Air Cleaners

These are an original set of air cleaners for a TR-3a that is also a 1-3/4" S.U. carb set up. These were set aside because they had a couple cracks on the back side where they are attached to the carbs. They have since been welded and sanded, primed, and painted. I think these are an exact match for the Jag. They are supposed to have a couple of decals installed that say what the service requirements are. Maybe later. I've never liked these things. The wire mesh is designed to be wetted with oil and that is supposed to trap the dust that is headed for the intake. They drip. Or the oil and the captured dust is headed into the intake. Generally, everyone runs these dry then they are good for keeping out the shop rag, rogue chicken, or tree branch and not much more.

More Convertible Top

More before shots.

Then the canvas top is removed and the wood front rails are removed. It took most of this afternoon, but all the bent rails have been straightened. The next step for this assembly is to completely disassemble all the rails from each other. For the most part all the seperate pieces are held together and pivot on 1/4" stainless steel rivets. So all these need to be drilled out and the pieces go off to the chromer. They get chromed, then new rivets get hammered back in. I'm getting ahead of myself here because I want to fit the frame to the car that is still away at camp, make sure the straightened bits fit before the rivets get drilled out.

In other news the windshield frame, the rear lights, the bonnet prop rod, the crash rail plugs, and some other odds and ends are off at the chromers. I brought several other pieces along that the chromer didn't want to do because he thought that they were too far gone. He could fix them but the cost would be too much.

Convertible Top

Since I don't have a whole car to play with, I'm playing with the parts that I have. The convertible top frame is pretty rough. It's bent in quite a few places and missing a couple small parts and it is supposed to be chrome. These are before shots so I can remember how all this goes back together.

Battery Cover

The battery cover for this car was very rusted away, but there was enough of it left to get dimensions from to make this one. The original is steel and since it sits directly over the batteries it has no good option but to rust away. This is stainless. The exposed surfaces are eventually covered with vinyl. It is stretched around and tacked to the nailing strips on the inside. No stainless except the dzus fastener brackets will be exposed.

Exhaust manifold-porcelain

These just arrived back from Tom Sparrow of Prairie City Porcelain. The original castings were pretty crude with fins and bumps all over. I did a lot of grinding and porting and generally smoothing inside and out prior to sending them off, and I replaced the studs with stainless steel, but it seems like it was all worth it now that they are done. There is one rather sizeable casting flaw in the number six ( that's the one in engine front or the far right in the top shot) right at the top of the manifold. If you try to weld this to fill it, the porcelain generally won't stick to the repair. The porcelain actually goes on pretty thick and covered a fair amount of the problem. I didn't want to risk cutting too much away at that point and Tom agreed that I shouldn't go any further. You can't see it here but the inside is also coated. If I had a car I could put these on.

Fairfield Concours

Dee and I went to the Fairfield County, Ct. Concours in Westport, CT. on Sunday. It was a really good show. If any of you want to view a bunch of snapshots of a bunch of really fine cars, you can see them on the web album- Dee Welding photos 2011-8-18-Fairfield Concours. This is the first time I've tried this so let me know if it doesn't work.

Try picassaweb.google.com/102163592810391998508/20110918fairfieldconcours

Horns Finished

The wrinkle finish paint was cured in the kitchen oven and then the horns were reassembled. The passenger side horn required a bit of straightening since it was hit pretty good at one time. It is not perfect, but the horns are mounted to the inside of each of the front wheels are are generally not visible anyway. But they now work and it is more important that they be heard.

Radiator Paint

The first coat of the high temperature paint went on to the radiator today. Now it dries, then I will resand the top and give it another coat and this will be ready to go. Looks good.

Horns

On the last blog entry, I posted a little about the horns. These are images of the disassembled horns. First shot is of the support bracket for the right side horn- it's pretty well destroyed from a hit that the car took to that side front that collected the front fender and horn. Second shot is of some remade pieces that will be used to reconstruct the bracket. After that are images of the horns in various states of clean up and repaint. The last two shots show the main covers still in primer. Those were painted with wrinkle finish black paint today and should come pretty close to matching the original finish. It takes a long time for that paint to dry and properly wrinkle up so I'll show that in the next entry about the horns.

Seat Structure

Going quite a ways back, there have been a couple of posts where the metal structure for the seat was rebuilt and there was another where the seat bases and the hinge brackets were chromed. I decided to try to plug weld the chrome brackets onto the metal structure of the seat backs. I was worried about the chrome burning off where it would be exposed on the hinge brackets. Well, it worked great. Nothing even blued on the exposed chrome.

So the first couple of shots are of the completely reassembled seat backs and the last two are of the seat backs positioned with the seat bases. I need a couple of springs, some chrome Whitworth nuts and washers for the hinge bolts, and these will be ready for upholstery. A bright floral pattern I think.

Other news: A party was recently held where the two original horns were rebuilt. Amazingly, I don't think that these had been worked on before so they they weren't messed up. Party was again poorly attended but at the end of the celebration the noise makers actually made noise. They were mostly dirty and the points were fried. I filed them a little and adjusted them according to the shop manual and hooked them up to the battery of the John Deere and they worked. Now to finish cleaning and painting.