Right Rear Fender in Primer

 I know that there are those out there who think that sanding parties are fruitless fun ending in nothing useful, but you would be wrong.
The sanding parties actually lead to something- painting parties.

These shots don't really show all of the fun that was had.  First, this bit of original steel was blasted on the back side, then sanded, then the rust pits were filled with a glazing compound, and then sanded again.  The outside was sanded to within an inch of its life to get down to clean metal, then filler was added to quite a lot of the surface, then sanded, then glazed, then sanded again.  Both sides were then cleaned, an epoxy primer was mixed up, I put on my moon suit and respirator and finally primed it.  What I am trying to do here is block out the panels where I can but more importantly, to get the raw steel protected

Priming panels and bits

 So the non-industrial smoothing can actually lead to something- mostly more smoothing.  In this episode I have been sanding panels and other assorted bits and finally this has lead to some epoxy primer being applied to those same bits. I used a quart of primer all told which is less than I would have guessed but apparently there is more surface area than I thought.  At least there is some seal now on some of the bare metal against the humidity.

In other news, I did a little online searching and found an address for what I thought might be my chromer.  There were a lot of people with the same name and I found two people, one a junior,(the father and son worked together) who were living at the same location.  So I showed up there Saturday morning and the guess was right.  So I got all of my missing chrome pieces back.  They are obviously not done but now they are not missing and they can be used to check the panel fit.

Proper Heater

I found a heater that is made for the xk120 and have dismantled it and refurbished it. For the most part it was in pretty good shape and generally needed to be cleaned, lubed and repainted. The core is holding pressure but it is 6o years old and I may replace it just because. The motor was dragging but once the bearings and brushes were cleaned it does fine. Now if I just had a car to put it in.

Dash Mock-up

The gauges and switches went into the dash today. This is by no means finished. The wood panel gets covered in leather. All of the gauges need to be rebuilt, and the tach may not be the original type. Notice the difference in the number size and thickness. I think all the others are original and generally they work but need to be freshened up. Notice on the back side of the tach there are two holes presumably for lights that have been stuffed with cork.

Wood Dash

Sometime back in this car's history, the leather center dash was removed along with about 3/8" of the original birch ply backing and in its place a mahogany face was glued to the remaining plywood behind. Aside from the facts that it was not original, not attractive wood, and the new holes cut through the mahogany were not centered on the gauges behind, it was pretty good. So I scrapped all that stuff and carved an entire new face out of Baltic Birch ply. It was a bit of a challenge since the old dash was so buggered and since the holes were not properly located, and the metal backing plate that you can see in the background that I took all of the measurements off of was also filed out to fit the misplaced gauges. In other words, the old wood dash had misplaced holes drilled into it and rather than start over with a new piece of wood, the backing plate was filed out to fit the poorly made wood face. You can't make this stuff up. Usually the holes in the backing plate were enlarged in one direction only and I was able to get enough dimensions off of the undamaged side to draw the correct pattern. Then you get out the router and a few bits and go to town. The last shot is a little hard to see, but that shows the new wood dash located on the aluminum dash panel. Eventually this all gets covered with leather.

Heater

This car is currently without a heater. Since I have all sorts of time on my hands currently, I drug out of my TR-3a stash a spare heater that I was saving for parts. It's not the same as the XK120 heater ( it's taller but it also mounts higher) but once installed, other than the identification plate which is visable under the dash, should be virtually visually identical.

So I disassembled it to check for problems. It is actually in pretty good shape. The motor was froze up but a little WD-40 and a little time and it came loose. It took a little longer to get it to run free but it now does and it runs under its own power. The core looks very good but it needs to be checked under pressure for leaks. Beyond that it needs blasting and painting, and the top mounting plate needs to have new holes drilled to align with the holes in the heater box mounted in the firewall. Piece of cake.

Wheel Trim

Look what I have been reduced to. Without the 120 in the car cave, my life has become a challenge to find meaning. And frankly, the parts left here that need work are getting scarse. Not that lots and lots of parts are not still required, it's just that there are few old parts left here that are worth redoing. So the wheel trim rings got some attention. They are stainless steel and were pretty rough with dings and scrapes. So the dings got somewhat pinged out, then sanded, then buffed. Now they are merely rough.


Also, in my boredom I drilled out all of the stainless rivets from the top structure and then took the convertible top bows and parts to the chromer.