hoses on the element.



Next up is the motor. Again, easy if you know how, but the orientation of the wiring is important. Get it right and the wires will be easy to get to, and will not stick out the bottom of your heater, get it wrong and you'll have two wires trying somehow to get past the heater hoses and prone to getting messed about when fitting the heater hoses.

This is the orientation you need, have the wires sticking out next to the cutout, but not through that gap. It might seem neat now, but when fitting you will be glad you did it this way.



Next up is refitting the element, which is just a matter of getting the orientation right so the hoses go through the gap, and the motor goes through the middle. This is easiest to do by putting the heater on its back and dropping the element "upside down" onto it, otherwise the motor spindle hits the bench and won't sit flat, which is why there is a bit of wood underneath in this photo:



Now the fan goes back on, and you do up the grub screw against the flat side on the spindle. Make sure there is clearance between the fan and the element, and that the fan does not protrude above the height of the spindle, otherwise it will hit the element or the front cover. Logic dictates that the closer the fan can be to the element the more efficient the heater will be, but in reality the difference will be nonexistent.



Now stick the front cover back on, it has a funny textured paint on it that I didn't attempt to touch up, and redo the clips. Originally the fans had three clips around the circumference, quick tip on this is to fit the first one right next to the water pipes, and then the other two will fit easily enough - if you put the first one in the wrong place on the other side you may not be able to fit one where the water pipes are. The cars may have had three clips originally, but being as we have an abundance of spare heaters, I have fitted four to this unit. It also means that if a clip is lost for any reason, you still have three to hold the front on securely in the back end of beyond.



All done. Hopefully this will save someone half an hour taking their heater apart again, and might be of interest to anyone who hasn't seen the inside of their heater before

Jack.

[Chris Spencer]

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A area close to the shock absorber mounting point looked somewhat weak and sure enough a tap with the hammer proved just how weak

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This is double skinned with the inner wing - the affected area was carefully cut out by means of the air powered body saw

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Inner side of the panel completed

[Chris Spencer]

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Outer side section ready for welding in

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Repair complete

[Chris Spencer]

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Next was the O/S/R inner shroud area where the outer wing mounts to (not as bad as the nearside)

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Another one off the list

[Chris Spencer]

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O/S/R shock absorber mounting - again all but hanging off

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Mounting removed

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The subject of many previous in situ bodged welding repairs