DHC report nr. 44; Under body protection

Went over to the car a few times over the last week to have a look at the progress but also to make a small stand to make transportation and painting of the body a little easier. Last week the seams underneath the car were filled in with sealant;

After which it was time to mask of the body in preparation for the under body protection;

Just visible on the left is the (light weight) stand that will be used for support in the spray booth. And with the masking done the under body protection could be sprayed on;

Followed by a thin coat of spray filler, as a final base for the top coat.

This needs flattening down, after which the underside will be painted in a 2-pack uni-colour, this is planned for early next week. After which the body’s outside can be painted. It is booked in with the paint shop for the second half of next week 😎

DHC report nr. 43; Front brakes

After last weekend’s struggle with the front suspension I thought it a good idea to take ‘t Kreng out for a spin in the country. And I enjoyed every minute of it. But it also give me the opportunity to visit local brake specialist C&C Parts and see if they could provide me with some new brake pads. I have used EBC green stuff before, but whilst performing pretty good overall, they lacked proper bite in extreme situations. So I opted for some Mintex M1144 pads which they had in stock for the ATÉ M16 front calipers I have on the car;

They even had the proper fitting kit for these Ford Granada based front calipers in stock;

DHC report nr. 42; Front suspension frustration

Progress on the DHC has been a bit slack over the past few weeks. Won’t bother you with the reasons for this. But as my holiday started this weekend I thought it a good idea to get some work done. So to get my motivation back I started with something simple like reassembling the front suspension. As all the parts were already coated or cleaned it shouldn’t take more than a few hours to get them back together. How wrong one can be!

Right from the start it went wrong. The first job to do was to get the damper inserts into the struts. Usually this shouldn’t take more than a few minutes, but the lock-nuts refused point blank to go back in the struts. Their thread just didn’t want to engage with the thread inside the strut tube. A closer inspection of said nut quickly revealed the problem;

Clearly the thread got damaged somewhere, but I can’t remember how. But luckily I do have a few spares so out came another nut. This time I made sure the thread was good but the result was the same. The thread just didn’t engage properly, every time I thought it was engaging the nut would tilt. But a frustrating hour and a half later, in which I swapped lock nuts and struts, and cleaned and re-cleaned threads, I got a result. I managed to get the lock nut in a few threads by hand, after which I had to change to the special (Koni) tool to get it in further. But it soon became very heavy work indeed. As I was afraid to damage the thread of the struts I removed the nut again. Number two was also ready for the litter bin;

Luckily the struts’ thread wasn’t damaged so it was time for number three, which went in with only very little persuasion. Strangely enough the other strut suddenly went very smooth too. But now I was pretty fed up with them so I decided to finish them! From here everything went slightly smoother, only cleaning out the bolt threads for the calipers and the disc shield proved rather time consuming.

Before putting them back in I thought it a good idea to check the Sierra bearings I put in two years ago. There were a few people who had their doubts as to how I had mounted them. But I’m pleased to say that they still are in pretty good nick and still work as I meant them to.

And after a stubborn plastic ring, that for no obvious reason didn’t want to fit in its designed hole, a bit of a hassle with one of the springs and a pair of gaiters that went on to smoothly (so slid of immediately afterwards), and lots of perseverance I managed to get everything back together in the end!

DHC report nr. 41; Chosen Color

This one doesn’t need much explanation. Managed to get a fairly decent shot of the colour sample I received from Dutch paint manufacturer Sikkens last week;

According to them this should be 1979/1980 Leyland Triton Green (HAG). Don’t know if it is the correct shade of green but I like it, very green indeed! Contrasts nicely with the black trim and blue piping of the interior.