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Idle hands: assorted projects


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Go big or go home 😁.  Build one like the guy who printed the Project Binky fender flares.  I think 3d printing is extremely cool.  But since I'm too cheep to buy one i need to make my brother finish assembling his.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Random project updates. Had these old advent baby iis sitting aroumd for a while and finally decided it was time to get them rocking again. Thought about just replacing the speakers entirely, but figured I'd try refurbing the originals first.

 

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Sadly the tweeters appear to be dead and one of the woofers has a hum in the voice coil at anything above low volume.

 

After letting it sit for a couple of months I did finally get around to doing water pump gaskets on the merc. Was going to do the pump too, but after pulling it off I realized it was fucking mint.

 

Then it was time to get the xj road worthy again. Started with a fuel line and actually getting around to replacing the busted leaf springs. Turns out they were worse that I realized. Both packs had a cracked leaf and the one I knew about was actually cracked in three places.

 

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New springs are designed to handle the weight I threw on the back of this thing, so shouldn't have to worry about these again. Really realizing, just how shock limited I am though so might have to address that, if I actually ever go wheeling again.

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16 hours ago, UnderControl said:

Turns out they were worse that I realized. Both packs had a cracked leaf and the one I knew about was actually cracked in three places.

 

Is that a rust belt thing? Never seen that happen here. Worst we see is a bent main leaf due to a careless driver...

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Probably more just being way over loaded. Those were definitely light duty springs with at minimum medium duty load. I wasn't especially easy on them either. Lucky for me I had previously coated all of the hardware in an excessive amount of anti seize, so I was actually able to get all the bolts out. I did manageto snap the other lower shock stud though.

 

In other news I worked on the mustang again.

 

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Thinking about making some mustang flavored bullets now that I have all this lead laying around.

 

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That hole by the drip rail is gonna be fun. As will the window corners.

 

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Figured I would start with an easy one though.

 

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Did find my line in the sand with this thing. I Should probably have resigned myself to pulling the sail panels to get at that rust hiding underneath, but I was already planning to dump a couple gallons of por15 down all of the cavities anyway. For now I'm going to pretend I didn't see it.

 

 

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18 hours ago, Lockleaf said:

Have you watched the Fitzees Fabrication video about building window frame patch panels?

 

Also have you considered frame/cavity wax for filling the sail panels?

 

I have seen that video, and will be using a similar method. Unlike Fitzee, I use the shit out of cardboard templates, and by in large couldn't care less about retaining factory seams. To that end, those seams you can see in the pics of the corners will be going away.

 

The plan is to dump some por15 or similar into all of the cavities and follow that up with chassis saver or cavity wax.

 

Didn't have a lot of time to work on things tonight, and most of that time was spent being not happy with the corner patches for the sail panel. To give myself a quick win I went ahead and burned in and lightly dressed the patch I made last night.

 

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Don't have to go too crazy cleaning this one up since most of it will be covered in lead, or a lead free alternative.

Edited by UnderControl
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13 hours ago, UnderControl said:

I've used kitty hair with lasting results

 

FWIW, I typically go kitty hair, then a very thin skim of regular filler, on stuff that's kind "deep" like that. I try to limit regular filler to no more than 1mm thick if at all possible. 

Edited by datsunfreak
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4 hours ago, datsunfreak said:

 

Part of me thinks "they quit using that shit for a reason"...  😄

I think you are right, but I think the major reasons would be A) lead is deadly, so sanding it and breathing, not amazing idea.  B)way harder to do and likely more expensive.  Why do something challenging well, when you do something cheap more easily?  Makes good business sense.  But man there is something cool about knowing your car is solid metal.

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Lead filler these days is pretty cheap, lead free metal fillers less so. I think I'll pick up a small batch of the lead free type and see how much I hate life while trying to use it. Worst case I go over whatever abomination I create with glass filler.

 

Got the corner patched up.

 

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Got the sail panel patched up, or at least as much as I can until I get to the window corners.

 

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Down to scraps for sheet metal stock and none of those scraps are big enough to do the patches on the panel below the window so those will have to wait until I restock. In the meantime I started in on some random other things including getting the rust cut out of the passenger inner tub.

 

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There is a common mod to extend that lower corner to the inside for improved tire clearance. That'll happen before that hole gets closed back up.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Got around to restocking some sheet metal and got to work on the first rear window area patch panel.

 

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After a couple of hours it was sitting fairly close to about right for the basic contours. It was here though that I got to thinking about how many additional hours it would take to get it the rest of the way there, add the break, trim, add the window frame sections and then have to repeat it all on the other side. That was followed by deciding my time was worth the not very much money of the whole replacement panel, so yeah, got to work with the spot weld cutter in preperation for the new metal that should be here this weekend.

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Couple weeks ago I picked up a couple old carbs for reasons. One, well 2, a complete 650 double pumper that was an emissions legal replacement for quadrajets, a carb I've been meaning to replace on my mom's K20 for years, and another mostly complete. The other other just a humble 600cfm 1850 that will find it's way on to the 289. Both of the 650s have stuck throttles that I'm hoping to get moving without trashing the base plates. The 1850 is sticky, but moves.

 

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These led me to give a chinesium ultrasonic cleaner a shot. It did a decent job of cleaning with a 50/50 water and simple green mix.

 

Cleaned several parts including the base plate.

 

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It's still stuck, but it's cleaner.

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Went ahead and pulled the base plat off the other 650 and put them both through the blaster before going for another round in the ultrasonic.

 

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Also ran sever other parts through the bath. Found out that someone has been at this carb with the needle and float adjuster 9000.

 

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Also managed to get the throttles moving in both base plates so I might actually have 1.75 usable carbs by the time I'm done. Not sure if there is a way to embed gifs here and don't have the fucks  to find out now, so click at your option for short clip of moving, albe they still sticky throttle plates.

 

https://i.imgur.com/MmSN8X8.gifv

 

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

The busy season is upon me, and as such I haven't spent much time in the garage over the last few weeks. I did manage to find a color correct hatch for the xj and got it swapped over. Also, got around to putting a water pump in the merc and actually wired up the oil pressure and water temp gauges that I've had for roughly 9 months.

 

Today I started in on another hopefully short project.

 

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Did a compression check on the bike, and, well I think those numbers speak for them selves. The above numbers are dry, but I did do a follow up on #1 with a bit of oil in the cylinder and saw 150. So...

 

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Cylinders actually look ok, #1 definitely showing the most signs of wear, but some cross hatching is still visible. The ring gap on 1 is .002 over compared to .001 over of 4. I already have most of what I need for a topend rebuild and new rings are on the way. In the meantime there shall be lots of cleaning and likely some painting.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Really starting to wish I had gotten the 20L.

 

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Overall it did a real nice job on the areas the solution could reach.

 

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I blasted the barrels and frankly it took so much more time than the ultrasonic for not far from the same result.

 

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Edited by UnderControl
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Bores are honed, block deck is all prepped, old rings are out and started in on gapping the new ones.  In preparation for checking/setting ring gap I whipped up a little dealy to get them set nice and even.

 

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Edited by UnderControl
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