As you may recall, about a year ago I bought a pair of 1.75CD Strombergs with adaptors for my Vitesse motor for the princely sum of fifty quid on ebay. These were meant to replace my somewhat worn out 1.5's that were strangling the engine above 4,000rpm and give it a bit more
oomph. The only slight fly in the Chateau Lafite was that I couldn't shut the bonnet with them fitted.
So I took them off and put them to one side for a year to have a think about it.
About a fortnight ago though, I decided that my original 150's had to go. Fuel consumption had rocketed from about 28mpg to the high teens, the motor was struggling to start from cold despite all of the ignition components being in tip-top condition and the smell of fuel was all pervasive.
So, after about four hours spent replacing the rock hard rubber seals in the 1.75's, removing the old carbs and fitting up the new ones, to my delight (relief?), with just a bit of fettling needed on one sticky butterfly I had it running on the bigger carburettors. Which left me with the original problem of the bonnet not closing due to clearance problems on the front carb.
After a bit of measuring it was out with the angle grinder and cut a hole above the offending carb before a considerable amount of staring and beard scratching about what to do next. I felt a second bulge would look odd as it would've been too close to the first one, while another scoop would also look odd because it would have to be almost exactly parallel to the small one on the other side of the main one, which just wouldn't look right.
Eventually I settled on cutting out the existing bulge (which was entirely cosmetic anyway once I'd removed my methanol injection rig), fabricating a new one over the carb hole and reinstating the bit of bonnet I'd cut out for the original bulge.
I used the same technique as before - building a shape I liked out of stainless modelling mesh secured with screws around the hole then 'glassing over the top and inside the bonnet once the outside had gone off, before adding filler where necessary and sanding to a smooth, teardrop shape. Once the basic shape was set I was able to take it for a test drive and... What a difference! A lot more power, far more revs available and no more fuel smell. Phew.
And here are a couple of pictures, just bear in mind that the new bulge is still very much a 'work in progress' -
As I'm going to have to respray at least part of the bonnet I thought I might as well tackle a few other bodywork jobs that'll need a coat or two of paint over the next couple of weeks too. I've had the car on the road for almost three years now and I've used it a lot. Over that time I have had about four cracks appear in the body, almost all of which are actually my fault...
I'll take some pics when I start fixing them, but I have:
A crack at the back immediately below where the offside rear boot-rigger joins inside the body. That panel is a bit of a patchwork quilt as I cut far too much of the original body away while aligning the body on the chassis, then used ordinary body filler over stainless mesh to reinstate it where I should have used fibreglass and/or fibre reinforced filler. My bad.
A stress crack on the side of the same rear wing. Don't think that one's my fault, it's just one of them things you get with a fibreglass body sometimes.
A couple of stress cracks just ahead of the flyscreen directly above the servo I fitted. This is due to there being no support under that panel for about eight inches in the centre. The bonnet shuts onto that panel and I had put a sponge strip right the way across the underside of the bonnet, which put pressure on that unsupported panel when locked down and caused it to crack. I cut the matching section of sponge strip out of the centre of the bonnet and it's not under stress any more.
My main scoop has a number of hairline cracks under the roundel. Again, that scoop is a patchwork quilt made out of bits of the original bonnet and bits of the Sammio dash that I didn't use held together with fibreglass and body filler. I should've used fibre reinforced filler there too, of course.
I also have a 'spider' shaped crack under the front number plate where my radiator touched the inside of the bonnet for a while.
I've also decided to change my rear light setup too, just for good measure. I liked the lights I chose, but there's always been a slight niggle that the (slight) asymmetry in the design of the back end means that they look a little cock-eyed from some angles. More on that later...
So, I'll be doing a bit of repair and respray, which brings me to my final observation. There's been a bit of debate recently about how best to spray fibreglass panels. I'd never sprayed anything in my life before so I took advice from Mike (Miglia) about prep and gun spec, turned to Google and Youtube for some demonstrations, and finally spoke to Jawel (who supplied the silver cellulose paint).
Jawel's advice on how to make their paint stick was to degrease everything thoroughly then spray on a couple of coats of etch primer. Once that's dry and flatted back, follow up with two or three coats of high-build primer, flatting and degreasing between coats. Then gun on as many coats of colour as you like (I think I did about six), leaving it about twenty minutes between each coat. Having never sprayed before, the results I got were very pleasing to me indeed, in fact, the finish looks exactly like the paint you see on genuine 1950's race cars.
A few people have suggested that using the etch primer is either unnecessary or will lead to the paint flaking off. Well, I've had no paint flake off in three years and I've just given the surface finish the ultimate stiction test by trying to remove the roundel from the bonnet to get at and repair the hairline cracks mentioned above. I thought that it would be a case of lifting a corner and just peeling the roundel off in one piece. Wrong. The glue sticking it down is far stronger than the vinyl, which tends to just break off in fingernail sized bits.
With a great deal of care I was able to lift about a third of it off in one piece, but that alone took about an hour and then the whole decal snapped across just short of the secondary scoop, leaving me nothing to get hold of to start peeling again (I need speak to the people who fitted the roundels to see if there's a trick to removing them).
Now it's been a bit of a ball-ache trying to remove the roundel, but what I have done is put an enormous amount of upward strain on the paint surface on a panel with a number of cracks across it. Not one fleck of paint has lifted, and I guarantee it would have if it hadn't fully adhered to the surface of the body underneath (the rough surface and darker patch is the residual glue from the roundel, the shinier bit is where I've used thinners to remove the glue) -
One thing I have noticed is that the paint under the roundel is a much brighter silver than what's been exposed to the air. Hmm, hoping I won't need to do a full respray now...
More later.
...just need to play with jets etc ...barrys building his new house so we be back ripping a round norfolk very soon hope you had a good xmas...... summer on the way see you for cuppa soon 
