MadaboutKitcars

The wrinkle finish can be a bugger to get right, if it isn't perfect it looks crap. Having had a couple of goes with the wrinkle paint I am sticking to the Hammerite satin.

I warm the spray can of wrinkle in a pan of hot water, get the oven going (with wife gone). Spray from at least a foot away and follow remainder of directions. A warm can is a good can!

I have already got some plastic primer, satin black and the wrinkle finish to go on top. If anyone can foresee a problem, shout out now please! After the warm weather this week, I am tempted to get going before Easter if it repeats. I will post pics regardless of my assessment of success.

ps I shortened the legs on a trundle bed frame a couple of weeks ago. Cut out sections, cut a slice out of the extracted tube and then squashed and used it as a strengthener in the residual bits, then welded together again. I used a rattle can (old English White) to touch up the blackened mess. I thought i had contained it pretty well, using newspaper and masking tape. Sadly, the patio table looks like it has leprosy, as well as the plague from where I converted a double bed wooden frame to a single and had to re-drill dowell holes. I clamped the pieces to ovehang the edge of the table where I was drilling..... I thought.

Battery drain

I know you were having problems with battery drain, I was suffering the same problem. My car gets used depending on its position on the drive. It can be used every day and then gets blocked in for a few weeks. Sometime the car will start fine if left for a few weeks other times it can have a flat battery after just a day or two. Finally tracked down the problem, the passenger door catch on the B post was slightly loose, most of the time it was fine but occasionally it was loose enough to move and the switch for the interior light is on the catch so it was occasionally left on causing the drain. Worth checking if you have a drain problem or removing the bulb and see if it stops the problem.

I checked drain by plugging into each fuse location. First it indicated door lock, and I removed them refitted driver side actuator. After the garage super charged battery, it has been good for up to 2 weeks at a time. However, it has not been used whilst I wait for it to go in for seized brake calliper, and it was flat after 10 days. Passenger door is seldom used, but I'll che k put connections on both soon. Thanks for the tip.

I solved my drain problem by taking out the fuses for the radio and the interior lights and using a solar panel charger.

When your door switch gave problems:
1. did the interior light actually come on?
2. was the central locking activated? I would have expected the alarm to sound if the door switch "opened".

Central locking wasn't working (from the key fob) and the interior light seemed to go out, however it was only occasionally that the battery went flat and I didn't twig that the interior light was staying on occasionally.

The intermittent ones are the worst.
A bit like my brake light switch- usually needs "waking up" before a journey.

Time for an update, is it going to be shown at Stoneleigh?

It won't be ready for Stoneleigh, Chris and I discussed that in January. I am going down at the end of next week to see progress. I will take some pictures and post them. The Z3 has a seized front brake caliper which will get sorted early next week. Now the weather is warming up, I hope to get the internals sorted before the end of April.

Meantime, we had a lovely mini tour of Belgium and Holland sampling the beer, waffles and frittes. The plan was to be in the EU when Britain left, but the politicians messed up that little plan. Also, I have chopped out an oak tree stump by hand (very good for releasing aggression), and bought the box section to make some bicycle stands to store them upright in the shed and free up space in the garage for working.

I'll have to do some proper proper project work soon.

April Update

I went down to see Chris and the progress on the car this morning. The front is nearly finished. Unfortunately, moving the edges of the trout pout with filler means that it isn't seen well in these photos. But it now matches the Ford grill. It has also been squared front to back on each side. The inherited pan front nearside bonnet is dealt with. It is probably finished by the time i type this. We discussed the merits of how the scoop follows either the bonnet insert lines or the wing lines. The former is how it is currently, the latter would mean widening the taper nearest to the windscreen a couple of inches either side. I prefer how it is now.






Now that the nearside is pretty much finished, Chris needs to re-visit the driver side to match it, but that should go quite quickly. The wheel arches have been reworked to fit my wheels.






Progress should accelerate now that the final lines are agreed, and Chris plans to get some additional help to finish off the buck. However, it won't be finalised until the window frame outlines have been made up and trial fitted.





The back has been smoothed out as agreed, and the shoulder adjacent to the rear quarter light profiled to fit better with the overall flow. Not shown here, but the plastic / chrome windscreen trim sets the rear screen off nicely.



The petrol cap looks a little small here, but it will be recessed into a bucket, so the visual impact will be greater. Having seen Molleur's placement (thanks matey), we may replicate with the cap at the highest point to facilitate filling. Not so much like the AM, but very similar to other Zagato placements.

I'll be back down there for a progress update and more photos in May. Thanks to all you chaps who keep posting on the forum (not just this thread) your ideas and experience are invaluable.

The Z3 has got new brake callipers, one of them seized and b*ggered the new disc and pads, hohum.

Love seeing these progress pictures.....keep posting them please..!
Car's looking great.

looking good! what is the rear screen?

Thanks for posting the updates.
Always interesting to see how builds go and I’m especially interested in this one
Looking great!
I have to admit, I check this thread more often than I should...

It is the back screen from a Nissan Micra, upside down. You can see the hole for the rear wiper in the centre at the bottom. The downside is that it was a little wide at the top of my picture, but just about works.

So do I, but it hasn't sped up the process.

Will do, of course. Once Chris has finished profiling the driver side, there is a lot of smoothing back to do, then the buck can be painted and good quality moulds made. THEN Chris can commence my build, so lots of stages to go yet. Chris may paint the buck in a RAL green (not the putrid one I tried on the door mirrors earlier in the thread), so I am looking forward to that, as it may well be the gelcoat colour I get the panels made up with whilst I prep it for painting.

I joined an old gits metalwork group to learn how to weld. The guy who owns the workshop has a Ginetta racecar (kit) and has lots of handy contacts. He has offered to give me the details of a couple of paint shops, one who does classic car concourse quality, and the other who does good but not top notch. As my car will be a daily runaround, parked outside, I don't see the point in getting top of the range, but we'll see.

Just looking, perhaps it would fit the 250 SWB with a little fiberglass modification.

I'm using the Grassbank rear screen on mine.

Probably too wide for the 250. The Zagato has a wider roof like the 275 to allow for using the stock windows. It looks to be at the limit, so a narrower roof would probably not take it. The Grassbank one is lovely, but we wanted a stock solution that was not the MG slab to keep build costs reasonable.

It does look good on the Zagato. Thanks for the info.

I know the rear window is a big issue on these cars, so it’s so nice to see that the one used has a nice framed boarder around it. Equal lines between the boot lid and the same around the rear wings.

Then it reaches up to the side window - just like the classic cars from the period. Really nice detail and incorporation.
Should be stunning when it’s done.

Thanks, Chris is still tempted to tweak that area to make it perfect in his eyes. The finer details are lost on me, but I am happy with how it is turning out.

Well I think it looks as if it was made for it- super job.

Chris has just sent me pics of the mock up window frame, looks great. I cannot upload from my phone to this site, so check the Tribute Owners FB page until I can get them on here. ��