73 2002 Malaga - Cyril

[jjbunn]

Here is a '73 2002 I just received - bought as a project. I know little about these cars, so welcome advice/suggestions and comments.

VIN is 2588395 so a Model 71-73.

This car appears to be in decent mechanical order, but has numerous cosmetic issues, as you will see. The engine starts and runs, the gears shift, the brakes work, and it's sitting pretty square.

A couple of very obvious things need to be dealt with:

1) no windshield (I have one ordered at Safelite - should be here tomorrow - $220 - I'll try installing it myself, as I did an MGB GT windshield a while back, so feel reasonably confident. The PO provided me with the gasket and locking strip.

2) atrocious paint - I am not going to have this car professionally resprayed I don't think, so am considering what I can do myself to improve the appearance (shouldn't be hard!)

3) driver's seat completely worn out - I'm not sure what to do with the seats. I had some TR6 seats re-done by a local guy a few years ago for around $400, so that's an option. Or I could buy some better OEM used seats, or just something else that would fit.

Now on to the photos: there are many more here http://www.flickr.com/photos/snigfargle/sets/72157629817333222/

[jgerock]

Congrats on being the new owner of this Malaga 73. Based on the missing pedal pads, carpet and seat condition, I'd say this car has seen a ton of miles.

Dash cluster is from an older car. Was another one included in the sale?

What are you goals with it? Looks like an interesting project!

[jjbunn]

Congrats on being the new owner of this Malaga 73. Based on the missing pedal pads, carpet and seat condition, I'd say this car has seen a ton of miles.

Dash cluster is from an older car. Was another one included in the sale?

What are you goals with it? Looks like an interesting project!

Thanks - I agree the whole car looks rather tired :-)

The "actual mileage" on the Title in 2007 was 64k, but the odometer currently in the car reads 21k ... which bears out your statement that it's not the original cluster. The PO didn't provide an earlier dash, but he did provide quite a few other parts including new brake/clutch pads, new gas pedal, various bits of trim, under dash cover, etc.. At the price I paid for the car, I was delighted to get anything extra :-)

My goals are primarily to get it into nice, running, condition with decent interior and properly set up engine and mechanicals. But those goals may change as I go along.

[jjbunn]

Perhaps the paint isn't as bad as I thought: I took some 1200 grit wet&dry paper, dipped often in water, to a patch of it:

and it looks like it may come up nicely. Next I will do the same on the boot lid, which currently looks like this:

In other news, I picked up a new windshield at Safelite, Pasadena, which I ordered on Saturday. I was amazed they could order glass for a 1973 car: in the past I've been used to paying through the nose at places like Moss for LBC windshields. Not only that, but the glass that I got is made by Pilkington - an old, reputable company that is known for quality.

[jjbunn]

First, easy step: placing the rubber seal around the edge of the glass. I have the glass sitting on top of a piece of sponge packing material - this avoids the seal slipping off as the glass is moved around. No lubrication used for this step.

After fitting the seal, I inserted a length of thin rope in the seal, all the way around, and taped the rope ends to the inside of the glass.

Then I offered up the seal+glass to the window opening, and after lining it up, just let it rest there. Getting inside the car, I had a young helper push gently on the outside of the glass, at the bottom middle, where the rope ends emerged on the other side of the glass. Detaching the tape, I pulled on one of the rope ends (gently, pulling towards the centre of the windshield) - this pulled up the edge of the seal as the rope came out, and the edge would then fall down on the near (car interior) side of the lip. This process was continued, with the helper pushing on the glass, and me pulling on the rope, until the rubber seal was over the lip all around.

Here is the situation at this point:

Next, the hard part: putting in the lockstrip, which looks like this.

The lockstrip is a fairly rigid piece of chromed plastic, and needs to be inserted in the groove around the rubber seal on the outside of the car. Here are the tools I used:

There is a container of dish detergent diluted 50:50 with water, used as a lubricant, a brush for painting the lubricant on the seal, a small nail-lifter used for teasing seal edges over the lockstrip (and used with extreme caution!), and the absolutely essential custom lockstrip tool without which the job would be almost impossible.

In the above photo, the lockstrip is seen threaded through the tool's head, which is shaped so that it spreads the seal's lips apart. As the tool is moved along the groove, the lockstrip is threaded into position and the seal's lips fall on top of the lockstrip, so securing it. The more lubrication used, the better.

At least, that's the theory. In practice it's quite hard to make this work well in the corners of the windshield, where the tool is being turned through an angle, and the seal tends to twist out of the correct orientation. If one edge of the lockstrip gets properly covered by the seal, then the other edge can be prised over it by careful use of the nail-lifter tool. I had to do this at each of the four corners, and it was quite time consuming. (On the MGB windshield I remember the locking strip was rubber, so much easier to manipulate.)

Finally, after going around the whole windshield, the locking strip is in place:

I will leave it untrimmed to the correct length until it has settled for a few days in the sun. Then it will be a matter of cutting it, inserting the end into the seal, and covering the join with a small piece of chrome trim for the purpose, which I have on hand (in the plastic bag shown above).

The cat appears to think the job is satisfactory:

[jjbunn]

Repairing this:

Cut out the rusty metal shards:

Shape a piece of fibreglass cloth, prime the area with POR15, then attach the cloth and soak with POR15:

Wait a day for the POR15 to dry, then skim a layer of Bondo over the glass, and fill gap at leading edge of crossbar:

Sand down hardened Bondo, smooth edges, and then coat with POR15 again:

Ready for remounting the front wing/fender:

[jjbunn]

Bought a 74-76 dash cover for the cracked dash. Made by DashTop. To start on the job, I first removed the instrument cluster. This involved detaching the speedo cable at the rear, then pulling the unit out. (There should be two knurled knobs at the rear securing it, but these were missing on my car, as were two small screws that go in the upper panel on the front of the cluster.)

Here's the cluster removed, rear view:

(Note the Lucas H9 horn from my E-Type, and a Porsche 914 speedo, both in the background!)

I cleaned all the electrical contacts, removed the bulbs and checked them all.

After the cluster came out, I undid the switches to the left and right, removed the cigarette lighter, undid two 7mm nuts holding the dash to the body inside the aperture, at each side, then moved the the lower dash attachments. First I pulled the knobs off both the heater etc. control panels, then pushed the escutcheons out from the dash by using a chopstick poked up behind each. I then undid the two screws on each panel, releasing the switch mechanisms, which I let dangle under the dash. (I removed and checked the small Osram 3W bulbs while I was about it.)

Then I removed the glove box by undoing the three 7mm nuts at the rear of the glove box hinge. After that I went along the underside of the dash removing all the recessed screws. Finally I undid the 7mm nut on the far right, under the dash, and tried to undo the one on the left. At this point I hit a snag - it was badly rusted and PBBlaster didn't help. After messing around, I finally had to take a Dremel cutoff wheel to it.

Following that, I disconnected the demister hoses from the plastic air distributors under the dash, and removed the top and bottom parts covering the steering column in front of the dash.

At this point I could lift the top half of the dash off - and disconnect the "Fasten Seat Belt" unit and relay underneath. Then the bottom half came off. Here are both the upper and lower pieces:

And the freshly denuded dash metal support:

After removing the air ducts, sanding the dash surfaces with 80 grit, washing and drying, I tacked the upper and lower parts together with two part epoxy in a few places, waited for that to set, then glued on the DashTop cover - it was a very nice fit indeed, much better than dash toppers I used for the TR6 and 914.

Here is the assembly with clamps and bungee cords while the glue sets up:

The trickiest part then was finagling the assembled unit back into the car. I had to reattach the air ducts before doing this, as otherwise the attachment nuts for the ducts at the sides of the dash would have been impossible to reach. By angling the assembly up and down, and threading the duct openings carefully into the apertures in the metalwork, and applying some careful force (nerve-wracking - I had visions of the ducts snapping at their attachment points, or the dash cover cracking in the middle), I was able to get it into place. Here it is just after positioning:

Next up: replacing the instrument cluster and controls.

[scanner]

Nice job on Cyrils windscreen, good skills! Have you considered learning to weld, it looks like this project will need a fair bit of rust repair work and it may be worth considering. It was the best thing i ever did to help with my car projects. Cheers Chris

[jjbunn]

Nice job on Cyrils windscreen, good skills! Have you considered learning to weld, it looks like this project will need a fair bit of rust repair work and it may be worth considering. It was the best thing i ever did to help with my car projects. Cheers Chris

Thanks, Chris. I've considered it a few times, but the outlay on equipment puts me off for the few places where I might need welding on this car. The PO did structural welding (e.g. rear strut towers) on the car before I got it, so I'm hoping that anything I do find will be cosmetic and I can use e.g. glass or Bondo or epoxies. For example, the lower trim around the middle of the car I will remove, and the holes I will fill using epoxy - welding up small holes like that seems like overkill to me, although I suppose if I had the gear I would do it.

[jjbunn]

With instrument cluster and switches installed:

[jjbunn]

Ordered some faux suede "racing" seats, which arrived today. I've no intention of racing Cyril, but I need to replace the existing seats and there is a great selection of racing seats on Ebay ... I think I paid about $100 each for these, including shipping. They are very comfortable, and appear well made.

They came with sliders, that have bolt holes that match the holes at the base of each seat. The hole spacing is 11.25" front to back and 13.5" side to side. The bolt holes on the 2002 are 12.25" front to back and 17.75" side to side, so some sort of bracket is needed. I suppose two flat bars will do the job, but I'm still thinking about it ...

[jjbunn]

OK this is the set up I'm going to use: I bought a 4ft 1"x3/16" and a 4ft 2"x3/16" steel bar, and cut a length of 48cm (sorry for the mixed units) from each, then drilled holes to match the spacing on the car's seat supports. Here they are attached:

The seats will then rest inboard of each bar - the 2" bar allowing the placing of the bolt holes 11" or so from the front bar, which is the required spacing for these seats (I think these are Corbeau-compatible). Before drilling the bars for the seats I want to place the seats on them in the car to make sure of their positioning.

[jjbunn]

Front seat fitting arrangement:

Close-up of inboard bolt/spacer/split washer/nyloc nut:

Seat in position:

[jjbunn]

I went down to Sherwin Williams and had them colour match a chip of paint off my car. The result is very close indeed. However, I had to buy a quart, for $21, which is way more than I need!

The Sherwin Williams formula for the mix they made is:

MTS BURGUNDY

BAC COLORANT OZ   32   64   128
L1-BLUE              6(32)
R2-MAROON                5(32)     1(64)      1(128)
R3-MAGENTA        2(OZ)     3(32)     1(64)      1(128)

[hendi72]

you found the best....in my opinion......year the 2002 was made! you will never forget this journey! looks great! consider yourself lucky! but....most of all.....have fun!

hendi