Drained the gearbox of oil. Why does it always smell of poo? Got it jacked up and supported on some concrete blocks i've been tripping over for the past 3 or 4 years. Really could do with another pair of axle stands. Gonna remove the box and axles for cleaning and painting along with the spring plates. It'll also give me a bit more room to get to the bottom of the boot floor to remove the scabby underseal. Managed to get the brake drums off to find they were full of cobwebs. Not just a few wisps but absolutely chocca. It looked like they were full of cotton wool.
Inside of the drum after tons of cobwebs were removed. Pretty dry in there (apart from where i sprayed plusgas) and even the shoes look OK. Brakes and backplate removed and axle tied up to allow any oil in the axle tube to drain back into the gearbox and out of the drainplug into the catch can. Other side is gonna be a bit more difficult as its really close to the garage wall.
Today lets look through the oval window. Trying to work out where the end of the clutch cable was so i could pull it out. Think thats possibly the remains of the original fuel line at the bottom. Got the nearside brake backplate off and the axle disconnected from the spring plate and undid the two big gearbox carrier bolts. Bloody tight and not much space to get a breaker bar in. Removed the two front mounting bolts and lowered the gearbox out on a jack. Little bit empty in there now.
Gave some suspension parts a wire brushing and a coat of Vactan rust convertor. Its a white liquid in the bottle but looks lilac when wet and should dry to a hard black finish. Will be getting a coat of grey oxide over the top then maybe silver chassis paint to make a change from chassis black.
I had to take them back to the garage to paint as it stunk. Got the welds on the repair on the top of the rear bulkhead grinded. Just needs a little skim of filler and it'll be rite. Made a start on wirebrushing the crud off the gearbox too. Top is OK now but the bottom is caked in oily muck.
Just read through the whole thread, some great work there, please keep the updates coming I'm on the lookout for a bug for me and my lad who's 15 to sort out for his first car so yours is a real inspiration .
So will home heating oil dissolve the oily muck? Isn't heating oil just parafin? So that gives you 2 years to find one and get it how you want. How much are you looking to spend? Even ones needing loads of work seem to go for a lot of money on ebay these days.
parafin comes from heating oil , heating oil is much cheaper leave it for a day or 2 3 days or get a 2 inch paint brush cut the bristles in half and use it to dislodge the crud , bulk head turned out perfect hats of
Thanks. I got the top of the bulkhead painted today and i'm well happy with it. Its getting hidden with carpet anyway but its nice to know its solid and tidy underneath. Got a few of the other smaller suspension parts painted today. Only enamel spray paint but better than rusty steel i suppose. I was told a messy workbench was the sign of a sick mind. Hmm. Flipped the gearbox over and started scraping the crud off with an old screwdriver. I think most of it will just scrape off but i've bought a stiff parts cleaning brush to give it a proper cleaning before paint. Just the bits around the side plates that look like they could be fun to clean properly. I've left the axles and gaiters on to try and keep as much muck as i can out of the box.
So that gives you 2 years to find one and get it how you want. How much are you looking to spend? Even ones needing loads of work seem to go for a lot of money on ebay these days.[/QUOTE] Not got a fixed budget yet but prob as little as possible but will have to do some calculations regarding how much work is needed versus purchase price, yes the prices do seem to have gone up I bought a 1 owner 69 with MOT and patina about 10 years ago for 1400 sold it about 5 years ago due to lack of use, wish I'd kept it now.
Ta muchly. I paid £1200 for mine 20 years ago, then bought this 1303s for £100 a few years later: Turns out it was in better condition structurally than my 1300 is.
Got two of the torsion arms off after struggling for ages to undo one of the balljoint nuts. Ended up using a nut splitter and sacrificing the bugger. Bearing surfaces don't seem too bad but the shock mount still has the metal bush stuck on it.
Atleast two of the balljoints are scrap even though they only had a years use out of them. This one was fitted wrong so beat itself to death: and one of the others has a crack running round it from a pinhole of corrosion.
I gave the other 3 torsion arms a coat of vactan. and then gave the rear drums a coat of high temp gloss black:
