escondidoron

In all the years that I've owned this car it has never had sufficient cooling capacity to support our SoCal desert climate. I could never get the coolant temp to stay below 100C with both fans on when driving the car in a spirited fashion. Last week I finally bit the bullet and ordered up a new aluminum radiator from Redline components. It is a very nice piece of kit: I added a pair of ports for a thermal fan switch and an air bleed in the top tank. I had to relocate the drain port so that the petcock was in the proper position to clear my steering rack mounting bridge as well. I installed it today and took it out for a 30 mile shakedown run in the hills above our house. The coolant temp stayed between 75-80C with ambient temp in the 70-75F range while driving even with the cooling fans off. The peace of mind this gives is a real load off and makes driving so much more enjoyable!

Putting the way back machine into fast forward, I am presently prepping for 4-day 1,000 mile or so road trip with friends north to Callifornia's central coast area around Arroyo Grande. I've been trying to figure out a convenient way to secure my mobile phone without damaging any of my new, and very pretty, to me at least, red leather upholstery. Yesterday I fabricated this nice little bracket to mount a magnetic phone holder, Scoshe p/n MAGDMB. I wanted to locate the phone on top of the transmission tunnel at the forward end of the removable trans cover / shift boot panel. However the alloy panels easily accessible in that area are now covered with expensive square weave carpet or more expensive red leather. Hmmmm. So after percolating on the problem for a bit I came up with a very simple bracket that both mounts the phone holder and secures the front end of the trans tunnel cover: The trans cover slips into the leading edge slot like this sheet of aluminum: The mount bracket itself is riveted to a hidden part of the trans tunnel. Once installed it looks like this: And And from the driver's seat: The magnetic phone holder is effective and simple to use. It is near to my new USB outlets as well. Also this location is out of direct sunlight yet readily visible when driving. Best of all no upholstery was harmed in the fitting of this bracket! Even better, no fasteners are required to secure the trans tunnel cover.

Waaaay back in May of 2016 I experience a piston ring land failure due to detonation on my 1340cc Cosworth Ford pre X-flow Lotus Seven while on a Targa California event. Initially I thought that it was a blown head gasket, which is a field repairable issue. Here we are in the hotel parking lot in Paso Robles: And then heading for home after reassembly showed lack of compression on cylinder number 3: Subsequent teardown once home revealed the root cause. With the engine out it seemed like the proper time to thoroughly cleanse the engine bay and driveline tunnel as the car had accumulated a lot of extra weight in the approximately 40 years since it's last thorough cleaning in those regions. What should have taken only a month or so went sideways when I decided to do a thorough chassis cleanse since the engine was out. This revealed a cracked chassis tube just aft of the left front A-arm mount. Further inspection found 2 more cracks. Which ultimately lead to this: And finally complete skin removal to bare chassis.......

I love the clams!

You are correct for many of the cars. They are used on my '62. However somewhere along the line when double A-arms are used the spindles are no longer the standard Triumph component. Not sure if they are modified, from another source (likely) or bespoke (unlikely).

I'm presently in process of fitting a Yoshimura RS3 silencer (haha) to my '62. I sourced mine used as a freebie from a customer at the shop who brought in 5 damaged carbon fiber motorcycle mufflers for me to repair / repack to net 2 usable units for his project. There were enough salvageable parts that I ended up with a 3rd unit to keep for myself. Here is a link for a pair presently listed on eBay Some fabrication required to adapt. But definitely lower cost if you have the facilities/skill set required.

Arch as it looked in 2018: And on the inside, need a drop floor pan? Maybe a replacement chassis? The brothers Robinson, the owners of Arch and the sons of the founder, are still at it and very helpful blokes. When I was re-skinning my '62 I got a class in forming the rear panel over the chassis rails during my visit to the factory:

Not sure about the present situation but Arch Motors built chassis back in the Lotus S2 / S3 days and at least into early Caterham production.

I'd be impressed if my '86 S10 short bed with 2.5L Iron Duke 4-cyl 5-speed weighed that little! I've had it weighed many times after dropping off material at the various local land fills and it comes in reliably between 3000 and 3050 lbs empty with fuel after removing my personal 200 lbs.

Haha. This is just like pulling the engine on my Seven to repair a failed piston ring land. As long as the engine is out there will never be a better time to thoroughly clean the engine bay and trans tunnel. Wow, look what I found, a cracked chassis tube....and another....and pretty soon the skins are off and it's a full blown rivets up restoration and reconstruction! Absolutely classic requirements creep! Hang in there.

Good to know. We're all looking forward to the update. Thank you for your efforts.

We have several vehicles in the 'fleet'. I guess that we are pretty much a Geely family. My wife has a '16 Volvo V60 wagon, delivered new at the factory in Gothenburg, Sweden. My daily driver is our trusty 1973 Volvo 145, the Bad Banana:

T-9 gearbox reassembly timelapse: The embed feature does not seem to be working for me. Is there a secret handshake?

Thanks for posting. I've been watching this project from just about the beginning. It's been a long road. The journey starts here: And if you are a bit more mechanically inclined there is another obsessive journey out there that is a bit more for the amateur builder vs restorer you might want to check this one out:

Nice.

Besides a serious Lotus addiction issue it turns out that it's really more serious as the diagnosis of my condition has been confirmed that I actually suffer from a severe case of Geelyitis; I own 4 Lotus and 2 Volvos. That said, while working on my one-owner '73 145 I have found a wealth of helpful information on the TurboBricks.com Volvo forum. One of the long term posters over there is going through a Volvo Amazon and has a very serious case of scope creep in his maintenance and restoration blog documentation. He has posted extensively WRT his home fabrication of CF parts for the car. He's just doing minor stuff like pretty much all of the bolt on panels like the hood and trunk lid as well as parts like door skins and parts like the intake manifold and air cleaner. Here is a link to the forum that documents the build, Volvo 122S Build Thread: Scope-creep the Sequel If you don't care to follow his progress or peer that deeply into his obsessive compulsive activities you can go direct to the builder's youtube channel, Throttle Stop Garage With something like 73 videos there is lots of good information on mold and pattern making as well as tips and tricks regarding general composite fabrication technique. I hope that this helps.

While we haven't attempted a monthly Costco grocery run in the Seven we have done so with both the Esprit and the Evora on occasion. The 2 'boot' configuration of the Esprit makes it quite Costco friendly as long as you remember that the aft bay gets pretty warm even without our summer and fall SoCal ambient temperatures: While the Evora has only the rear 'boot', it is quite spacious with careful packing. Note that it can get warm back in there as well so don't plan on packing perishables back there for a long drive:

PM sent.

I have a Caterham metric bonnet that you can have for free if picked up or if you want to pay shipping. I'm near San Diego. Send me some dimensions to check fitment. I will need your length, front & rear width and front & rear height. Color is green.

I am using a Crow 5-point harness system. While I had my car completely disassembled for chassis repair I added multiple tubes to the chassis to accommodate full triangulation as well as tabs, tubes & reinforcements to support integration of the harness tie-down points. If you're interested to see what I have done I can start another thread.

For future reference I have had excellent experience with Crow Enterprizes.

Same here, either in one of the cars or on my mountain bike on the local trails. While the great roads here in San Diego County are inland (all of the costal areas are too populated for spirited driving), a truly fantastic ribbon of asphalt, Highland Valley Road is only 5 minutes from our front door. I venture out every few days. If a little more time is available a short run up to Julian to take in Wynola Road is a fantastic morning experience. Here you can get a good feeling for heading uphill in the early morning sunlight: Before departure, my lovely bride cautions me to carry and wear a mask. Likewise upon my return she wants to know if I have been mask diligent and did I have any contact while I was out. Concur. Some food for thought: If we manage to be able to vaccinate 1,000,000 people per day nationwide, 7 days per week, it will only take a year to get everyone in the U.S. vaccinated.

Yeah, I know the feeling. We're starting to experience cabin fever too. We have been pretty much on self-isolation since 8 March. although I did organize a drive this past Sunday morning up to the Mount Palomar summit with some friends as part of the Drive at Dawn with Hagerty. If you aren't aware, Hagerty sent out a note to members offering a free Hagerty baseball cap to anyone who sent in a picture taken on Sunday morning, 16 August, to try to generate some enjoyment in lieu of the cancelled Monterey Car Week. We all practiced social distancing and in general we're responsible. It was the 1st time in months to see others in person. A very nice, if fleeting, break from being home solitary. But it did cause me to reminisce WRT Car Week. This year is the first time in many years that we have missed it. It prompted me to put together this little video as a result:

On the Chevy side of things, with the SS package, it was a trim package only, at least on some Chevy IIs and Chevelles. The earliest Chevy II SS models were 6-cyl only as the SS option pre-dated the V8 availability in that chassis. I have seen a couple of documented mid-60s Chevelles with factory 6-cyl engines. Badge marketing at its best! Not to mention the obscure trivia that you can remember from your youth when you get old!

Good to hear. Contact me off list to discuss a drive on Sunday 7 June.