Fyi i have shrinker and stretcher, and won’t need them for a couple months
Fyi i have shrinker and stretcher, and won’t need them for a couple months
In reply to dougie :
Her wonderful mom. It says "Daddy's Pit Crew".
In reply to Patrick :
Hmm...I may have to borrow them because this is just a stupid way to make the part and I probably have to do it on the other side.
As could be figured by my reply to Patrick, I had a really annoying time at the shop today almost finishing off this repair. I started by finish welding the piece which led to a couple small blow-throughs. Then it was about 30 minutes of fiddling to get the fit right. Then it was super tedious, low-heat welding (with one blow-through) to get it stuck into place. Ugh. At least it's pretty much done and smooth.
Oddly enough, the closer I get to the finish line, the further away it seems to be. ***A glimpse into Andrew's mental state regarding the Healey***
Saturday was busy. I had an 8AM meeting and then had to go out to Painesville to check out a potential Rally-X spot. Once I got back and had lunch, my wife and daughter got home from their lunch and I hung with them for a bit. That left me 2 hours to work on the Healey before needing to get ready for dinner.
I finished up the rear quarter repair. Apparently I didn't take any pictures but I'm very happy with the fit. Then it was on to the passenger fender. I'm baffled by this... It's hard to really get a good feel from the picture but there was almost 1/4 inch of filler towards the bottom of the fender covering up perfectly good, smooth metal.
I'm not a big fan of the big cooling vents that competition Healey's often have in the fenders.
It has been made clear to me, however, that it's very important to get as much heat out of a Healey's engine bay as possible. Yes - this is the case with any competition car, but those truck engines create a E36 M3 ton of heat! One of the most active Big Healey racers in the country showed me a clever trick that I'm stealing. Cutting holes along the bottom edge of the fender. You can't see them unless you're under the car and the fast moving air on the outside helps to pull the hot air out. Before trimming down my patch panel I started laying out my holes.
First I made some clear-as-mud measurements.
Then I drilled some pilot holes.
Then I proceeded to pretty much melt a cheap 1 3/4 inch hole saw on the drill press. On the list today is buying a set of quality hole saws. At this point I needed to get home for dinner so I had to end on a bit of a fail.
Yesterday, however, was all success. The Miata crew I run with is going to the 24 Hours of Lemons race at PittRace in a couple weeks so we needed to get the cars prepped.
The black one is the former Spec car that I blew up and put a new engine in last summer. That will be the primary car and needed a clutch, new rear differential, fire system (had been robbed at Nelsons last year to get the Pink Lady through tech), window net and new belts. All that was completed yesterday.
The Pink Lady is the backup car and got new belts, nets and a brake job on a forklift... It still has the blown HG from Nelsons and it will be getting a new (used) engine this week as well as some new (used) coilovers.
A sharp eye will notice that the fire bottle is technically in backwards in the Spec car. This was noticed only after the teammate in charge had already bent and cut the lines. Hopefully tech doesn't give us an issue. The manual says that having it pointed that way means it may not work under extreme braking. It's hard to imagine a situation while you are hard on the brakes AND reaching for the fire handle but I suppose it's a possibility. At worst we should have enough room to just flip it around into the footwell.
I really didn't feel like working on the car last night so I decided success would be cutting 6 holes.
Moderate success. As can be clearly seen, I forgot that in my haste to get a hole cut on Saturday I grabbed a 2" hole saw instead of waiting to get another 1 3/4". I bought a 1 3/4" saw yesterday. That leaves me with the ring around that one hole. Options as I see them:
Obviously the right option is to weld it but I'm nervous about the possilibilty of creating more work for myself by burning through...
Welding is going to be tough to do, I would paint it and move on. I'm easily defeated though.
Lead it.
Ignore it. Nobody will ever notice.
Pete
I'm sold on not welding. Thanks guys.
Knowing myself, I can't let it be completely as it is. I will notice it every time I inevitably have to put the car up in the air to fix something... Filler to the rescue.
I should have known that when I got the panel fitment right in <5 minutes that the welding part would be a pain. I definitely need to chuck my wire wheel. It's not doing a great job clearing away the surface rust and I'm feeling that it's contaminated. Heat and warping were a real struggle with this repair. I've got a good bit of hammer work before me.
The floor needs sweeping...
AxeHealey said:I really didn't feel like working on the car last night so I decided success would be cutting 6 holes.
Moderate success. As can be clearly seen, I forgot that in my haste to get a hole cut on Saturday I grabbed a 2" hole saw instead of waiting to get another 1 3/4". I bought a 1 3/4" saw yesterday. That leaves me with the ring around that one hole. Options as I see them:
- Leave it, paint it, "forget" about it (very unlikely, but appealing in many ways)
- Fill it with bondo, paint it, "forget" about it
- Weld it up, paint it, actually forget about it
Obviously the right option is to weld it but I'm nervous about the possilibilty of creating more work for myself by burning through...
Option #4: punch that one hole all the way thru with the 2" hole saw.
AxeHealey said:I should have known that when I got the panel fitment right in <5 minutes that the welding part would be a pain. I definitely need to chuck my wire wheel. It's not doing a great job clearing away the surface rust and I'm feeling that it's contaminated. Heat and warping were a real struggle with this repair. I've got a good bit of hammer work before me.
The floor needs sweeping...
In reply to Indy-Guy :
I could if the 2" saw would make it through... But yes, that's an option.
In reply to Crackers :
Seriously.
Plugging away. Fairly happy with the fitment of the passenger side. There's still work to be done with the door edges but it's all coming together. The bottom edge of the repair panel on the fender was causing the fender to stick too far out in relation to the door and rocker so that had to be adjusted.
Then there was something I couldn't ignore any longer. I'm guessing there was a mirror mounted on top of the fender at one point. A previous owner, probably the one who "restored" this car fixed the hole with mesh and filler. I fixed it with metal.
I guess I didn't get a picture after I welded it. Should be back at it tonight. I'm expecting to run out of welding gas pretty quickly so I'll likely be spending time drilling holes and aligning fasteners.
I got to the shop last night and couldn't get myself motivated to do rust repair so I spent some time cleaning up tools that I've left scattered around. Then I realized that I've got to get various things sent out to be rebuilt; calipers, rear shocks and front shocks. Front shocks haven't been off the car yet so I yanked them off.
Needed a good amount of heat to get these bolts out. The nail didn't last too long. Switched over to a screw driver that did the trick nicely. Passenger side came out much easier.
Also stumbled across a nice way to pull out stuck cotter pins.
Oh and here's the repair on the fender. Not the prettiest but a zillion times better than mesh and filler. Will probably clean up a bit more too.
I also have been curious as to whether or not the E21 would still be SCCA legal. As I'm getting more involved with SCCA for Rally Cross I feel like it would be nice to be able to run with them every so often on track. The local tech guy wanted some pics and I figure why not throw them up here.
Little known fact, if you cut your rust out with more rounded corners you can cut back on the warp and eliminate minor stress points that could show up as a crack a few years down the road.
That is a pretty amazing patch fit by the way. Some kind of a Savant skill?
Pete
In reply to NOHOME :
Interesting, I'll keep that in mind.
Even in my limited experience I've been burned so many times with poor patch fitment that I maybe go a little overboard.
So how about a little Lemons wrap up? It was just about a perfect weekend on a track that I just can't say enough good things about. I got to the track around 2:45 on Friday as the Miata was just headed into the tech garage more-or-less passing with flying colors. I then got my gear approved and whipped up my tent on the penthouse level.
Spoiler alert - the Pink Lady didn't move from this position! The black car ran awesome the entire time.
For whatever reason, this was my favorite vehicle of the weekend.
There were TWO E28s running! (pic of the second comes later)
Saturday morning came and we were ready to go!
I was last in the car in the morning and ran a 2:22. Fastest for the group at that point. In my afternoon session I ran three seconds faster turning a 2:19! Our closer then got in the car and smacked me down with a 2:17. He was...pushing.
Sunday morning brought rain.
We had a bit of a rough morning. The Lemons guys weren't happy about a little incident our last driver on Saturday had with one of the (THREE) Triumph TR8s, then our second driver on Sunday morning got bumped and spun out on the main straight and didn't come in. I was third in the car and got black flagged (for the second guy not coming in) and we spent about 25 minutes getting reamed by Jay. I went back out, was super timid not wanting to spin the car and have to go back and talk to them and, oh by-the-way couldn't see a damn thing it was raining so hard so my lap times were pretty terrible. I think my best was a 2:44. Yuck.
The day got progressively better, however, and in my afternoon session I ran a 2:22 on a partially wet track. I was really pleased. If I had driven that well on Saturday I think I would have been at least a couple seconds quicker.
So. A fantastic weekend with great track time in a car that is just so much fun. We ended up 33rd overall with a ridiculous amount of time spent in the paddock during driver changes. If we actually cared about winning we could have been much higher up.
My panning skills aren't what they used to be but I got a couple OK shots Saturday afternoon.
Yesterday I dove into the final big rust repair on the body but I ran out of gas so I couldn't finish.
Today I brought the shop vac over and gave the floor a much needed clean-up. Then the focus was to Elmore. I'm tired of the gigantic bent bumper always being in the way.
The ends have caught on so many things (before and during my ownership) that they stick out well past the side of the body.
So they are going away.
I'll make a cap for the end and then hit it with some paint. The bumpers, grille and wheels are going to get a color change...
Rust repair on exterior body panels is DONE. Just a patch or two on the inside of the driver's door and the FR wheel well and there is literally no rust on this Healey. Strange.
Threw a seat in and made vroom vroom noises because it's starting to feel like it may be a car again. Yes...I know Healey steering wheels go the other way so gauges can be seen but I like it better upside down.
EDIT - I guess I didn't post the picture and I've since deleted it. Rest assured - the vrooms were made.
AxeHealey said:Rust repair on exterior body panels is DONE.
Woooo Hoooo
Big milestone accomplished.
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