So... it turned out that looked like a wonderful paint job under a cloudy sky and in the garage, turned out to be extremely poor in the sun. The highly polished clear coat and metallic flake were hiding sanding scratches and a cloudy colour coat, plus a large number of dust nibs. The painter didn't want to know - he seemed convinced that it must have been something I did - therefore he will be the subject of a court case in the near future
Two reasonably local restoration shops have given it the thumbs down and, bless them, wrote me a report on their findings. I am stuck in limbo paint-wise until the court rules... the goal will be to start over, from bare metal again. Aside from in the engine bay and frunk, that means, no rebuilding / re-fitting of the hundreds of new rubber or restored parts that I have waiting in line...
That aside, I have spent the last months of spare time restoring the engine bay and the area under the rear seats and (new) kick boards, including a repairing areas of damaged rubberised undercoating (colour matched RAL7006 using Cobra tintable beadliner) followed by a light dusting of body colour, clear coat, and finally Bilt Hamber Dynax-UC clear dry wax especially in the nooks and crannies. It looks good, not show-winning, but nice and clean and original-looking under the engine lid (95% of the textured coating was good/retained). More importantly, quite impenetrable!
My goal is to get everything back in place and re-fit and run the engine in the next month or so, so it doesn't have to come out again for a while.
I have a few QUESTIONS about some of the engine bay parts below if you can help please:
>New old stock heater flaps and orange silicone hoses just fitted. Going to attempt to fit a new heater cable, as the original is a little short nowadays - - can anyone tell me, is it easy to thread a new one, is it easy to get at the guide tubes? is there a trick to it?
>Re-installed the fuel filter console and CDI fuse panel -- can anyone show how the cables are supposed to be organised under the panel, and especially where the nickel plated ground strap goes - does mine look correct (ground strap bolted to bottom right fuse panel mounting bolt, GREEN ARROWS)?
>Can anyone tell me where the left and right engine lid hinge ground straps are supposed to land? E.g. Left one to grounding point behind fuel filter console (RED ARROW)? Right side strap to oil tank mounting bolt?
>Restored and reinstalled the fuel pump with all new E10 compatible fuel hoses and hose clips - was fairly challenging to get it into the cradle (mounting bracket first on its rubber isolator with the Jubilee clip in place, then wiggle to pump in place). Given that all the pipes are san-fuel, do I need to prime the pump somehow before I run the fuel pump for the first time, or is it OK to run it dry until it has sucked up the fuel from the fuel tank?
>Just aboot to order new rubber sleeves for the accelerator rod, speedo and clutch cables - does the speedo sleeve (91164152000) in the parts catalogue go on the end of the speedo cable/gearbox or where the speedo cable comes out from the kick panel please?
