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About this blog

One man's attempt to fancy up a 1973 RHD 2002

Entries in this blog

Door Card Rehab

My door cards were suffering from the age old problem of warped backing boards. The vinyl was in an ok condition but the fake chrome strips were shot. As ever there's not exactly a glut of high quality replacements available in Australia and I am not quite at the point of wanting to commit to new replacements without working out what to do with my seats. Luckily, for a change, we have in Australia Beaner7102 (Shaun) who has manufactured CNC cut replacements from a form of high density foame

Simeon

Simeon in Rehab

A Quantum of Solex Part 2

Following on from my blog entry on fitting these carbs and the various things I had to work around (mainly related to the Cannon inlet manifolds) I thought I would post a separate entry on rebuilding them and a third for tuning and adjustment. There is so little information available on these carbs, I am hoping that someone else may find it useful.   Resources   The FAQ of course but specifically a few diagrams posted by CD and JGerock. The Haynes manual has some information

Simeon

Simeon

Suspension without Suspense

It's been a while since I have written anything for this blog, mainly because I haven't been doing much but enjoying driving it. I had intended to press on with my conversion to twin Solexes but as you can imagine, using the car in anger has raised a few more pressing issues.  The first, and most minor, is I readjusted the driver's side window and trimmed the Uro door seals to get a better fit. This was just partially successful but I will keep my eyes open for a deal on BMW replacements.  

Simeon

Simeon

Pump Up The Jam - UPDATED

The bushes were shot in my alternator, it was quite noisy and the 'L' light would glow slightly while the engine was running. To be fair, it had no charging issues and this could be high resistance somewhere in the wiring. I had tightened the fan belt as this was quite slack and I could see the alternator deflect due to the poor bushes which had turned to mush. Following this I had noticed a small dribble of coolant coming from my water pump so I assume that the extra load from the fan belt may

Simeon

Simeon

Belt Up!

I had intended to put the rear static seat belts back in the car as who rides in the back anyway? The problem is that since having my son, some of my priorities had changed. He is currently just under 3 years old and while not very practical in a two door car, I needed to fit a child seat in the back. Australia is a great country in many respects but some of the legislation here remains from the days when the Australian economy sat behind a high wall of trade tariffs and protectionism. One suc

Simeon

Simeon

Rear End Tune Up

The rear suspension on my car was pretty tired looking and like most things where I don't have a detailed knowledge of its history, I was not prepared to take any chances with it. Certainly we are planning an interstate move to Sydney before the end of the year so I wanted to finish up on the big jobs that would keep the car from getting a Road Worthiness Certificate in New South Wales. South Australia is more relaxed about testing old cars and as long as you keep up to date with your registrati

Simeon

Simeon

Exhausting times

Well it's been a while since I have posted (again). As before, the tempo of work has slowed and now I am tackling things as they arise and as the opportunity presents itself.  Since my last post, I have fitted my 123 Tune + distributor which I am now having fun (in a good way) playing with the tune.  I should probably write a post on that on its own just to document what I have done installation wise plus, of course, how I have tuned it. Bear with me if you are tuning in for that, I will get to

Simeon

Simeon

Alarming reaction

Now my car is worth something (it was always priceless to me) I figured I should probably add an alarm and immobiliser with remote locking. I am in two minds as to the effectiveness of alarms in a a lot of cases, particularly if a professional is targeting your car. That being said, most (potential) car thieves are opportunists who will look for the easiest target and may move on to easier pickings if confronted with difficulties. As the old joke goes, you do not need to out run the lion, only t

Simeon

Simeon

Our Friends Electric

One thing that had always bothered me about my car (and 02's in general) is the wiring arrangement in the engine bay between the battery, starter, alternator and feeds to the fuse box and ignition switch.  Given the large amount of unfused wiring involved in this lot, it somehow still managed to be as ugly as sin and generally let the car down as being a bit of crappy engineering.      Things like this get my goat, multiple wires jammed into an inappropriate crimp terminal.

Simeon

Simeon

Rubber Fetish

When I took the glass out for paint, I knew I would not be reusing the front and rear windscreen seals. The old ones were throughly perished and the filler strip hard hardened into a brittle state. After reading the many reviews of Uro seals Vs BMW windscreen seals, I elected to go with BMW even though I went Uro with the door seals. My reasoning, apart from saving money was that the door is capable of adjustment but the windscreen is not. I started with the rear screen first and tried to f

Simeon

Simeon

Prologue

Ok, I thought I would prepare a blog about the restoration of my car. I bought it in 2005 in Sydney NSW and drove it daily (sort of) until about 2 years ago. I had a sojourn to Bankok and London for 4 years work during that time, during which time my father in law dutifully drove it to lawn bowls once a week. The car had always been in good structural condition with no serious rust but it had had a few dings in the past that had been repaired to differing standards. It also looked like some

Simeon

Simeon

Ignition Investment - UPDATED

After reading good things on the FAQ and reviews around the web, I decided to invest in a Summit Racing 'MSD' CDI ignition. I have to say, this is an impressive package. EVERYTHING about this product (build quality, instructions, part numbers, specification, installation kit etc) screams that this is an MSD product. If MSD are not making this, or getting a cut out of Summit, I would be very surprised and I would suggest that MSD need to get a better lawyer. http://www.summitracing.com/int/p

Simeon

Simeon

Bearing repair

Having given up replacing the wheel bearings when refurbishing the rear suspension, I returned to the task once I had rearmed with two new axle-end castle nuts. I couldn't move the nuts at the time, so having limited time to complete the work, I left the bearings in place to be replaced another day.    I bought a new impact wrench as my old, single hammer wrench didn't touch the nuts. Sure enough, the new wrench, after working away for a while, removed the nuts as requested. As I was r

Simeon

Simeon

Steering Box Bonanza

When I rebuilt my front suspension, I noticed that the steering box adjustment was pretty much all in. The adjustment screw was almost flush with the top of the lock nut. Since I have a right hand drive, I thought that I had better make a start in finding a replacement since they are no where near as common as left hand drive versions. The right hand drive steering box is a direct mirror image to the left hand drive. The machined worm gear spiral  actually runs in the opposite direction as well

Simeon

Simeon

The pointless race.

My overarching target for completion was based upon entering the 'Bay to Birdwood Classic' a well attended classic car run and show here in South Australia. http://www.baytobirdwood.com.au As time went by, the actual entry date passed before I got the car back from paint so I conceded that I would not be entering this year. That being said, i am still trying to complete the car for Sunday 27th September- just because. I may be too late to enter but I want to feel like I could have if it wasn'

Simeon

Simeon

(Almost) finished

Well, almost finished. Out of the list I gave in my last post, I only have the front bumper to finish (struggling with enthusiasm for this job somehow), fit the waist moulding and now definitely complete some mechanical tasks that I was hoping to put off for a few weeks. Having changed the engine oil and filter, I swapped the fuel pump for a new one and replaced the fuel filter. Add some petrol to the tank and what else was there to do but fire it up? I had a a fully charged, new battery (so I

Simeon

Simeon

Carburettor Conundrum

Having spent some time sorting out my ignition, I was pretty happy with how my car is running. The idle is a lot more stable than it was before but I can still detect a slight miss fire occasionally. Coincidentally to finishing the ignition I noted that I had a problem with the water choke on my 32/36. This was normally as regular as clockwork but for some reason had stopped engaging. I took the air cleaner off to watch the operation of the choke and while I was there I looked down into the

Simeon

Simeon

A Quantum of Solex Part 1

I had bought a pair of Solex 40PHH carbs a number of years ago which did a great job of gathering dust on my garage shelf. As is typical with me, I often seem to do things the hard way. Not because I am some kind of perfectionist who looks for tricky solutions to easy problems but more because I am impulsive and optimistic about the effort involved when it comes to cars and parts.   Want to put side draft (or draught) carbs on your car? Sure. Going to buy a pair of Weber DCOE or even D

Simeon

Simeon

Interior issues

I hadn't intended to do anything to the interior at this point in time (my reasoning being that I would do a mini restoration of the interior at a later date) but having taken all of the glass out for paint I figured now was the time to do the head lining at least. As usual mission creep has set in slightly so along with the head lining, new rear seat belts and the door card refurbishment, I ended up repairing a weird issue with the drivers seat. The driver's seat had always had a weird 'list'

Simeon

Simeon

Tail to nose: the reassembly begins

With the car back safely in my shed, I wanted to start the reassembly in a fairly logical manner. The doors, bonnet and bootlid had all been off for paint so they needed to be realigned. I had read on the FAQ that the gap between the bonnet and the upper part of the doors needed to be matched to the gap at the bootlid to the rear quarters so the boot / trunk seemed to be the logical place to start. I started by removing the bootlid again, the body shop had made an attempt at lid alignment but ha

Simeon

Simeon

Back from Paint

So, my paint work was finally finished. This is a short entry with a few shots. I took some better ones with my SLR but it is amazing how quickly simple things like downloading pictures from a camera can feel like a drag when you get used to snapping something with your smartphone and immediately uploading it here / to Instagram, Twitter etc. Please enjoy these taken with my Android phone and I will upload others when I get chance. Edited to add some pictures from my SLR.

Simeon

Simeon

Puttering about

Paint work is on the home straight now so I am cleaning things up, adding new seals and shooting stuff with black / silver / galvanise spray bombs to get as many things ready as possible to just bolt back onto the car. Headlamp buckets have been cleaned and painted. These were bought second hand from the states to replace the Euro buckets with corroded reflectors. These are fitted with H4 inserts with a side light. I had to relieve part of the bucket frame to fit the sidelight and since these w

Simeon

Simeon

Further Ignition Investment

Having put up with a succession of worn distributors, I enquired about the cost of rebuilding my distributor with a local Adelaide specialist. After being quoted $650 AUD to rebuild, I took this as a clear sign that I needed to get a 123 Tune distributor as this was exactly how much I had been quoted for a 123 Tune by the Australian distributor for one. Entirely coincidentally, 'The Great 123 Group Buy of 2016' was on and despite getting a haircut on a few foreign currency conversions, I still c

Simeon

Simeon

Door repairs

I was aware of some rust bubbles on the drivers side door bottom corners. The passenger door appeared to be OK so I started with the drivers door. After stripping the paint outside I could see rust holes in each corner of the skin and a few small holes along the bottom of the skin near the seam. The small holes I enlarged with a drill to get them back to clean steel. These were then plug welded with a flattened piece of copper pipe held in rear to support the weld and stop blow through. Once

Simeon

Simeon

More retrospective bodywork - it has wings! (and doors)

Anyway boot and bonnet were now complete, move on to the rest of the car. The next point of effort was the rear panel. I knew I had a small area of rust right at the intersection of the boot floor, rear wing and rear panel in the seam. I needed to fabricate some patches to weld in. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures any more of the fabrication process but I cut out the rust (always more than first expected) and got out my tinsnips. What I could have done is replace whole panels of the boo

Simeon

Simeon

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