DDK - Die Deutschen Klassiker

Interesting approach to this.
Looks good and you could not have added more to ensure it is all sound.
Just my opinion, don't bother grinding down the welds just for cosmetic reasons, the joint will be stronger as a full weld rather than a dressed '1/2 weld'

I have a bitter experience on my race car where someone else had welded part of the suspension and the weld from a repair had failed while i was in full flight. The repair weld was dressed to hide the repair, the weld was about 1mm at best thick.

You can get back to normal now!

Very smart approach. Great result!

impressive

Thanks for all the kind words guys. Im really happy with how this has worked out, plus the relatively small damage to my wallet, all things considered. Obviously I would have been happier if this had never happened! Im sure I would be knocking on for a 5 figure sum to pay someone to repair this, which would not have been happening, I probably would have had to sell it. There cant be many more worse things that can go wrong on me now I hope. I did think at first when it failed as I was driving and lost power plus horrible sounds and smells that I had thrown a rod or siezed the engine, now that would have been bad on the wallet!

So I have braced up the tube to the rear seat bases painted it all under sealed it all etc. I got a can of cavity wax with a long probe attachment and gave the tube 3 heavy coats of wax internally






With the engine out and having done a few hundred miles on it, it was due a valve lash adjustment and a retorque of the head studs. This is much easier with the engine out. I wouldnt fancy doing a head stud re-torque with the engine still in the car, that must be a proper old git access wise. I was surprised how much retorquing was required, I got half turn on some of the studs. It may be different for 2.0 engines like mine as they run paper gaskets to the heads unlike later engines which I guess compress somewhat over time.

I also had the opportunity to fit isolating switches for each CDI box so I can test the twin plug banks. Plus I have made progress with getting my RPM transducer/fuel cutoff to hopefully work. I didnt know until recently that the factory transducer only works with points distributors. i.e. if you run 123 distributors (like i previously did) or any other aftermarket electronic/hall effect distributors like my current twin plug one, then the transducer doesnt work. Fortunately there is a work around If you have a Classic retrofit CDI+, which both of mine are so hopefully I will be able to sort this.




This weekend I have been slowly reassembling things. Theres a chance I could give it a test drive next weekend if all goes well and weather is kind. I didnt think this would be possible this side of christmas a few months ago

Very good to see, a result to say the least.

I have just removed the 3.2 out of my hillclimb Lola to clean and check the studs etc after 2 years of abuse on the engine, and all was well though the valves had opened to 6 thou on every valve so pinched back to 4 thou.

Hope your next update will be it flies down the road!

great to see how you've turned this disaster round

Well done, the earlier threads when this happened showed how disillusioned you were with it all. But you have persevered and done an excellent job of fixing it all. That repair should out last the car now. Congratulations!

It's really disheartening when these things come along but the test of a man is his ability to bounce back in the face of adversity.