More seat bits

You can see more easily here the chrome exposed structural pieces and the steel that is covered and mounts to the rear seat wood structure. Last shot shows a couple holes blasted through the steel when it was cleaned. It rusted badly in the location of the mice nests. Off to the welder again.

Seats disassembled.

The leather upholstery was removed from the seat structure. Both had bundles of mice nests and stashed accorns but cleaned up ok. Generally, the wood is pretty solid but needs to be reglued and retightened like old furniture. The metal frame on this car, since it is one of the early cars, has chromed exposed bits. These need to be cut away from the metal that supports the back support, rechromed, then spot welded back on.

generator, battery box cover

The blogger is acting up again. Curses.

The engine block is now hanging from a chain hoist attached to the garage i-beam. It awaits the clutch disc (eventually, I hope) then attachment to the trans. Tired of noting this. The chassis is on its own wheels now so it will be rolled beneath and attached someday. Note the generator has found a home again.

The next shots are of the original battery cover box and a replacement that I am constructing. The original has seen better days, but there is enough of it left to allow accurate measurements for the new one. This will all be covered from the outside with the same vinyl as the battery bulkhead where it is fitted.

Seat pans

Amazingly, the Blogger is allowing me to post with images after not allowing me to do anything for a couple weeks.

Progress has been made in a couple areas- an earlier post talked about concerns that the seat pans would not hold up to blasting. They did although they are quite pitted. So the non-industrial smoothing again took place (party was poorly attended) and some priming was accomplished. Pretty damn exciting, huh?

The last shot is of the smoothed and primed rear license plate mount which looks really good after the welding of holes and such. I replaced the captured nuts from the back and all seems ok. Now we hold for an epoxy primer to be applied over this professionally.

Bellhousing

The new bushings for the clutch lever shaft have been installed into the bellhousing and the shaft, the throwout fork and bearing have been installed as well. As stated earlier, this is not a xk120 bellhousing. Those are open on the bottom and the flywheel and clutch is covered with a steel bottom plate. They were prone to cracking and were often replaced with a later version like this one which is a xk150 version. So the bellhousing is attached with 8 bolts to the trans and secured with lock tabs. Now we await the clutch disc to install this onto the engine block.

In other news, the intake and exhaust valves have been sent to the machinist to be fitted. Soon a lot of parts will need to be ordered to finish the head assembly. Also, I need to order a special composite head gasket. The block has been shaved to flatten and currently the pistons protrude fron the top of the block by .025". An additional .040" is needed for expansion and overrun so I need a gasket of .065" which is not exactly standard. The price to be paid for restoring old stuff.

Engine stands

The oil pump gasket finally showed up. It's in, the oil pan is in place so the bottom end in closed up. So I stood the engine up on the bench. The bushings for the clutch throwout shaft have been installed in the bellhousing so that is ready to go. I'm still waiting on a clutch disc to finish the clutch attachment then finally the trans can be attached. Trans gets attached then the whole short block and trans assembly can be remounted on to the frame. Sorry, Peter, no timing party as of yet.