Not another 356 restoration

[Ignatzcatz]

Kind of blue - - - -
with thanks to Miles Davies I might just have a name for the old dog. There are a few runs and the panels are not exactly up to Pebble Beach standards, in fact they're nowhere near, But, the old dog is all one colour at last. After bucket loads of pug and gallons of high build primer, most of which ended up on the garage floor and in my boots, it's looking something like a Porsche and not some also ran from the local banger races. Still lots to do, find some interior, fit the lights, buy a windscreen (not looking forward to that) fill it with gas and hope my tank welds don't leak - doubtful, hope I've connected all the wires to the right bits. And then there is the small matter of getting some official paperwork for it. I've no history, no import docs, no V5, nada. I do know however that originally it started it's miserable little life in San Antonio Texas which I don't think will be any help at all.
Now the most immediate problem is trying to post some pics on this infernal website. Here goes . . .

[Ignatzcatz]

.goodbye

[Ignatzcatz]

It has been love and hate and a lot of the latter, but the car is now virtually done. I'm having the screens fitted next week, after shelling out 450 plus on the screen and a new surround of course I daren't try to fit it myself. So it's front and rear to go in, there are some sill plates to be fitted, check all the levels, that's steering box, transmission and I might fit new axle seals. The engine is fine. Better put some liquid in the washer bottle, then it's off to Cridfords for the MOT. The car doesn't have a V5 so I will be getting all the documentation to hand before presentation to the DVLA in my endeavours to get the old dog legal. It should be an interesting episode.

[Ignatzcatz]

The old dog is done. Finished it off this Summer and took it to be MOT'd and the folks there said they couldn't do the mot without the car having a registration mark. Well it's a chicken and egg deal, you can't get a reg number (and in my case V5) until you have a mot. However after driving back fro the garage I noticed oil from the rear hubs. Now this is a lengthy, boring tale of seal kits, shims, axial calculations and filling and re-filling of the transmission. And it would seem our 356 buddys on the other side of the big pond have similar grief with this over-complicated design. I have now sorted the problem and I'm now in the hands of the dear DVLA to gain full legality.
I do know that posting pics now is much simpler but I'm not sure how many I can bung on, so I'll have a go at five.

[Ignatzcatz]

Just gonna stick a few more pics up of the old dog . . .

[hot66]

They can MOT on the chassis number ( or you used to be able to )

[911hillclimber]

I think that is still correct.
It certainly was when I MoT'd my Italian import Lambretta 4 years ago. Reg number came later.