Today was spent cleaning the engine ready for a new coat of paint. The block has been re-bored to take a new set of 1600 pistons and is in its barest form having no bearings or components bolted to it. I’m going for a black and silver effect for the overall finish and once I sprayed the engine block black I installed some new core plugs. I was then going to fit the crank but I’m not happy with the wear on the main shells so I’m waiting for some more before I carry on with the rebuild.
05/04/10 (3 hours)
My intention for a while was to devise a system to turn the car over so that I could work on the underside of it. I’d seen a few contraptions created from bits of junk metal on a few Rochdale’s but decided to find some junk metal of my own to try and fabricate a system. I was ready to fire up the welder when I came across 4 old square tube badminton net posts at the scrappy. These were quite substantial and had the benefit of castors to help move them when they are on a slightly tilted plane. A plan was formed and the post was connected to the front of the car. It slid easily into the steering rack recess but needed an additional bracket to help secure the post in the holes. With daylight going the car was pushed back into bed and our thinking caps went on for the next day’s activities.
06/04/10 (3 hours)
Early start today and the rear post was bolted to the rear floor in line with the shock strut locating point. The glass is really thick here and more than capable of absorbing the flex associated with putting your car on the side! With the posts in place we took the precarious task of tipping the car over on its side, hey presto, it worked. A solid base and well balanced, it was quite windy and the car stood up to a strong breeze on the drive. Once the car was on its side it was just a matter of lifting the back end to engage the Castor wheels on the front bracket and pull it into the garage. The difference in space available is the first thing you notice and then the absolute ease of access to get to those tricky bits without dust getting into your eyes , can’t wait to tackle the damage on the underside! I've also got 2 spare net posts available if anyone wants them!
09/04/10 (2 hours)
After receiving an email this morning about this website and the inspiration it gave to others, this in turn inspired me to get off my bum today and venture into the garage (Thanks Dermot)! One thing I have been concerned about throughout the entire rebuild is the state of the front bonded in frame. Now the car is on its side I decided to inspect this frame to see if hindsight would rear its ugly head, fortunately it didn’t! The underside of this car has suffered from the original accident and is covered in cracks. I have a new moulding for this area so started today taking out the floor area below the front frame, luckily for me the frame is in excellent condition for 50 years old and won’t need replacing. I intend to put the new moulding in (just visible in the picture) and reinforce the area where the front anti roll bar sits to neaten and strengthen the whole area.
25/04/10 (2 hours)
After receiving the Crankshaft Bearing Shells through the post this week I started the rebuild on the engine. After thouroughly greasing the bearings with some engine rebuild specialist grease I put the Crank into position. After tightening the bearing caps I gave it a few rotations to make sure it wasn't too tight, it wasn't, it was bloomin perfect! There was just a bit of daylight left to install the oil pump which was also packed with rebuild grease prior to fitment. This specialist grease disolves in oil to save your filters clogging after initial running. Next will be the pistons and camshaft, I'll need to make sure the Con Rods are all balanced and equal weight prior to fitment. The last time I weighed them they was 20 grams difference between them. This is the reason I have bought another engine to take the con rods out of to try and make sure I have a set that are equal!
07/05/10 (3 hours)
With most of the underside skin below the front subrame removed I set about cleaning up the area of damage in the offside footwell. This had been subject to years of grease and grime so it was imperative that I cut enough away to leave a fresh clean surface to facilitate the repairs. I hope to clean the front subframe next and paint it prior to repairing the underside skin.
08/05/10 (3 hours)
When I come to fit the underside floor skin I'm going to have to fibreglass the front subframe bottom bar in at the same time. Prior to doing this I wanted to make sure it had a few coats of Hammmerite, so after a few hours cleaning I painted the offside half of the subframe and couldn't resist spraying a bit of the fibreglass around it to see how the final finish will be! Once I'd done the spraying I moved into the engine bay, years of grease and grim are stuck to the sides of this and I found the best bet to remove it was with a wire brush on my drill at slow speed. I'd tried a jet wash and solents before but this is definately the easiest and best way. Suprisingly it doesn't rip through the fibreglass and just teases the top surface away leaving it nice and clean. You can see the difference below!
08/05/10 (2.30 hours)
All of the damage on the underside has caused numerous gel coat cracks and weakened the whole area. The best way to tackle this one is to remove all of the gelcoat so that a fresh layer of Chopped Strand Matting can be layered over the top and joined to the new floor skin section being put behind it. Sanding gelcoat can be a bit of a nightmare, if your speed is to fast then the gel heats up and clogs your sandpaper. I find the easiest way to remove gel from large areas is to use a sharp chisel, make sure you have a grinding wheel standing by for regular sharpening! I’ve recently figured out how to embed videos into this website so I’ll do a test with a video of me chipping away at the gel. You can see that it’s a lot less dusty than sanding and a lot quicker. It does bring away some of the chopped strand matting underneath but this will be rectified by putting fresh matting over the whole area. This new layer will also be joined up to the replacement panel. Once the matting resin is cured I can then coat the whole area with gelcoat and profile it to a finish. You can see in the last picture I have balanced the replacement panel in place to give you an idea of my plan.
02/07/10 (2.00 hours)
I've not had much time recently to get in the garage due to the birth of my new daughter, for those who have young family you'll know that all the spare time you do get all you want to do is sleep!! This evening I spent a bit of time sanding down the underside floor to carry out some minor repairs. I'm not going to be too fussy about this area but I do want to maintain some structural integrity so I'll be sorting out some minor cracks and neatening it up a bit. There is also a hole on the underside that looks like a jack or something has gone through it, I'll be carrying out a repair on this also.
03/07/10 (3.00 hours)
I've spent a few hours cleaning the inside of the nose area today. I'm getting this whole area ready so that when I put the floor skin on I don't have to struggle with access problems to do it further down the line. Not much to show but I've taken a video to help make things a little clearer?
14/08/10 (5.00 hours)
I’ve had some time to myself today so decided to find the garage door key and dust the cobwebs off my work clothes! I started with fibreglassing the inside of the nose area to increase the overall strength and cover the holes in the engine bay and bulkhead. This is all in preparation to put the floor plan back in. I’ve also rubbed down all the gelcoat cracks on the underside of the floor and put some fibreglass on top of them and the split in the wheelarch area. Hopefully I’m going to take a week off work in a few weeks for the sole purpose of finishing this bodyshell, come back to see some major changes and possibly ready for painting!!!
05/09/10 (5.00 hours)
Today I’ve decided to drag the engine from the back of the garage and carry on from where I left off. Having already fitted the Crankshaft to this re-bored engine the next job is to fit the camshaft. I have decided to install a MGA 1600 camshaft to this riley 1.5 engine, with the engine re-bored to 1600 capacity the 1600 camshaft will give me that bit of extra power further up the revs. With such a lightweight car I figure it will get off the mark pretty quick anyway! Before I fitted the cam I made sure the journal diameters were the same, being second hand it needed to be the same as the old riley one, fortuitously it was! Coated with rebuild grease I slid it into the engine block and engaged the oil pump drive.
Next on the list was to attach the conrods to the pistons, you may remember back in this diary that my conrods are out of balance and have a weight difference of over 20 g across the 4. Because of this I bought an engine that had laid outside for a while in the hope I could get some better conrods or at least some within the same weight range. I started work stripping down this engine and removed the first conrod, the first thing I saw was a professionally ground conrod shaft! The same was apparent with all of the rods I removed from this scrap engine. I weighed and checked the balance of them and they are all within a 1g tolerance of each other and weigh 50g lighter than my original conrods, not bad for an engine I paid £10 for, couldn’t believe my luck!Below is a picture of the old engine pistons with the conrods resting on top, you can clearly see the work that has been carried out on them.There is a great youtube clip that will help anyone in the same boat with some info on balancing conrods.see:
Finally today, with the new piston rings fitted to these new pistons I connected the conrods and placed them in the engine. The photo below shows them fitted in the engine but not connected to the crankshaft. A good days work but I can’t connect the pistons to the shaft yet as I need some new bearing shells.
