75 Page 4.
Having got the welding done, it was time to start painting (the bit I don't like). In the past I had used Hammerite directly onto the metal. I had found that it didn't tend to last very long though. This time I was extra careful to make sure I had created a good key with wet & dry, the cleaned it with solvent to remove dust and grease. I then used Hammerite primer followed by the Hammerite itself. I will be some time before I know if this will work or not, as this car will not be subject to the winter commuting abuse that previous car have been subject to...
De-dion axle painted & crossmember powder coated.
It was now time to reassemble the car.
For the rear suspension, I fitted polyurethane bushes in the watts linkage, anti roll bar to axle mounts and the axle to crossmember mount. I had considered fitting the SZ uniball type bearing here, but decided against it as I intend to use this car mainly on the road, and the roads are somewhat bumpy around here!
I also fitted lowering springs. I refitted the Bilstein sport shocks with fresh rubber bushes.
The origional front transaxle mounts were well on the way out, however I had a good looking one in my spares collection for the offside, so I used that. For the nearside (which wasn't quite as bad) I decided to try a modification I'd been told of, which was to fit a bolt through the mount thus stopping the rubber coming away.
At the front I fitted polyurethane bushes to the upper suspension arm, the anti roll bar to chassis mounts and the castor rods. I retained the HBE 29mm anti roll bar but ditched the front shocks (boge) in favour of some old yellow koni's that I had. I also lowered the front 40mm.
For the interior of the car, the leather went to London to grace Tempra's lovely black V6 and in went my LE recaro's. I also fitted my Personal steering wheel.
Four months later and it was time for a test drive! Yeehah!!!
Here she is fresh from the garage:
First job was to get an MOT and some tax. It would have been nice to take her for a good test run before the MOT, but I couldn't afford to be caught without MOT or tax, so the first run was the one to the MOT station...
On the way there, the only think that concerned me was the brakes. They were very poor. The car passed the MOT but the brakes were right on the limit.
On the way home I tried them again. It felt like there was very little servo assistance. The first thing to check was the valve on the vacuum line. Sure enough this was gummed up with crap. A quick clean out and the brakes were as they should be!
I was planning a trip up to the Isle of Skye in a few days time and was very keen to take the 75, so as soon as I had the brakes fixed, I was out again for a run. First along a twisty road, then some high speed dual carrigeway to see if anything fell off or went bang.
On the twisty bit, the main problem was the front tyres scrapping the bumper. This wasn't too bad, so I didn't bother too much about it. On the fast bit however, there was a bit bang from the rear when I sank the boot coming out the first roundabout. My first thout was that a propshaft doughnut had let go. On further inspection it turned out to be the transaxle mount that I'd put the bolt through. I must just have caught the centre bracket with the bolt and under load it seems that part of it had sheared, resulting in the bang and subsequent clunking. I decided that I would put up with the clunking for the trip to Skye provided there were no other major problems on the longer run I had planned the next day.
The car went fairly well on the longer run (60 miles) the only problem being a misfire at about 4700 rpm and a reluctance to rev much above this. By now I REALLY wanted to take the car to Skye as I was rather looking forward to experiencing the best roads in the world (IMO) in a 75 again, so I decided that sorting out the missfire could wait till I got back.