Recent Posts

Fiats and Friends – Saturday 3rd August 2024, British Motor Museum (Gaydon)
A few of us are booked into this, it's only £11 for display cars.
Tickets give admission to the show, Museum and Collections Centre 

more info and tickets available here:
https://fiatsandfriends.co.uk
https://www.britishmotormuseum.co.uk/whats-on/fiats-and-friends

Excellent - I'll give it a try tomorrow
Thanks

What Stuart Said!

The bearing is not an especially tight fit in the housing. Remove the clamp plate bolts and the whole driveshaft will tap out.

Having a bit of trouble with this. Compared with your description (one top bolt and two bolts/nuts to engine mount), the intermediate shaft carrier is held to the block by an extra two studs/nuts at the bottom, which are too long to allow the carrier to be pulled away. I have removed the engine mount to get extra clearance, but I'm wary about levering the carrier too far and too hard, for fear of ruining the bearings. Any ideas? I think removing the studs will not be easy given the cramped space. Pic attached.
If I can get the carrier loose, does the shaft pull easily out of the diff, or does it need some persuasion?

In less time than it took me to find a suitable reservoir, I knocked up some stainless bracketry and mounted it in the location of the original rear bottle. Once the shell is painted I will run the feed pipe to the front of the car in hard nylon pipe. Then once the car is refitted with carpets and trims I shall see if I need to protect the filler neck from knocks and bangs.

Work on the HPE has taken a back seat whilst the other 3 roadworthy cars deserved maintenance and repairs. But things have still been ticking over with external machining jobs and small detail jobs that I would rather do before finally painting the shell.
One such job that was niggling me was replacing the two window washer reservoirs. I’m not a fan of the fragile front windscreen washer bottle mounted under the windscreen scuttle panel and I wanted to combine both bottles into one.
Initially I would have preferred a washer bottle under the n/s wing like most modern cars but the filler neck would have needed to be where I intend putting a secondary fuse box for fuel injection power and relays.
So my second idea was to put a single bottle with two pumps where the original rear washer bottle lives. Some hours later on eBay and for the grand sum of a tenner I had myself a Suzuki Alto two pump reservoir to experiment with.

More parts on the done shelf. All the plated suspension parts have had two coats of POR15 as well as the fuel tank. Bearings pressed in and a full set of Marks poly bushes done. Next job is the front subframe. It needs degreasing and then painting with POR 15. I don’t think I’m going to have it shot blasted or powder coated. There are 4 adjustable rear transverse arm ends in for plating and once they come back all I’ll need is the springs and one more set of poly bushes and the shell can be put on wheels.

Progress is slow but the fourth corner is done. Just the sill in the rear corner of the drivers door to fix, the top of the B post and a small repair in the rear window aperture before a roof swap. Then minor repairs to closing panels and it’s off for dipping and e-coating!

Excellent work. Great pics

Just started assembling the rear hubs and immediately hit a minor glitch with the PU bush I got from Mark for the hub to ARB, I cannot get it ti slide into the hub, it's the first one that has said no. Now I'm wondering the there is a sleeve in the cast hub that needs to come out first or if I just need to have another go at it...

And having looked at it with a set of verniers it was pretty clear it wasn't going to fit with the outer wall of the original bush still in place. A bit of judicious cutting with a hacksaw (two cuts in each one, receive the pressure and it taps out with a punch) and the new bush popped into place without too much of a fight. Putting the sleeve into the bush and the job's done.

Guy