What did you do to your E-Type today? (Part 1)

Having more fun. I recycled the too good to be restored seats from my FHC and made a pair of shop stools. Now its looking like I’m going to have to add a bar.

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69 Coupe

I like it! Mine are so destroyed from sitting for so many years, the only thing usable is the frame, etc. I’m more curious about the room. Is that wood flooring? Wondering if it’s a garage or a add-on? Much too clean to be a garage?

Mark

Hi Mark.
The floor is concrete, and not in as good of condition as it might look in the picture. The building is a disused commercial office-warehouse that I decided to make into my personal dream hobby garage. I’ve got a long way to go, but I’ve finally started working in it as well as on it. It only looks clean because I’ve just started. My goal is to retire and spend lots of fun time working on my old Jags and to have a clean, well organized fun space to do it in.
I haven’t decided what I’m going to do to the floor, grind and polish, epoxy, or something else.

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Finally started assembling my fuel components starting with the HD8s I’ve had sitting here for too long!

Hi Ron… you probably realize this, but just in case, your middle and right carbs are reversed. The middle one has the connection for the distributor vacuum advance, and should be on the far right.

HTH
Robert

Thanks Robert. I actually was trying to sort all of that out as it’s a set that I bought in pieces. I did see the vacuum port but thought it went in the middle. No worries on swapping them and thanks!

Now that they are more or less in the right place I’m going to take them off one at a time and rebuild them. Thanks again for the eagle eyed catch, very helpful!

Cheers - Ron

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A bit more done today…

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Not sure if it would be different for your car or not, but it’s usually not very easy to raise the IRS and attach it to both mounting blocks at once because of the way the mounting studs are aimed at each other. Commonly you mount one block on the car and the other on the IRS cage, and then it can raise straight up into position.

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Erica, if all the receiving holes for the fixed stud are slotted then I have not had an issue fitting the cage. I believe early E’s did not have the slots and as a consequence were a PITA to fit and people left the front mounts off the chassis.

Ah, yeah I think on my 64 it’s simply round holes in the cage. I didn’t realize they slotted them after.

What is that blue, filter like doohickey, just forward of the left front IRS mount in the second picture?

Diff breather catch tank.


I got my original license plate frame back from Paul’s Chrome this afternoon. I’m very pleased. Having the CA plate restored and painting the letters and background on the MCM frame are next. There’s surely someone out there that does the proper job of restoring license plates and printing the reflective stickers. Probably not a good idea, but I’m tempted to try painting the frame myself.
Paul’s also plated some shift ferrules for me. OCD problems. I only needed one, but six were just as easy as one on a cnc turning center. These ferrules are my fix for a dumb repro part. Backstory is the shop that restored my OTS had substituted a whole bunch of my very good original parts. The repro shift ferrules don’t have the radius on the top and have a brass base instead of nylon. I couldn’t stand the incessant rattling and, after unsuccessfully trying to get my original parts back, I ended up using the parts from my FHC for my OTS.
So, finishing the plate & frame and installing one of the ferrules are nearly the last little things needed to complete the restoration of my FHC.

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Just flip the “M” and you’d have ONE RUDE licence plate. :scream:

Very cool, BTW !

wonderful detail in your car Pat

William, I made this week, welding an extra stiffener in the middle on both side’s , so this better for the jack point, more strength. Martin Robey sells a big part for this problem, big metal with holes, for to much weight, that’s runs from the begin to the end.In the middle.
Ceers Frank.

Yes… Erica is right!! Installing it is a one person job if you follow the instructions exactly.

LLoyd

“Man’s character is his fate”

Heraclitus, Greek philosopher

“We’ll see about that”

LLoyd Nolan, rithmetician

After a long time of pondering I thought I’d try and plate some fasteners. It goes like this. Search the interweb for plating kits. Baulk at the cost. Search the interweb for eejits who claim to have done this already using household products. Disbelieve them all. Another search, more claims using cheap available household products. Think, oh what the hell, it’s only a couple of quid.

I used. One 600ml bottle of distilled white vinegar; two pieces of pure nickel; some copper wire left over from a house re-wiring project; salt; old plastic soup carton saved from the re-cycling bin; an old phone charger 5v 1a. Total cost of new items £5.
And it worked reasonably well! It was a bit fiddly but it worked.

IMG_7889
Drawing about 220ma at 4v
IMG_7891
Initial setting up, turning clear vinegar into green electrolyte by plating a nickel cathode from a nickel anode.
IMG_7894
Parts in the electrolyte waiting for power on.
IMG_7899
Comparison before and after.
The initial trial was with two untarnished washers, they came up really bright.
Fresh out of the electrolyte the parts are disappointingly dull, but a few seconds with polish and they brighten up nicely.

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Caswell kits work well: @John_Walker has some results.

you have inspired me to do this. the kits are ridiculously priced and made for doing a lot of parts.
I just want to do a few bits like you did. time for research

Bob F