any progress?

Sorry Boys & Girls, I was away on Holiday and then on exercise in the desert for a month but since then the car has come on leaps and bounds.

The wiring's in and almost working. I decided it was best to start from scratch with the wiring loom but was still able to use the odd connector from the original loom here and there. I took the opportunity to fit a modern blade style fusebox and also to add extra fuses to the different lighting circuits. I've still got to do a couple of electrical jobs such as wipermotor (linkage seized hopefully) and headlamps (silvering is shot) but it's all in hand.

The engine now runs and I have even taken Belinda for a quick drive along an short stretch of taxiway. I originally just wanted to make sure that the engine would turn over on the starter motor afer completing the wiring but when I did so I thought "why not take a chance and see if she'll fire up with some petrol in the tank". Well after a bit of fannying around she did and quite nicely as well. Next was the brakes and that went surprisingly well which meant that I was able to take the car for the aforementioned brief test drive.

Currently I'm fitting the exhaust which has meant shortening the swan neck and also opting for short van type tail pipe arrangement which I think suits the car anyway. I'll post some pics later this afternoon to bring you up to date.

OK, there haven't been many pics taken lately as visually not much has changed whilst I was doing the wiring but I have been making a template for the front grill in between jobs



modifying and refitting the bumper



and sorting the exhaust

Well it was all seatbelts last night. When I originally bought the car, the inertia unit was already installed as was the B post attachent but the free end was well, err free!!

It was explained to me that in A series cars, the inertia unit should be mounted forward of the B pillar and the free end aft. As my inertia unit was originally mounted aft, all that was required was an additional bracket fitting, the inertia unit moving forward and the free end attaching where the spool was. For the new bracket I found some quite thick plate (about 2mm),welded a bolt behind in order to make it captive and then welded the bracket both to the internal metal frame of the body and the floor. I'll let the pics do the talking:

Can't wait to see it finished

Dare I say it but, if I was doing the test (which obviously I won't be) I'd want to see a bit more substantial metal on the belt mounts like perhaps a closing section welded in front/behind the bracket so there was less chance of it being able to bend/tear off in the event of any incident.

Oh right. Well I did ask if there were any guidelines or regulations concerning the mounting of seatbelts on the 2CVGB forum and it didn't seem to attract much opinion, other than a link to MOT guidelines which states "Reason for failure: Deliberate modification which significantly reduces the original strength, excessive corrosion, severe distortion, a fracture or an inadequate repair of a load bearing member or its supporting structure or paneling within 30cm of a seat belt anchorage".

The existing mounting point must have been adequate for previous MOTs so I used that as a guide. Both are substantially welded to the body frame at the top and then welded around 3 sides of the flange at the floor.

I do welcome further advice on this subject as it's obviously important!!

After a week's leave I didn't seem to get much done last night really as I alwasy find it hard to get back into the swing of things after more than a couple of days away from the car.

I did get some new headlamps fitted though (thanks David) and they're working fine.

After experimenting with some LED front indicators to replace the knackered originals, I wasn't convinced that they're a good replacement. At first the flash rate wasn't quite correct which I (wrongly, probably) put down to the fact that the flasher unit wasn't being "loaded" correctly with the LEDs. So I got a standard pair of indicators of the type fitted to classic minis and although the flash rate is better, it's still not right so the flasher may need some adjustment as I've seen described elsewhere. In any case I'm not sure the LED units were quite bright enough so I'm going to use them as repeaters on the side of the wings.

A night of mixed fortunes I'm afraid so I'll split this post into 2 parts.

I decided to tackle a lack of "windscreen wipage" and set about removing the motor and linkage.



All was well and good, I removed the motor from the linkage so that I could check to see how stiff the spindles were. Indeed, the spindles were extremely stiff so I lubricated both these and the moving parts of the linkage and before long, everything was moving freely. Feeling pretty chuffed with myself with getting away with just a seized linkage, I attempted to refit the motor into its housing but it wouldn't locate fully. A bit more pressure saw it push fully home but ominously, a small piece of plastic (a couple of mm square and about 20mm long) came from somewhere in the vicinity of the motor housing. Even more ominously, it has uniform marks along the length of it that look like gear marks As a result, I now have a motor that runs when pushed in fully but the park mechanism doesn't work and when the motor stops, it falls out of the housing slightly meaning that it won't run again unless pushed in. Even the pepperpot cover doesn't hold the motor spindle in as I thought it might. I suspect that my newly found piece of plastic is instrumental in this!! Any thoughts?

Anyway, pretty fed up by about 8:30pm I decided to leave the wiper situation and get on with a bit of welding. Belinda still needs a front grill and bonnet front and although I am looking to get these eventually fabricated in GRP (as they should be) I'm doing them for now in metal in order to get her on the road for the International.

I thought that it would be feasible to tackle the leading edge of the bonnet with what was left of the evening, so I started by making up cardboard templates of the side profiles of the bonnet as they have a couple of angles. These were then transferred to some sheet metal in the form of some salvaged metal shelves (ever the recycler, me) which was cut to profile and welded to the existing leading edge of the bonnet. The pics tell the rest of the story:







The more observant of you will notice the reinstatement of the standard front indicator units.

I'm into the realms of just tidying stuff up on Belinda and finishing off little jobs now, so I carried on last night with making some little brackets on which to mount my auxilliary/driving/fog lamps to the front bumper first of all. They were straightforward, just requiring a piece of metal cutting out, bending twice and then welding to the bumper.

Secondly, a job which I've put off until now was a little bit of welding to the valance below the rear door. Those who know the history of Belinda's restoration will have become accustomed to classic bodges and the valance was no exception. As Belinda doesn't have a rear bumper as such, the body is attached to the rear chassis legs where the bumper brackets would go on a standard car. The valance has a lip meaning that when the body is removed or fitted, the front needs to be raised first and the body then removed rearwards. Rather than do this, a previous owner obviously found it easier to cut away the lip around the rear chassis legs and then just bolt pieces of metal across to keep the body on. This just looks gash in my opinion, so I elected to weld in replacement strips of metal to make the valance lip whole again. In time, I think I might need to fabricate a complete new valance, but for now it's fine.

I'll post some pics tomorrow which will make all become clear.

I think the only really big job now will be the front grill so I might start that tonight.