Great SC rebuild.......

[Forumadmin]

A couple of pictures.
Amy getting on top of a hood hoop.
Jack tackling another hood hoop

[Jack]

A day of woodwork for me, crafting the batons for the top of the windcreen across the front of the hood.

These look like fairly simple planks with rounded edges, but in fact are angled at both ends, rounded at one end, and various cut-outs required on the bottom edge for the metalwork.

I managed, working from 1pm to about 7:30, to get most of one done. It involved cutting a piece of the right width from the plank with a circular saw, planing the sides to get them flat, planing the front edge to get the correct curve on it, cutting either end to the correct angle, sanding the various ends, sides and corners, then routing the relevant parts for the metalwork to fit into, and chiselling the corners square from the router.

Final job is to drill the right holes for the screws and the locating pin on the corners of the screen.

And then to make the one for the other side I think I managed to use almost every woodworking tool we've got.

Then Amy filled up the car with petrol for its first outing of the year - Goodwood Breakfast Club, Soft Top Sunday.

Jack.

[Forumadmin]

Except Amy has no soft top, Jack (In the MX5) and I (In the SA) have. . Early start mind with a couple of hours on the road before breakfast. My stomach will complain.

Awaiting an update from Joe who helped Amy adjusting the brakes on the SC, me with sorting no headlights when going to the Ace Cafe in the SA and Chris who was doing a bit of welding on Project B.

[Jack]

Another evening in the garage, and time for me to finish off the passenger side baton for the top of the windscreen.

I had successfully managed to be a bit keen with the planer on Saturday, but with a bit of sanding managed to get both matched up and correct length and profile.

There was a bit of work to do removing a bit of material for the metalwork on the hood frame - I had routed these sections out, but in order to keep it looking original, and because I am fairly sure that they didn't have electric routers available in 1954, I got the chisels out to square off the corners and remove any marks from the router.

A quick test fit demonstrated that I had not cut quite enough material (much better that way round) and had a little bit of tweaking to do in order to get the fit perfect.

Only jobs now are to remove a small amount of the metal from the front of the frame - the metal is much larger than it needs to be, and prevents a nice smooth edge for the front of the material, as well as preventing the hood from seating properly at the corners, creating a draught. I'll do a bit of research on existing hoods, however the consensus seems to be that Jupiter hoods are just draughty - hopefully we can fix all that with our new hood.

I'll also be getting some photos of the woodwork, because it will hardly be visible once the hood is fitted, and rather a lot of work has gone into them!

Next job after the batons - back to the hoops for more cleaning and some painting, as well as the horizontal and vertical wooden batons around the windows.

Jack.

[Leo Bolter]

Jack.

I have several detail images of my (Mk 1) hood (and tonneau cover) which I can send to you (or post here) showing the front "baton to windscreen frame" and it's method of very satisfactory waterproofing . . . there's NO drafts and leakage from that point and only minimal leakage at the rear bottom area of each side windows at the transition of the hood, window glass and the door top . . . I'll indicate that area on the images if you take me up on my offer. I carry a couple of old towels to catch the splatter, inside near the small gap, when it's really pouring

In other words with the top up (a RARE thing) we are as snug as a bug in a rug!

Best regards.

Leo.

[Forumadmin]

Hi Leo, please put in Gallery or email.

[Jack]

Another evening of hood work, and finally the wooden batons are fitted to the metal front rail!

There's another few screws to fit, the ones that are on the inside edge and visible, and the locating pin holes need to be drilled to correct depth, but these are quick jobs that should be easy enough to do in an evening this week.

The sealing strip discussion is ongoing, currently researching others hoods to get an idea of what works, and what we can do with our hood to get the least draughts and leaks!

Annoyingly, when everything was all cut, fitted and putting the screws in, a small crack has appeared at the end of one of the batons. I could have cried. I think it is repairable, and luckily is in the least critical/structural part of the batons near the back.

More presents for Amy, the very expensive designer bag that she won as part of Classic Car of the Year arrived today (we took a little while to get it ordered due to rather a lot of work on the car and family stuff over winter) and it is really nice. Hopefully it will last a lifetime, because I can't see me being able to afford a bag like that any time soon!

Jack.

[Jack]

Managed to get the screws into the interior side of the baton last night, fairly quick and simple to get done, so I could start looking at the fit of the horizontal batons above the windows. Hopefully not too much work to get these sorted, they seem to fit nicely at the front edge and the new ones are already cut to size and match what we have pretty much exactly.

Currently debating whether to do the vertical baton first, to get the top and bottom lined up correctly along the edge of the glass, or whether to fit the horizontal baton and then work out the vertical one from that. I think it may be a case of both at the same time to get the right fit, many hands should make light work.

Evening off tonight perhaps, and everyone back in the garage on Saturday to carry on with various jobs on the SC and Project B. That said, if the sun keeps shining and I can get out of work at a sensible time I might fit an hour or two in before dinner while the garage is quiet.

Jack.

[Forumadmin]

You lie Jack! You are currently down the garage sorting the batons. I have been down there for 2 hours rebuilding the 30 VIg carbs that will go on the Javelin. Stalled because I need a 1.5mm cobalt drill to drill out the stud (that holds the gasket to the float chamber) that broke off. You can get that drill whilst Chris and I are listening to the F1 practice down the garage between 9 and 11.30 tomorrow (assuming you two get out of bed!)

Big day tomorrow with a Barbie planned for the end of the scorching afternoon. 24 C here today.

[Jack]

Well, decided to give in and get an hour or so in the garage this evening. Initially just sorting the correct pieces of wood for the horizontal and vertical batons, then routing the section for the hoop over the top of the car. This is now provisionally fitted on the drivers side.

Next rather scary job is to fit the main hinge to the vertical baton. The spacing is critical, as is the angle along the vertical edge of the window.

Final checks revealed a small section at the top of the door that needs to be modified slightly to hold the window channel in place correctly, and also to allow the vertical baton to sit properly on the B post.

Big day tomorrow, off for a bit of shopping when we get up, then to the garage to try and make as much progress as possible.

We also, quite worryingly, looked at the number of weekends left between now and the Jowett rally in Daventry. It's not very many, made worse by planned holidays in the next few weeks.

Jack.

[Jack]

Yet another evening in the garage, and progress is marching on at a pace with the hood now.

Motivated by seeing the mocked up hood on the car, tonight's job was to get the batons above the windows in, I started with the passenger side because this is the harder side to get to on the car when everyone is in the garage, so it made sense while I was the only one around to get it done.

A small amount of chiseling was required to get the gap correct between the front of the hood metalwork and the top of the quarterlight, this was too wide on the rough cut wood we'd got, but easily rectified.

Once that was done, it was time to do another one of those horrible "if I get this wrong we are completely back to square one" jobs - cutting the angle and length at the rear of the baton where it meets the vertical wooden baton. Luckily, the cut went well, and just needs tidying up with sandpaper when we do the varnishing.

I then had to fit the metalwork to the baton, another pressure job with very little clearance in either direction. Not too much work, a bit of clever clamping, 3 screws, and the metalwork was on.

Final little job was to cut the bolt that had been chucked in there by the previous person to play with the hood - they had elected to drill a hole in the wooden baton to allow the bolt to go through - my solution was just to make the bolt the right length

Tools away, and time for dinner - paella in the oven, Amy is still excited because we found a very cheap hard top and a new master cylinder for her MX5 today, and apparently it is a thing of wonder and beauty. It's nice, but I can't see it's that exciting Perhaps after I've driven for a bit in the "new" car I might see the fascination. I just hope she doesn't decide she wants a hard top for the Jupiter, because I don't think we'll be able to find one for a similar price if we could find one at all...

Jack.

[Forumadmin]

Since all the rest of the team are on holiday in Europe either skiing down rocks or visiting car museums in Portugal, it was left to me to continue painting the hood frame. Anyway it was 27deg and sunny whilst doing that and before a great rugby match where we secured second place and only one point behind the leaders with one match to play. Damn like last year the Jowett rally will take precedence over the final at Twickenham.

[Jack]

The rebuild continues at quite a pace through evenings this week, and the third evening this week and we have progress on the oak hood frame.

I have been sorting out the horizontal batons above the windows, which seem to need to fit in about 5 different directions - the hood has to still go up and down, they have to rotate through the correct axis to fit flush when it is down and also at the correct angle when it is up, has to be the right length to secure the vertical baton exactly parallel with the edge of the window, both forward to back and also inward and out, has to be the right angle for the front edge to seal against the top of the windscreen and be parallel to the top of the screen, and also be at the right angle to follow the angle of the top of the window perfectly.

All of this, otherwise it will either not work (as in go up and down smoothly) or it will leak.

So, with just a little bit of pressure on getting this right, we have now finally managed all of these things, except for getting the front edge to fit against the windscreen perfectly. And that is because I have not yet drilled 6 diddy little holes and put in 6 diddy little screws. Once that is done, I think, just maybe, we've nailed it.

Saturday is going to be a busy one in the garage, with these little adjustments left to sort (though we are very very nearly there) and then I will need to take most of it apart again so that we can put the varnish on the oak to really bring the colour of the wood out - it's not original concours as it would have left the factory, but the grain and colour of the wood is so nice that we will be keeping it on display in the car. This little detail does mean that there's no second chances with these batons - you get it right or you start again, because every mark will be visible if you get it wrong, no hiding behind a vinyl covering or layers of paint here.

Once that is done we can hand over to our hood fitter, Chris' wife Sharon. With just a few short weeks to the rally it is starting to feel like another mad dash, but I am fairly confident that with a good couple of days this weekend we will have the hood frame sorted and the fitting will hopefully be fairly painless.

Keith on the other hand is going to a rugby match tomorrow Apparently Harlequins vs Saracens is rather important. We've opted for the premiership semi-final instead of the last game of the regular season this weekend. Hopefully the game will be on the TV in time for us to take a break from serious Jowetteering. I'm sure he'll be making up the hours on Sunday and next week, I guess we all need a bit of downtime occasionally.

Jack.

[Jack]

A busy and somewhat frustrating and painful day today.

The first job was to assemble the hoops at the back of the car, the bars that help the mechanism to work and are attached to the bottom hinge, and generally get everything ready for sealing tomorrow.

I decided to start with removing the window channels from the old wood, the first one required quite a bit of work to get these fairly fragile metal channels. This involved drilling one screw head to get it off, and cutting one screw to get it off. During the cutting the saw slipped and took a fairly massive chunk of skin off my finger. Ow.

More frustrating was when I went to the box of bits to get the other one, having carefully removed one, only to find that someone has removed the old one by prising it off, bending it and damaging all the screw holes. I have no idea why they didn't take 10 minutes to just do it properly and avoid us having to make a new one, I am sure the guilty party will avoid owning up to this one. Partly because they may do well to avoid getting their bent and broken part thrown at them in the garage

After this mildly frustrating moment, I decided to focus on what we could make progress with. The steel was attached to the vertical wooden batons, but had a couple of screws which hadn't been fitted, so these went on, which should be nice and strong now.

The next and critical job was to fit the sealing strip for the top of the windscreen. At some point this morning Keith must have gone shopping, because several metres of sealing strip was waiting for me when I got into the garage today. This type of seal required a 6mm channel, around 4mm deep, right the way along the front of the screen. The fit was really important, because if we got this wrong we'd end up with either a screen that didn't seal, or we'd have a gap along the front edge of the screen that wouldn't look good and encourage wind and rain to get in there and try its best to leak. No problems here though, a clever routing trick resulted in a nice neat channel for the seal to sit in, and we should be able to both glue and staple the seal in place if required.

Final job was to take everything apart, which was an almost depressing job and felt like we'd not been doing anything for days once it was done, however it all came apart very quickly and I was able to keep careful track of which screws went where and keep the metalwork together. A bit of sanding and sealing tomorrow, and then we just need to put everything back together again.

Jack.

[Jack]

We have now sat watching a film cleaning chrome. That's got to be a first for this rebuild, but the parts are looking a lot better for it. Almost unrecognisable compared to the grubby bits of metal we started with, paint on them, that gunk that accumulates on stuff where they are regularly used, and a bit of rust here and there.

A couple of very small springs and screws that make the front edge fittings work are currently de-rusting. Good old fashioned Coca-Cola is doing a nice job of taking the rust off them, conveniently there's a special on at Sainsbury's so we've got about 10 litres of the stuff in the kitchen.

Roll on tomorrow, fitting shiny new chrome, and getting everything looking good again.

Important job for tomorrow, making another couple of fittings for the latches to hook under - currently we have two because there were only two on the hood we had borrowed from John Blankley, but our hood had four originally (I think) and this will make the front edge of the windscreen seal nicely and be more secure at high speed. They'll have to go to Premier Plating this week to have them ready and fitted before the rally, I'm sure they'll do their usual great job.

Jack.