Sunday, 4 November 2018

FHC resto nr. 73; Staying up

While working on the car over the past few months the fact that I needed a makeshift prop (the anoraks will probably recognise this TR7 part!) to keep the bonnet and the boot lid up, started to get ever more annoying:


Time to search through the boxes of galvanised parts for the two support stays and their mounting parts. That's when I found out that I forgot to add the special mounting bolts to the batch of parts that were sent of for galvanising:


So these were quickly added to the "need-to-be-galvanised-as-soon-as-possible" basket. But as galvanising is a batch process, plating only a handful of parts is rather expensive. As I wasn't too keen on the temporary stay, and disliked the fact that the bonnet was fitted with a metric bolt and the boot lid with a pair of old school  imperial ones, I decided on a redesign. For which I (again) used a  local firm (Montagetechniek Patrick Saes) specialised in all sorts of stainless fasteners. And he managed to come up with a fairly simple and cost effective solution, using standard M6 Allen head bolts with ø10mm rod with an M6 inside thread:



This solution was almost direct plug and play. Only the pivot holes in the two stays needed enlarging to slightly over ø10mm, to fit the new mounting bolts. But that was rather straightforward with a drill column. After which mounting the stays in their designated position was a piece of cake. At least the boot lid was:


The bonnet took slightly longer, as I needed a new jack nut for the mounting point on the inside of the LH suspension tower. But that was quickly sourced and ordered:


And I didn't have to take the special tools out to fit it into its designated place. A long M6 bolt with a sturdy washer, a small vice grip, a spanner and plenty of grease on the bolts thread, was all that was needed to do so:


After which securing the bonnet stay was straight forward. Paying particular attention as not to knock the temporary stay (as pictured @ the top of this post) from its position. The bracket of the bonnet stay is mounted to the bonnet with two M5 bolts. In my case dome headed stainless Allen key bolts:


With another small task finished I went in search of some parts for the headlamp mechanism. To be continued ...



2 comments:

Unknown said...

Greetings, Very nice work. I am working on building a rotisserie for my TR8 coupe and I am wondering if you found that where yours pivoted in the area of the bumper was a good balancing point?

Thank you

Beans said...

Hi Unknown, with the bumpers as mounting point the body will turn upside down. But easy (as in not to heavy) for one man to turn it in any position needed.