Meet Ralph - 1970 ST project

[coomo]

Hi There,
Yes it was Tubecraft, good to hear that they are worth the money. Would be really interested in hearing more about your Stainless oil lines, are end fittings readily available and how did you get the flares on the ends of the tubes?
Let me know about the tube please, although I’m not sure if titanium may be a bit out of my league!

Hi Rob,
I’m using 0.8mm , I found that 0.8mm ran smoother in my welder than 0.6mm and I couldn’t really tell the difference. One of the key factors in controlling the current for welding is wire speed. I think there’s an explanation on Trev’s Blog Youtube. At the moment even for thin stuff I use the second from lowest setting(1/Max) but the wire speed is only set to between 2 and 3 (max is 10).
I would spend some time just welding beads on some sheet on a workbench just to dial in your settings. I would then move to a butt joint on the bench and basically build things up a step at a time.
One technique that I use if I’m struggling with blow through is to use a series of spot welds, letting thongs cool for a second or two between welds, this is useful when you have a bit of a gap in a butt weld. Let me know how you get on.

Busy day today...

2021-10-12_05-29-10 by richard cannings, on Flickr

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Hi Rich.The ferrules for the oil lines,are coming from a Pelican Guy,whos also making my high looping thermostat to engine lines.Yes,pipes will require flaring with flaring tool.Will need some heat first,then silver soldering.ive 3.5 metres of 50mm Titanium on order,totals about £250 the lot.
I made up 2 patterns of oil lines.Used any old scrap to get the shape.However.Its not possible to create a less than 4 inch bend in a mid tube, as it will kink,and you cant fit a mandrel to keep it from collapsing.If I need to create a more severe bend (as pipes exit sill, into wing space) I will buy premade and braze in.Cost of lines was about £400ish.I supplied the tube which was about £60.
These are the lines I made that run to flexy pipe from front cooler.These are steel,and will be zinc plated.

[rich73]

Thanks for the oil line info,
Let me know how you get on.....trying not to to too distracted from scraping underseal and welding at the moment.
Left hand inner wing cleaned up and primed now, bit of surface rust at the so got the blast pot out. I bought a a cheap one on eBay ages ago which I really wasn't that impressed with it but I spent some time on YouTube and found some info that helped. First was finer blast media, I'm now using crunched glass which works well and doesn't clog but is really quite dusty. Second thing was a new nozzle which is a huge improvement.

2021-10-14_09-46-37 by richard cannings, on Flickr

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[rich73]

More underseal scraping today.....yay!
Things are looking good under the rear arches, you can see that the underseal has failed but there's only light surface rust that i can remove with media blasting.

2021-10-20_09-48-21 by richard cannings, on Flickr

Reached a point where about 95% of the paint and underseal has been removed from the car but there are still parches here and there. Decided to work my way around the car doing the remaining paint and underseal to get the job complete.

I'd always assumed that this was the first car that I'd get media blasted before starting on the bodywork and got a price of £1200(3 years ago) for the whole doing thing from Decorrosion services that are local to me which seemed pretty reasonable.

Since then prices seem to have gone up and I realised that by the time I'd replaced the floor and scraped off the underseal I was half way there already. Also realised that if I did it myself I didn't have to worry about getting the car on a dolly and the cost of transport.

Starting to think about paint colour, some sort of Orange is high on the list at the moment. Hoping to go to the DDK swap meet and see a few cars to get some ideas.
Rich

[RobFrost]

Starting to think about paint colour, some sort of Orange is high on the list at the moment. Hoping to go to the DDK swap meet and see a few cars to get some ideas.
Rich

What's the original colour? Was it signal orange?

[rich73]

Sepia Brown, which I did think about for a while but moved on from that idea long ago.

2021-10-20_11-40-41 by richard cannings, on Flickr


As its basically the same colour as rust its a bit depressing making everything look much worse than it is.

[RobFrost]

Signal orange, bahama yellow or black are my favourites

Sent from my SM-G988B using Tapatalk

[Ian Donkin]

Great thread with amazing pace, skill and resourcefulness. Thanks for sharing.

[rich73]

Thanks Ian,
More progress with blasting, sanding and epoxy on the right hand rear inner wing. Its working well just doing a section at a time and then getting some paint on.
2021-10-25_04-20-03 by richard cannings, on Flickr

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Thinking I might have a go at getting the roof done tomorrow.

[Gary71]

That’s come up lovely.
You must be chuffed with that

[rich73]

Thanks Garry, really pleased with how its coming up.

Feels like I'm still getting to know the 911 shell in detail though, some of the areas like the end of the chassis round the rear lights must be a huge amount of work if rot has set in.

Really happy with the section at a time approach, I did have the initial aim to get the whole car in clean bare metal at the same time for pictures as much as anything but found this just isn't practical working by myself at home.

[rich73]

Shiny Roof day.
2021-11-01_04-14-23 by richard cannings, on Flickr

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and shiny door day too.

2021-11-01_04-15-26 by richard cannings, on Flickr

Just got a coat of epoxy on both.

[911hillclimber]

Slowly-slowly-catch-your-monkey.
Good approach and nice to do the graft and then colour with the grey, good sense of progress. Looks nice, takes me back 3 decades ago when I did mine!

Keep at it, and the reports too.

[rich73]

Really wanted to have the whole car in bare metal but just not practical.

Be gone sepia brown....

2021-11-02_01-15-51 by richard cannings, on Flickr

2021-11-02_01-16-05 by richard cannings, on Flickr

Other side going well.

2021-11-02_01-16-23 by richard cannings, on Flickr

Finally have a media blasting setup at home that works well. 2 X 3hp compressors, cheap eBay blast pot, fine crushed glass media and a squeeze trigger blast gun.

[rich73]

....and straight in with the epoxy. Spraying really well without thinning using a 2.0 nozzle. Then used a brush to get it into the seams

2021-11-02_05-52-26 by richard cannings, on Flickr

[deano]

Finally have a media blasting setup at home that works well. 2 X 3hp compressors, cheap eBay blast pot, fine crushed glass media and a squeeze trigger blast gun.

Looks like you have a great setup, this is really impressive. Can you give any more details about what you are doing the sanding with, especially in the harder to reach places like gutters? What size are your air tanks and are there any tricks needed to use two compressors at once, besides a T piece and regulator at the gun end, or is it just plug-and-play, and very noisy when they are charging at the same time?