So yeah, I finally bought a hoist... Realised waiting for a crane-type one wasn't the answer, so bought this two-ton one from ebay in August 09 for about £30 inc postage - in other words, not much more than a day's hire. After the Haltrac problems, still wasn't convinced, and Jon advised me to 'wear a helmet' after all the creaking from that occasion. So just to be on the safe side, I wedged a length of 4x2 vertically under the joist at the front of car before yanking on the chain. And it was effortless... engine just floated up, and once it was high enough, just hung in the air while I shoved the car back to let it down again.
And then it was all over - two and a half years of waiting, and that was all it took... So now that was all out of the way, I could go ahead and strip the rest of the front chassis down. Hubs and suspension were first, leading to another expense - while the shocks may well be in working condition, after 36 years, modern ones will undoubtedly be far better, so an uprated set have been added to
the shopping list.
Steering rack and ARB followed, leaving a completely clear - and
surprisingly good condition - chassis. All those years of oil leaks have obviously protected the paint work, so rather than sand the entire thing down, decided to just take a wire wheel to the bare patches.
So scraped at least a jam jar full of crud off the top and sides of the frame, gave it a bit of a wash down, and then set to with KuRust before the Hammerite primer.
So here endeth the catch-up - all the updates from now on will be happening in real time, so you can see just how long it really takes me to get round to this stuff...
No comments:
Post a Comment