Great SC rebuild.......

[Chris Spencer]

Saturday - 24th - Amy & Jack are away at Jack's siters wedding - just leaves me and Keith to crack on, slight delay in starting as first we head off to Edgeware Motor Trims (After I had removed one of windcreens out of the SA - which is actually is the SC frame) so that we could obtain new windscreen rubber to pattern. Other items of trim were obtained or ordered at the same time.

Upon return I contine to bring the panels into shape - the boot which has taken the most amount of time is now ready to be advanced into primer coats, other panels are close but this is a long process with each panel taking several hours of reshaping before being ready for primer.

I tried a little welding of steel with the new tig this morning on what shall be the SA windscreen frame and this now awaits final prep prior to priming.

Meanwhile Keith shortened one of the gear linkages and prevented them from fouling each other, the wiring harness has started to go in but this is having to be modified as it is for a SA and not a SC.

Many things are left to do and as quickly as we complete them - more items appear on the list that we had not originally thought of - if you can spare any time - you would be very welcome - more updates to follow Sunday.

[Chris Spencer]

Sunday 25th April - I had to prove to the wife that I had not left home hence I was under instruction to escort her to a antique fair that we visit on occasions - I had not even got in to the hall of the said fair when she further reminded me that her birthday was less than a few weeks away. Couple of hours later and my wallet a few hundred pounds lighter (birthday present of choice purchased) I was on my way but still did not get Keith & Jens until 1500 hours.

Amy & Jack arrived about an hour later - Jack will write up about the fitting up and mechanical progress.

Meanwhile in the bodyshop department, the reshaping of the bootlid was completed, followed by both doors, and N/S/F & N/S/R wings - this just leaves the O/S/F & O/S/R wings which are both at a advanced stage of repair & alignment plus the main bonnet panel - which I have yet to start on however first inspection declares the bonnet as the panel with the least amount of work.

The day job gets in the way of Monday evening so Tuesday will be my next visit when I hope to advance the sealing of the seams on the doors & boot plus bring the remaining wings forward to completion.

(My thanks to Jen for again keeping me fed)

More on Tues !!

[Jack]

Well, after a long and fairly stressful day on Saturday (I have worked in some zero tolerance environments when it comes to operational failures, but this doesn't even compare, the wedding of my sister, an accountant, under the supervision of my mother) where somehow I ended up in charge of getting everybody where they needed to be on time, sitting in the right place - don't you love family politics - and managing the alcohol supply through to 8pm (after that nobody was managing anything, least of all careful control of what we were getting through!) we managed to get away from Birmingham around 3pm on Sunday.

A race down the M6/M1 from Birmingham with Amy asleep in the passenger seat (we seem to have both missed rather a lot of sleep lately, old Army theory of sleep when you can, you don't know when your next chance will be) and a quick change to get working on the car.

Sunshine and showers meant we could do a bit of work outside, but most of the work now is being done on the actual car which is nice in terms of progress, not so nice in terms of lack of natural daylight

I started with cleaning up the dynamo, apparently this is what we are going for instead of alternator, for simplicity at this point and originality. Managed to get off the fairly hideous yellow paint, to be replaced with a tasteful coat of spray on black hammerite. All ready to fit, I think we are waiting to do something on the waterworks before this goes on.

Amy and Keith were focusing on the waterworks (as if there weren't enough of those at the ceremony!) and the radiator and hoses are now in place. The radiator, in case it hasn't been mentioned, is quite something - an aluminium brand new radiator has been in the garage a while, and looks great on the car. The fan has been fitted, along with various other important water stuff.

The HT leads went on as well, various tweaking on that front seemed to be going on while I fitted gauges to the dashboard, but the engine is looking a lot like an engine now. No time for photos last night, we'll try and get some tonight for all you avid readers.

Now here's the funny bit. Somehow, despite Keith being a highly decorated graduate of many years experience in Electrical Engineering, somehow I (who would need to check on the web how to wire a plug, just to be sure) seem to have been given the job of getting the wiring loom attached to various bits. So far I've managed almost all of the switch plate in the dashboard, the various electrical gauges (fuel, ammeter) and I think I've worked out the colour coding system on the loom - broadly it seems to be that the red wires are connected to the red wires, unless they aren't, in which case you have to go chasing about with a multimeter checking everything 5 times. Same is true for the 70-odd (yes, you read that right) different colours of wire we've got in the thing. For 1950s car, when electricity was barely invented, there sure is a lot of wiring in this car. I haven't quite worked out how we're going to get the wiring sorted for the subwoofer and underfloor lighting (and sequential Dukes of Hazzard horn) but I don't think anybody will notice with the sheer number of wires we are dealing with Hoping to have the dashboard finished tonight, another major milestone for the project, and I can start working on the various parts of the interior we've got to get sorted, and Amy and Keith can work on getting the engine running and the other end of the electricals - the lights etc, and I guess that Chris is going to need some help getting the panels fitted once painted as this is a right pain to do on your own.

All in all, the deadline is achievable. As long as we don't have any major failures between now and MOT time we are probably going to be ok, I think, but there are going to be a lot of late nights and long weekends before then. I may have to have a chat with the boss (the real boss that is, not Amy) and see if I can get a day or two off before the end of May.

Jack.

PS - Chris mentioned last night that he'd noticed a lot of people had read the various threads relating to the rebuild. If anybody is out there and wants to ask any questions or offer any encouragement we'd love to hear from you, even if you're a little too far away to drop in and see how things are going. On that note, if anybody is local or in the area and wants to come and have a look, by all means get in touch with one of us, there can't be many projects of this scale going on at any one time, so any curious members very welcome, you don't have to bring your spanners and multimeter, honest

[Amy]

As Jack said, we arrived yesterday afternoon following the wedding (we escaped with only one of the flower arrangements, which Jen has taken delivery of), and rather lacking in sleep.

Whilst Chris worked away in Filler Land behind the Big Blue Curtain, and Jack ferreted away with cleaning up the dynamo and getting started on wiring the switches and gauges, I took it upon myself to install the cooling system (well, it would be useful, eh?).

I unwrapped the very very shiny new ali radiator (one of Scott Renner's, I believe), but discovered it had taken a few dinks, so spent half an hour straightening it all out.

Bottom hoses were attached, then removed, cut to size and re-attached, then the radiator itself was bolted into position, loosely enough to allow for a bit of movement. Next came the top hoses, which prompted a question from me to Clements Senior "so, what do these attach to, dad?"

I hadn't found anything in my box of cooling system bits which looked likely. Clements Senior promptly swore a bit - it seems that we're missing the Y-pipe attachment which links the top hoses to the water pump. Oops. Current plan is to get some copper pipe of the correct bore, and dad will wield his very shiny new TIG at it to craft one together; we'll probably ask Scott to bring one over with him from the States so that we have a 'proper' one too.

I also fitted the water pump, with a bit of jiggling, the help of some white grease and Clements Senior's muscle power. On of the propellor blades was fouling the radiator, so was promptly bent back a little (I possibly bent it whilst tightening the nut on the fan).

Our next issue arose when we realised that the bracket from the water pump to hold the dynamo doesn't reach the hole it's meant to. Not sure what the current plan is for this....but will need to be sorted, as we have a cleaned and painted dynamo waiting to go in.

This was about as far as I could get with the cooling system, so I moved onto the distributor and leads. The new distributor has an 'interesting' method of connecting the leads to the dizzy, which involves much butchery of HT leads. I've duly butchered, and will get the leads into the dizzy cap tonight / tomorrow - we need to check which order to attach them, and given the difficulty of attachment I want to make sure we get it right first time; 11pm on Sunday night wasn't the time to be trying it!! Hopefully - Y pipe and dynamo bracket notwithstanding - we'll get the engine done this week (carbs have been cleaned by dad, and I think are ready to go on) and get Napoleon started...

Amy.

[Jack]

Major update on the new stuff arriving front, a box has landed on my desk with about a million nuts and bolts in it. All looks to be good, lots of small boxes of nuts, bolts and washers - reception couldn't work out how a fairly small box could be so heavy!!!

Hopefully no more problems finding the right nut and bolt to fit, and we can replenish stock in the Clements garage.

Jack.

[Forumadmin]

A little bit out of order as I started this before work but then work interrupted.

Completed all the welding on Saturday and Chris had a go at the mild steel welding on the windscreen.

Got on with the loom on Saturday morning starting at the rear where the SA loom needed heavy modification. I performed surgery on the loom by carefully cutting the braid and tape around the joints where the petrol sender and indicator wires came out. Then pulled them back through the loom to where the nearside and offside branches split.

This branch is positioned in the centre now just above the rear prop shaft. The branches go off to each side of the boot and the wires extend down the inside of the boot offering protection from the elements. The offside splits into a centre branch that now contains the indicators and number plate light.

I will put connectors on these ends allowing removal of stop/tail lamps and boot lid. All connectors will be inside boot.

Continued forward connecting up sender, pump, brake light switch (which had an extended cable for LHD version) and on up through hole in front of driver on bulkhead to join with main loom.

Then organised main loom, positioning grommet between fuse branch and regulator branch. Connected up coil, starter relay and wiper (after spending much time not finding the new wiper grommets so fitted with old). Need some work on wiper arms. Anybody know if there is a driver's side replacement available?

Stripped and soldered all the wires on the loom, fitting connectors where the loom differed from the SA (wiper motor, ignition switch).

Jack and Amy then came and we decided to use the dynamo (and hence rev counter). If it does not work we will swap to alternator; (main reason is that connectors would need to be changed). Need to check on whether we should run dynamo on positive earth (currently set up for negative!).

Jack cleaned and painted the dynamo and then set about the dashboard. Amy tackled the waterworks ; but I let them tell you about their jobs.

Spent an hour or two wondering where the Y piece had gone that connects the water pipes. Has anybody a spare,please ? I know Scott has had some stainless made so may have to ask him to bring one!

The new water pump from Bill Lock had a new support arm for the dynamo fitted. Unfortunately this was too short (having checked on SA) so will need to modify a Javelin one.

[Forumadmin]

http://jowett.org/jowettnet/dt/tech/mod ... rnator.htm
Shows how to swap polarity and fit an alternator. So will go negative earth.

Latest pics on TOPIC

[Jack]

Another evening spent in the garage, this time me and Keith had a rather small friend "helping" us - a bumblebee that I am pretty sure was buzzing sarcastic comments at me while I rubbed my head and looked at a wiring diagram.

After much deliberation, including me thinking I was ready to fit the switch plate on the dashboard, it became entirely apparent that we had various spare wires, various terminals without wires in them, and we obviously weren't done.

At this point it also became apparent that just because the diagram said there was a brown wire going into a terminal, that didn't mean there couldn't be another brown wire going into the same terminal. I learned a lot about wiring diagrams this week.

We also established that if the wiring diagram says attach the green wire, that doesn't mean you can attach any of the green wires in front of you.

After much faffing about, a bit of swearing, some fiddling, but no bodily injuries (though I will have the scars in my mind forever) the switch plate is now, to the best of my knowledge, wired up correctly.

I also connected the wires to the small gauges in the centre of the dashboard at the weekend, and last night was able to connect up the bulb in the centre of the dash (much more work than it sounds like) and get a good earth for the bulb so we won't have to worry about that for some time.

We also learned last night that it is a good idea to clean up contacts when you've got the various components off the car, and to make sure that any earth wires are well and truly earthed as you go. I am sure a lot of this is very basic stuff for many of you who have been living with old cars your entire life, unfortunately I am having to learn as I go, and that can be a slow process at times

Anyhow, in addition to the switch plate, the starter button (rather important) is now wired up, and I am hoping to get the big gauges (speedo and rev counter) wired up and fitted tonight.

Hopefully, if I can get the couple of small panels that fit in the dashboard test fitted, the holes to the far left and right on the dash pic below, we can basically put the dashboard to bed for the moment and I can get on with wiring up the various other bits of the car.

DSC00836_sized.jpg

I also suspect that the hole second to the left of the switch plate square hole is non-standard, the finish seems a little rough, and it is mounted lower than the other holes and kind of spoils the symmetry of the dash. I am also not sure what goes in that hole, but hopefully the wiring diagram, Keith's memory, and the powers of deduction should help us out. Possibly.

The other thing I am distinctly not looking forward to is the prospect of fitting the indicator switch. Which now I've wired up everything else, there isn't a lot of room for. That will be another job for tonight, hopefully not too stressful as I think I can wire it up and then fit it - trying to get to the contacts in situ now would be a bit of a nightmare.

I have noticed with the wiring loom that some of the wires are a bit short here and there, and some don't have the connectors we were expecting, but we think this is because the loom is for an SA not an SC. The gauges are in slightly different places, but at least there are the right wires that are connected to the right places now with very little modification.

Finally, as a bit of an aside for anybody desperately interested in putting a dashboard together for an SC, we got some O-rings to space the gauges off the dashboard. These are designed to protect the paint firstly, but also to keep out some of the potential weather from getting into the gauges and causing corrosion and behind the dash particularly. With the potential for condensation on the inside of the windscreen, and a possible sudden rainstorm, trying to keep water out of the mass of wiring back there would be good. On the SA the gauges seem to be mounted quite differently, giving them a fair bit of protection from the elements by design, on the SC they seem more exposed and open to the elements. The O rings should also prevent the gauges from rattling in their metal housings, another benefit. If anybody really really cares a lot get in touch and I can dig out what sizes we used, but it was basically just measure the diameter of the body of the gauge and get a 3mm O ring of that internal diameter.

Jack.

[Forumadmin]

Whilst mentoring Jack on the nuances of wiring I rectified the water pump support by taking a Javelin one and drilling a hole in the appropriate place. Now that place is a matter of great precision as it needs to be high enough for the water pump not to foul the distributor cover which it will do if you have no gap between the pump and the timing cover. Also when in that position the rubber ring on the rear support popped out. Measuring the SA pump I found the dimension between that ring and the pump casing was 1cm shorter on this pump from Bill Lock. So be careful, we do not want the fan shaft coming out!

Anyhow, with the pump raised by 3cm, the rubber hose was now the correct length and the rear rubber ring seemed to stay in. The Javelin bracket had to be bent to prevent fouling on the pulley. Pump now installed but we need a Y pipe. HELP.

The fan at this height is not vertical so the top of the radiator will need to lean backwards to provide enough clearance. We will have to set all this up when we get a Y pipe.

Amy should install the dynamo tonight, after finishing off the ignition.

[Amy]

but we need a Y pipe. HELP.

I thought we would be fettling one together with bits of appropriate-bore copper pipe and your shiny new TIG? If you can measure the bore of the respective pipes, we can get on with sourcing some copper. I happen to know a plumber...

[Forumadmin]

33 mm to rad, 35 mm from pump. But 33 all round will do.

After midnight last night before we all retired. I had once again looked for the missing Y pipe. No luck, so will phone a few people as no response from forum. I found copper washers of correct thickness to point the heater tap correctly. Note the fitting had some sand still in it from sand blasting in professional rebuild!

Amy found a screw fitting (carb banjo ) that fitted the heater inlet to the rad. I bored it out to 7mm to give a bit more water flow. I used rubber grommets to angle the rad backwards after retapping the captive nuts to take longer bolts. Did ignition timing and labeled dissie cap so Amy could insert cables. Note- set No 1 cylinder to TDC, contact breaker point terminal is placed just behind body of water pump, with rotor arm just before it (arm rotates anti clockwise) and rotated back and forth till the offset slot locates and dissie drops into place. Clamp hole that fixes to timing cover had to be filed to centralise clamp on dissie body . No 1 lead should now be next to water pump and other leads numbered in order anti clockwise 4 -2 -3 as per brass ID plate.

Amy finished the waterworks (apart from the Y pipe!) connecting the heater.

Chris put in a long evening on the panels finishing up seam sealing them.

Jack continued wiring with a long lasting discussion on how to wire the indicators ending the evening.

[Jack]

Well, my achievements were few last night, managing to get the ignition warning light wired up (sounds a lot simpler than it was!) and I am now confident that it will work at the right time. Or at least, it has the correct coloured wires attached to the bulb, time will tell if I have got that right!!!

I have now, I think, worked out in my head what we are trying to achieve with the indicators, and now understand why my method wouldn't really work - if you switched the trafficator in either direction both indicators would come on the way I was planning to do things

I am planning to have the power terminal for the trafficator switch run to the indicator light, and from the indicator light to the "power" - the fuel gauge has power coming to it and is local to where the power is going so is a logical choice.

Then the left and right hand wires coming from the indicator switch will run to the flasher unit - not sure if we are going to need two flasher units or if they have separate "sides" for the left and right hand indicators - in all honesty I don't think I've ever seen a flasher unit, I thought that was an elite part of the military that went around in long rainmacs and not much else

Other option if there aren't "sides" in the flasher unit is to have the power from the fuel gauge run to the flasher unit, then to the bulb, then to the indicator switch, which then goes out to the left and right hand indicators.

Because the wiring loom originally doesn't seem to have indicators which work with a flasher unit, the wiring diagrams we have aren't helping massively. We do have a modified wiring diagram, however the modified diagram doesn't seem to quite line up with the wiring loom we've got in front of us - this may be due to the way we have done things, but I think I have worked out the issue - we have allowed for a flasher unit in the loom, but have not allowed for an indicator light on the dashboard. Possibly.

This said, trying to work it out at past 11pm last night probably wasn't the best time

We also discovered that we have one more wire than we actually need running from the left hand side of the switch plate to the other. It follows the same route as another wire doing the same thing, that must have been a 10pm confusion between the left and right hand side of the panel from me I think, but the wire is doing no harm where it is, and will act as a backup to the one that is in there for now. Plus if we disconnected it we would have a spare wire in the loom, potentially one which could run from fuel gauge to indicator bulb/flasher, but the length wouldn't allow this so it is better to stay as is, and we'll be the only ones who know it's there (well, us and the whole internet I guess) unless we remove it, which means unpicking a braided loom to remove it which I don't want to do.

My plan to get the speedo and rev counter put in place were unfortunately put on hold by the indicator discussion - because of its location the indicator really needs to go in before the large gauges, otherwise they'll only need to come out again to get to that part of the top of the dashboard.

I am going to be having a chat with the boss (the one at work that is) today to see if I can get Tuesday off, I think with a day to have a go at it I could get the wiring sorted so that I am happy, and it will pass the Clements Quality Control department.

Ultimately, and this is the important thing to remember through all this, having done all this work on it, I now understand what is happening with the wiring in the dashboard (arguably the most complex piece of the electrical puzzle) so if we ever have any electrical problems I should be able to find the fault much more quickly than going back to square one with finding the fault, probably in some far flung destination as we are trying to get to a checkpoint before sunset or something.

Lots of plans to get working on the car this weekend, unfortunately I am away from Friday to Monday, but will be putting the hours in next week to keep the project on track

We also should note quote of the project so far:

Keith: “If you can get that horn working, you’re a better man than meâ€

[Forumadmin]

On way back from work called in at Classic Autos to see if they had some aly tube of the correct size, 32mm and 35mm. They did and cut me off 6 inches of 32 and 3 inches of 35. Cut the 32 in half at 45deg.
The restorer (who is rebuilding Lotus' first F1 car) asked how I was going to put a ring on it and duly produced a special tool to swage a ring on the end to prevent hose slipping off.

Visited my parents who live opposite and then went back just in time to greet Chris.

After some discussion and looking at SA decided to leave the 45deg angle and tack welded the two halves together. Then cut the point off to accept the 35mm tube. Then welded it all up.


As you can see the bonnet is ready for skim fill after a little panel beating. By the end of the evening it was filled.


Jack was AWOL tonight. Allegedly planning a stag do. But I have purchased a 2x21w flasher unit and drawn a wiring diagram to fit it. It might work!

Amy is around tomorrow and just has drain plugs to clean and fit, whilst I weld up the water temp sensor adaptor. Then it is water in.

Hope to get the electrics finished soon, with all the components tested before battery connection.

May just hot wire petrol pump and ignition and give the engine a start though. First need to make sure no leaks in petrol system using and air line (so if there are we can solder up).

[Chris Spencer]

Progress contines in the bodyshop department - on Tuesday the O/S front and rear wings were completed in preperation for primer coats. All panels have been repaired by removing all paint (this was several layers that had been applied over the years and was a huge task for Amy & Keith). Minor welding repairs were undertaken where required.

Keith built new bottoms for both doors and reinforced the bottom hinge mounting points. I then took each panel and reshaped them as required by panel beating bringing the surface contours to the original shape prior to skimming with a high quaility body filler.

Days of rubbing down - 80% of this is by hand and block to ensure that a ripple free finish with the correct body contours are achieved.

Wednesday evening got the remainder of the seam sealing completed - although not undertaken at the factory when the car was new we have taken the option of sealing any water / rust traps on all of the panel joints and seams as required - whilst being carefull to present a finish that looks original.

The last panel to get into shape prior to primer coats is the main bonnet panel which is not in too bad a condition - with all the paint removed you can see the original factory joins in the metal - the bonnet would have been made in sections and then welded together - 7 sections in all according to my eyesight vs adding up and when taken into account what tools and equipment the factory utilised - is a real work of art ! By the end of the evening I had the bonnet panel beaten and skimmed with filler.

The weekend looks an exciting prospect as the primer and paint coats are planned - we have a reasonable forward weather forecast so the drying times should be in a our favour. I do not wish to make it sound too easy as we are still up against it - once all the panels are painted and fitted there is still a large number of small parts / trims / fittings to be prepared and painted and then fitted.

We have not even started to think about things like the hood / side windows / chrome trims etc - so the sooner I stop blathering on and get on with the day job - I can get finshed and over to Clement Restoration Challanges Limited (which is 30 mins up the road for me) - More soon !

[Leo Bolter]

Hello Chris (also Amy, Jack, Keith et al.)

What a great team effort is going on at the moment . . . Marvellous really. I have been keenly following the "reports" daily . . sometimes several times a day!

But a question . . . . How are you off for suitable supplies of the guards to body/bonnet joint piping in the UK?

I ask this because when I did my car there was nothing suitable here in NZ. All that was available was a cheap and nasty plastic moulding that was too small in the round section and too short to pull down into the joint area where the two flanges meet. My Auto Trim mate and I developed a method of making our own "anti-squeak" from Vinyl and synthetic rope to give the approximately 5 - 6mm diameter "bead" needed. We were also able to ensure the piping's sandwiched material was long enough to protrude well through the flange so it could be pulled from underneath while the bolts were snugged up. This ensured the piping bead was nice and snug in the flange joint's groove on the top surface. The excess material under the guards was trimmed off when all was considered to be satisfactory.

Further info. can be given if you require it.

All the very best . . . Leo.