Work begins…

[Papalazarou]

I’ve been staring at the car all winter. Sat sorn in my garage. This week I decided to pull my finger out and get some projects underway.
After watching Jonathan’s video on wet blasting, I too bought the £16.99 ebay attachment and a couple of bags of kiln dried sand. I removed the spacesaver rest and the battery under-tray and started work. To begin, I’d never used the sand blasting attachment. But was expecting big things. The first thing that happened was the sand tube filling up with water. Not a good start and with no instructions that I would not have read anyway, I was a little disappointed. Anyway, by turning the sand inlet tube to the top of the lance I was in business.
This was not the deluxe version, so it was not a beautiful steady feed of sand and water. But I am really happy with the results.
The next job was to pick up the refurbed fat fives. This was an expensive job. I could easily have gone to the powder coater and spent sensible money. But a good wet paint is just so much better.
So I have the 94+ seven spokes on the car now, whilst I get the tyres back on the fat fives. I drove the car a couple of miles the other day and whilst aesthetically I prefer the seven spokes. It rides and turns in better with the original wheels.
This weeks evenings have been taken up machine polishing. I haven’t done this for a year or so and it’s a massive time waster. I have to set my alarm now, so that I don’t leave the garage at midnight. However, the results are great and although red/black is not my dream colour combo. It’s so rewarding to work on. So about five hours in and two panels.
Today my amps arrived for my bose speakers. I know nothing about electronics, so a friend from the forum is going to wire the ‘new’ amps to the old speakers. Not OE, but these days original amps are tough to find.
I had the roof repainted. There was a small impurity on the nearside corner which needed sorting. I’d forgotten how utterly tedious the job of stripping out the back the interior is, in order to get to the screws that hold the b-pillars on. Maybe not as bad as getting the air intakes off, but close.
I thought I had a spare weather strip for the windscreen. But I was wrong, so I’ve just ordered some stuff from Amayama. ABS accumulators are back in stock. But they won’t send them! However, the £22.00 weather strips were in. Yours for £75.00 from HUK. I hate them.
Amayama’s a bit of a nightmare. I go to checkout my trolley and have to remove all the cool stuff I don’t technically need. But want.
I did order a refurb kit for the shifter. It feels fine, but I fancied another project and saw a guy doing it on youtube. It looked quite easy although not sure which grease to use.
So, lots going on really. I hope to have it back on the road in the next few week.

[goldtop]

Sounds like real progress. I've not tried sand blasting - is this to remove paint or just dirt and grime?

My car also needs the weatherstrip that goes across the top of the windscreen - the one I have refuses to stay in place at a few locations. Did you have to order both parts?

As for speaker amps, these days Class D amps are so small, efficient and decent-sounding that if/when my Bose go bad, I will replace them. Talking of which, do we know the claimed output for each of the original speakers?

[Papalazarou]

Sounds like real progress. I've not tried sand blasting - is this to remove paint or just dirt and grime?

My car also needs the weatherstrip that goes across the top of the windscreen - the one I have refuses to stay in place at a few locations. Did you have to order both parts?

As for speaker amps, these days Class D amps are so small, efficient and decent-sounding that if/when my Bose go bad, I will replace them. Talking of which, do we know the claimed output for each of the original speakers?

Mike sold me a set of amps that he’d done, but I owed them to a friend who bose amps I had stolen. So I’ve bought some more. Not sure of the original outputs.
The sand blaster is for the aluminium parts. Although my wife bought a fire surround last week, so maybe that too.
I always order both strips, for a couple of reasons; first, it’s been in there a while and secondly there’s potential to damage the fastener strip when removing the top strip. Both strips from Amayama come to around £45.00. So with a few other components, carriage and a bit of duty, it’s not that expensive.