Not a lot to do other than get rid of the grot. De-rusting and cleaning the remaining suspension parts. The tub sat in the garage is a real tease I want to get started on building the Murtaya, but I haven’t got the parts readied, its still too cold to paint and it is really frustrating. The bushes are on order and still haven’t managed to work out an extraction tool for them yet. The weather was cool but with little chance of rain forecast, it was out with the workmate and wire brushes.
Why do I mention the Workmate? Well Ron Hickman inventor of the Workmate died earlier this week age 78. Hickman had a life-long love of cars, and also designed the original Lotus Elan, the Lotus Plus 2 and the Europa. (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/18/workmate_lotus/).
So it was out with the angle grinder with a stiff wire brush head. Things were going well and in no time I was on the third piece until there was a ping and Ouch! I think I might have been a little over zealous with the angle grinder and one of the wire bristles was now embedded in my top lip like a whisker. It was then I noticed the car cover on the donor car I was working beside was sprouting it own set of metal whiskers. I pulled out the whiskers both my own and the ones on the car cover. I decided to tone it down a bit and switched to the drill and an abrasive disk.
I went on to the Anti roll bars. The Front was in Good condition and with the exception of the ends. The middle section still had the original paint on it which I’ll sand down to take the gloss off before painting. The rear anti roll bar offside bracket as true tradition with all aspects of the offside rear quarter of this car was a sod to undo and I ended up grinding the top of the bolt off. The bracket was already torn from when I took it off the car. Graham has mentioned that I wouldn’t need to rear anti roll bar because of the new and improved coil over system. I’m still going to paint the bar but I will decide later whether I make/acquire some new brackets.
Last thing to be done for the day was the rear differential nose mount. Which is not an insubstantial piece of metal I only managed half of it before the light was fading.
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