Javelin Restoration - Project B

[p.p.]

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Herts Project

peter

[p.p.]

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[Forumadmin]

Why there are waves on the flag beats me. Herts is landlocked!
The hert (or deer) is apt. Kings Langley was the king's hunting lodge. The Rudolf Steiner school is built on the ruins. Perhaps when remodelling the garage and digging the pit we will uncover some archaeology.

[Jack]

Jack - The answer is so very simple - the reason for the 4.5mm socket is that it fits the head of a 4.5mm bolt or nut.

Have you ever seen a 4.5mm bolt or nut?

[Forumadmin]

Useful for rusted 5mm nuts as on the petrol tank fixing!

[Jack]

More socket sorting this evening, we are now up to 5 complete rails (and these are not small rails) of sockets, and I have to go and clear out all the socket rails from the Apsley branch of Halfords as well to sort all the sockets we have. Uxbridge branch was cleared out this week, head office must be wondering what is going on in the South East with the number of rails being sold this week!

Tomorrow is a big day for us - the car may actually move on its own wheels, onto the concreted area in the garage, we also have some organising to do before the car can move, and some more shelves to set up. Further parts will need to move into the cellar from the garage, but there's still a lot of space under there, and more space in the garage will make life a lot easier for the next few months.

There were rumours of engine removal as well, we will see how far we get with everything else but it should be achievable - we could do with having a good look at the state of the engine in there, Keith assured me this evening that it was running when it went in there. Unfortunately that was a very long time ago, and the oil over the engine suggests that it will need some work to even start, obviously it will be stripped and rebuilt before use.

I have had a few people ask me offline whether this little project (codenamed Project B) is going in direction 1, 2 or 3, following my initial post and a little bit of secrecy. I can tell you that all will be revealed soon. Remember that patience is a virtue Needless to say we are all very excited, and this project will be something very special for Jowetts when we have finished.

Jack.

[Jack]

A long day today, just got home after a nice pie and chips for some of the troops.

Amy had a bit of a lie-in after a long week, so I was naturally obliged to keep her company. Work has been pretty busy for a few weeks for both of us, so catching up on sleep meant we were all set and ready to go this afternoon.

We arrived to find Joe and Keith in the garage, already hard at work. Joe had ridden his bike to get to us, apparently his mothers car had some issues so they had called the RAC. Unfortunately a modern car with an engine warning light - without a laptop and the right software there's not a lot we could have done. Luckily all easily fixed by the RAC, and we were in the garage dealing with cars that were made before computers would have fitted in a car, let alone controlled them.

Joe was tasked with salvaging all useable parts from the rest of the doors - the metal is shot to bits so the mechanisms and door catches are all coming out, along with the glass, frames and anything else that may be of use. The rotten bare shells will then have to go to the scrapyard, to join the rest of the car that they came off some years ago. Accident book entry number one (I think) when trying to help Joe remove the handle from the mechanism to remove the door card, I managed to cut my knuckle a bit. Wouldn't stop bleeding for ages, it has now been first aided while the bath runs for a looooooong soak.

My primary job after cutting my hands to bits was to finish off finding and sorting sockets - a quick visit to Halfords Apsley meant we had a few more rails to fill. An hour or so later, we now have at least 3 rails of Whit sockets, 2 rails of metric sockets, and 3 rails of AF sockets. And there's a few spare sockets left over. Luckily we are only missing a couple of sockets from the AF set, these are likely to turn up in the next few weeks as we work, if we've not found them by Easter we'll order the missing two sizes.

Next up was dealing with a fairly unstable and slightly disorganised set of shelves that had been precariously balanced next to Amy's car. Naturally she was a bit nervous about this, but also the location of the shelves in front of the door made the garage feel a lot smaller, and also took up a fair amount of space to get around the cars. Luckily much of the stuff on the shelves was the sockets and various bars, ratchets and extensions, which have now been very neatly organised into a tool box by Amy. That means everyone will be able to find tools for themselves, and know where tools need to go back to at the end of a job.

The shelves came out and the single tall unit was converted into two smaller units, much more stable and useful to fit under the bench.

Keith and Chris decided that now it was dark and starting to rain a bit that would be an ideal time to go and have a look at the plans for the garage building work. Everyone seems to have a fair idea what is going to happen now, though the lumberjacks have failed to cut down the tree that they've been due to deal with for 2 weeks. If only we could all work that slowly! Once that has gone we can start working on expanding the space that we have for parts storage, as well as a workshop for sand blasting, welding, and other messy jobs.

More progress in the evenings this week, we have discovered boxes and boxes of nuts and bolts that we will need to sort - Joe has half term this week, so perhaps a good job for him to get familiar with imperial threads. Plus I did the sockets, so I think I've done my attention to detail job for the year.

Lots of discussion on vehicle movements today as well - by next Sunday we have decided to get the garage sorted to the point that we can move the SC back to the doors, and put the Javelin into the work area. Once we have got it in place, we can get it on our new rotisserie and get the engine and gearbox out, start removing panels, and get a better look at what needs to be repaired and replaced. This will have to happen over a few weeks, as we've got some fairly major work to do on extending the garage, and we've got a few other things to sort out in the coming weeks.

Jack.

[Chris Spencer]

Has Jack stated 'lots of taking' - but we needed to go through the options we have and what the impacts are upon the workshop - i.e. how do we store the SC and Jen's Javelin safely in the workshop and keep them damage free whilst reorganising the workshop - mounting the new project up to the vehicle turner that was purchased at the NEC show - How we stop Keith from having that very worried look as the workshop goes through a major sort through and de-clutter (I think Keith's new road car has numbed some of the pain of this).

Much done though - Keith and myself had a good look at how we would mount the car at the rear to the vehicle turner -the car is at it's weakest in this area with the majority of the rust damage - it is so easy to assume that you can just mount off the bumper irons / locations - but most of the integral strength in the Javelin after the D posts / rear doors is carried in the roof line and the rear shroud - mount the brackets at the rear most point of a car with a rust weak structure - and transfer the load when the car comes off the ground will just result in bodyshell distortion - giving major problems when refitting / aligning body and mechanical parts back to the shell. With a solid shell - I have no doubt that the car can be lifted / fitted to the turner from the bumper iron mountings with some small fabricated brackets.

We decided in the end that the safe way would be to build a steel jig / mounting frame for the rear of the shell - by removing the rear axle we can locate through the shock absorber and the trailing arm mountings - bringing 2 rails out under the boot floor and to mount onto the turner, we shall also put some additional support in off the rear panel where it meets the boot floor / boot panel shut. We need to be careful that this frame will not limit working access to areas of the shell - however one benefit of mounting to the trailing arm mountings is that provides reference for there locations has these are very weak with rust and are likely to move in the repair process with heat distortion through welding - with the jig frame in place this is prevented. Once built. we shall record the frame size to a drawing for the gallery / legacy project along with images -for all user reference.

Mounting at the front of the vehicle is much less of a problem - I am keen to mount the car with the engine intact - but I know Jack is keen to remove the engine - however, ideally the bracket can mount to the bumper iron locations - with some added strength given from a rail back to the start of chassis box section - the reason for leaving the engine in is to enable the brackets to be built around a engined shell - therefore any Javelin can be mounted to the turner.

Images of the rust prone structural areas along with some general shots of the car were added to Amy's camera - who will post them once she gets time - I will comment on them once posted.

[Jack]

I think the best solution is to design the frame so that the rotisserie can be used with the engine, and if possible bumpers etc in place, however before we fit the brackets and lift/spin the car we can remove the valance and bumpers to reduce the weight on the lift, on the floor, and also on the brackets we will need to make. That way we know we can fit it to a complete car, but also don't lose time lift and dropping the car to remove the engine, plus we are going to want to get started on stripping and rebuilding the engine and gearbox sometime soon.

Jack.

[Chris Spencer]

Jack - the bumpers would have to be removed regardless - in order to mount the vehicle - there is no other logical place to mount the car to the jig from - and the weight saving is not even worth taking into account at this stage.

[Forumadmin]

Joe has just registered on the forum, so expect a Jowett Junior's view of this project soon.

[Jack]

Well what a day. After the England vs France rugby match yesterday and rather a few drinks along with it, we were late out of bed, and had to get home from seeing friends. Luckily we'd had a big breakfast, because there was a whole lot of work to do.

We arrived at the garage just after lunchtime to find Chris, his wife Sharon, Keith and Joe all hard at work. Sharon had already taken the pattern for the hood, and was working on an indoor cover for the Jupiter.

Joe was busy helping to move parts up to the cellar from various cars, including glass for a Jupiter, various windows from a Javelin, and all kinds of other things that we needed out of the way in the garage.

Chris was hard at work at the back end, removing the boot lid, the boot floor, and generally hitting things with a big hammer.

Keith soon started work on moving the front seat out of the way so that we can access the floor, shifting it back against the back seat because we haven't really got the space to take it out of the car. We did discover where little mousey and his friends have been living, including their fallen friend found a few weeks ago in the doors from under the car. They had built a nice little house under the back seat, a well hidden and frankly comfortable spot for a mouse. Unfortunately their little house is now in the hoover. Engineering beats nature. Ha.

My main job was to get the space under the house sorted a bit first, a lot of stuff has gone up there and we needed to make sure we were using the space as best we can. That meant shifting an entire back axle a bit, moving drums further in, a couple of small panels, some bits and bobs, and a few boxes of stuff that we needed to keep, but wouldn't be needing for a very long time.

Next up was showing Joe how to disconnect the propshaft so that the engine and gearbox can be removed. A few stubborn split pins later, and a bit of grunting to get the nuts loose, and the bolts were out. We showed Joe castle nuts and split pins, and went through how to get them out and jacking the rear to turn the prop shaft.

Once that was off next up was engine removal. To get it out we had all the other stuff to get off before we could drop it out - the radiator, water pump, dynamo, throttle cable, earth strap from the engine, cables from the starter, horns and a few other bits and bobs. Only an hour or so of taking things off, and we are almost at the point of being able to drop the engine and gearbox. Only thing left are the gearbox control rods, which we should have off this week easily so we can have a good look at the engine and see where we are with it.

I also seem to have ended up blamed for the scratch on the car while the rest of the team were sitting around drinking coffee all morning, strangely I wasn't in the garage between us having the clearout, and the scratch wasn't there, to the point where we went back to the garage a week or so later and the scratch was there. Hmmmm. I have my suspects.

One idea we have had was to swap the cars over so that the SC was in the top garage, away from all the work, and the SA would be in the bottom garage under a cover, however it doesn't have a concourse paint job so much less to risk if there is an accident. We haven't told Keith about this though, I'm sure he'll understand.

Jack.

[Chris Spencer]

I see Jack is attempting to talk himself out the damage to the rear wing on the SC - has the scratch carries two thirds of his initials - I somehow think he has not heard the last of this.

[Chris Spencer]

While we decide where everything goes in the workshop reorganisation, what new storage areas we build, how we build them and when - in the interim we are preparing Lamerod in advance of mounting the shell to the vehicle turner in order to make the underside repairs somewhat eaiser than laying on your back and welding upside down.

I removed the front bumper as one assembly with the iorns, the front panel came off at the same time, the nearside chassis rail to the frontmost of the car is also embedded with tinworm - with this being a closed section and the exhaust following in close proximity to the rail I have little doubt that condensation is the prime cause here as the offside chassis rail is rock solid. We may have to weld some temporary support into the rail as this will be the front mounting point for the vehicle turner brackets.

I then concentrated my efforts to the rear of he car whilst Jack, Joe & Keith went about preparing the engine & gearbox for removal. I removed the rear bumper, boot lid, tool tray lid and the ply section of the boot floor - which is rotten but none the less retained for pattern. Some time was put into the removal of the offside bumper Iron - with only one bolt coming loose and the other two shearing - it still required some effort with the hammer to free it from the mounting point. The majority of the bolts were removed from the offside rear wing with little effort but I had soaked the threads in WD 40 a few weeks ago - I just need to remove the roadwheel to access the last few bolts prior to wing coming off on my next visit - once the wings are off it will enable the building of the jig to mount the rear of the car to the vehicle turner.

Hopefully my example of labeling /marking / refastening the nuts / washers / bolts / brackets back to the removed items got through to Jack & Joe - but I get the feeeling that they may need a few more lessons yet - Keith photograhed all removed items before they were put into storage. More next time

[Forumadmin]

TOPIC Team introductions.