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No shame in your game, Jack. Coming along really nicely.
PS, it must be “dashboard week.” Here’s me, two days ago:
Wow! Very nice, Ed and Jack!
Vicenç - (bee sense)
Pembroke Pines, FL
1986 Aston - BCW Model 52 - "Montse II"(1983 FiberFab MiGi II - "Montse")
Great progress Jack!
And I saw yet another phrase I will never be able to type, “I ran it through my surface plane.”
Because, of course! Everyone has a surface plane in their garage! 😉
Paul Mossberg
Former Owner of a 1981 Classic Roadsters Ltd. Duchess (VW)
2005 Intermeccanica RoadsterIf you own a TDr and are not in the Registry, please go to https://tdreplica.com/forums/topic/mg-td-replica-registry/ and register (you need to copy and paste the link)
Progress, Progress…
One thing I did add after seeing Bill’s work on making engine compartment access easy, is a set of hood hinges that can be easily taken apart to allow the hood to be removed…
I just knocked out the hinge pins in the hood hinges and replaced them with a long machine screw and nyloc nut…may only be worth the effort for front-engine TDr owners, I imagine…
Happy Jack
Very cool idea. Maybe that same idea can be used at the bottom of the side panels. Although the side panels would have to be cut at the bottom about the fenders.
1986 British Coach Works Type 52 (Sammy)
Chevy 2.8 V6, 5 speed…not sure how much of the fender strength is provided by the panels being secured to the down (sides) with those 5/16″ nuts and bolts….interesting idea, though…
As to modifying the hood hinges so that they can come apart to pull the hood off — it was an idea born from some good old- fashioned brain storming —
Royal was over helping me figure out how to cut the hood so that it would fit the car (previous, previous owner of the kit trimmed things a bit too much in some places and too little in others). I had been reading the CMC kit assembly manual coplaining that the kit company was too cheap to provide friction hinges for the plexiglass wind wings — they had you drilling out the hinge pin and using a bolt and nyloc nut to provide the friction — Royal said “why not drill out the hood hinge pins and use machine screws instead so that the hood can be easily removed to work under the hood…….!!!
Amazing how many good ideas come from out of the blue when you sit and complain and think and brainstorm!!
“Happy to be able to easily take the hood off of the car” Jack
Thinking back what I actually did was to use a punch and hammer to push the pin out and then I used a drill and drill bit to clean out the hinge barrel so that the machine screw fit in easily. I found out the hard way that the hinge pin is bigger on one end (the end that has serrations to hold the pin in) and should be driven out from the small end……but it will work if you get it backwards and start driving the pin out the wrong way — it just takes a lot more effort to get the pin out… (guess how I figured that out??????)
So again, I drove the pin out, did not have to drill it out —
Happy Jack
Still plugging along but I do tend to get sidetracked away from the mundane and toward the more exciting stuff —
Found a used, Triumph TR4 LeCerra steering wheel with the Boss and all of the mounting hardware and horn push on eBay at a really great price…This set turned out to be an old MOSS UK kit from the early 2000’s…so it makes it not quite New Old Stock nor antique but still a bit period for the MG…..
Now I have to do some trimming on the center steering shaft extension and the MG insert so that all will fit as needed — not sure I can get the center horn switch operational but we shall see… I also need to find out if I like the wooden wheel’s thickness or if I’ll want to wrap it with a WheelSkins leather wrap sometime down the road — but it does look like it will be a pretty good color match for the dash (both seem to be Mahogany that is more toward a brown tint).
I guess I should get back to bolting the fiberglass together, glassing in the battery box and pan/body, etc, etc…
–Happy Jack —
(too bad there will be no Air and Auto show in Va Beach in October this year,…….bummer…….
That wheel looks really right. It’s the absolute best one for a TD (next to the Bluemels Brooklands, of course).
No Air & Auto? DANG!
Perhaps I failed to be clear. The VA Beach show will probably happen as I informed George that if it goes to Sunday, they will lose all of us. Being long term attendees that might persuade them to keep it Saturday. I know, wrong thread.
Jack, the wheel looks great.
Bill Ascheman
Fiberfab Ford
Modified 5.0, 5sp., 4:11
Autocross & Hillclimb
"Drive Happy"I know, wrong thread but…
It does look like the Air and Auto show in Va Beach is off for this year. I got this from First Settlers yesterday — in part ..
“Air & Auto Classic attendees, volunteers, sponsors and vendors:We’d like to thank you for supporting our show, some of you for many years. Due to your generosity, together we’ve raised $64,000 for some great charitable organizations since Air and Auto Classic 1 in 2010. After eight years of conducting this great event, we’ve decided to take a year off. We have 12 October 2019 reserved at the Military Aviation Museum, so we’ll be back next year. We’re considering having the show on Sunday the 13th to help deconflict with other shows that weekend, so stay tuned for that. If you have a strong opinion on having the show on Sunday, feel free to shoot us a note by replying to this email. We hope you enjoy the 2018 car show season and we look forward to seeing you at Air & Auto Classic 9 in 2019.”
…so unless we want to make up our own show sometime in the fall…???
Jack
More (slow) progress on my Ford TDr —
Front Fiberglass all fitted and then removed so I can install the heater, wire up the engine compartment, and install the throttle linkage and pedal.
Now I am working on getting the back end fiberglass fenders and panels installed, as well as creating and installing a wire harness … hard work, this…..(even for someone who has electronics background…..) I can see why original kit buyers would opt for the kit-provided wiring harness for their Ford-based cars).
Also — I had to find a wiper assembly from a VW junkyard — then de-rust it, paint it, lube it and install it — I think I’m going to try to use a pair of VW wiper arm pivot ends with some wiper arms removed from an old pair of Trico MG-style wipers — to take advantage of the screw-down spline-grabbing VW wiper design…….stay tuned…..
Fun, Fun, Fun!!!
Happy Jack
Nice going, Jack. I’m about to start wiring the Spyder, a daunting task. As it happens, I, too, need a wiper rig. I wish I knew you needed one: I’d have sent Bridget’s old setup. No good for the Spyder, as it needs the later (sideways motor) standard Beetle rig. NOT the Super Beetle! (Ask me how I know).
So, a plethora of VW wiper junk here at The Brass Hammer Motorwerks. Just not the junk I happen to need!
Yea, I also found out about “curved windshield, 20″ between center-of-pivot” Super Beetle wiper rigs — I purchased a very nice, extra clean rig, got it home and found out that it would not fit (too wide). Luckily my local VW junkyard took it back and let me wander the yard to find a “flat windshield” Beetle rig that they let me pull out of a late 60’s rusted out Beetle. Hence the extra time with the wire brush and black paint……
Have fun with the wiring!!
Ed, by the way, I did find a new rig available from CIP1 in California — for around $150 complete with motor…
Of course, I found that one right after I finished referbing the junkyard one that I paid $100 for……. 🙂
…By the way, the flat windshield regular VW Beetle wiper rig is 15 3/4″ between centers on the mounting pivots….
Jack, I never had to cut the hat. It was used as is. It simply bolted to the small flange on the rear cover. Drill your own holes.
Bill Ascheman
Fiberfab Ford
Modified 5.0, 5sp., 4:11
Autocross & Hillclimb
"Drive Happy"Hey Bill,
The problem is that the flange on the hat is only around 3/8″ wide and the mating flange on the rear is about the same, making it impossible to install per the assembly manual (installed from the inside using 6 ea. 5/16″ bolts and nuts) — only room for #8 self-tapping screws, and barely at that. So Roy came over and helped engineer a way around the problem. We straddled the opening with a piece of pressure treated deck board 5/4″ x 5 1/2″) that we attached inside the lip of the rear deck opening. Then we put the hat on from outside the rear opening (instead of inside) and used some 1/2″ all thread rod bolted to the wood, then the hat, and then the spare tire. Eight 5/8″ #8 sheet metal screws hold the hat edges flat to the rear. The all thread gives it the strength it needs to carry the spare tire. An added benefit is that I can access the rear area (gas tank and fuel level sender) just by taking off the hat instead of having to pull the whole “truck lid” off of the car.
The only problem was the rough edge on the hat — went to Auto Zone and got some black door edge guard guard plastic U-trim, put the trim around the hat edge and called it done!! (Thanks Roy for the idea)
It’s rather amazing how much invention and innovation and adaptation and sweat and re-purposing goes into creating our “rides”!!
Very good.
What you don’t see, does not matter.
Bill Ascheman
Fiberfab Ford
Modified 5.0, 5sp., 4:11
Autocross & Hillclimb
"Drive Happy"True. The tub and the doors were wood “framed”. Wood floors also as I remember (might be wrong here – I sold my TF-1500 35 years ago)
We thought about using a piece of steel plate I had in the scrap pile, but that seemed like overkill for what was needed….so out came the leftover deck board and the wood saw instead of the steel plate and the cutting wheel.
And as Ed and Roy pointed out, my Ford-based TDr (still un-named “tribute car”) now has some wood in its DNA — just like its original namesake…
When I go to Jack’s house to work on his TDr, I dress up. I grew up in and around garages and workshops and I NEVER saw anything like Jacks…..perhaps an operating room? It’s quite a different experience, for me, not getting dirty when laying on the floor under his car.
This TDr build will look absolutely new, with paint in the most remote and unexpected places – and virtually NO rust.
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