My last post was in May when I pulled the brakes off the Smart Roadster and found more work than I needed. My last post before that was over a year ago when I started the bodywork of the green Spitfire and found more work than I needed. There was a theme building here...
So now it's September 2020 and having got involved in a few unexpected things (partly thanks to COVID-19 lockdown and related effects) I've finally got back to playing around with cars again. It must therefore be about time for a big update.
I'll start with the Roadster. Having ignored it for several months it clearly wasn't going to get any better on its own and I decided that if I was going to do the job then I would do it properly. The rear wheel cylinders were not in a pretty state with seized bleed nipples and unions.
Getting the cylinders off the car was eventually only achieved by cutting the brake pipes.
That meant buying an assortment of new unions and copper-nickel pipe to fix it again and since I'd already gone that far I made another trip to the Mercedes main dealer and bought a pair of flexi-hoses as well. At least fitting those allowed me to install them properly and remove the cable-tie bodgery left from "professional" work carried out at the expense of a previous owner. Interestingly whilst that part was retained with cable ties whoever replaced the brake lines at that time didn't see fit to retain any other part of the plumbing after breaking off half the plastic clips. But, I digress...
Eventually the pipes were back where they should be, the new cylinders were installed and, after much struggling, the shoes and springs went back in too. There's very little room to manoeuvre since the hub flange is relatively large compared to the size of the backplate.
I couldn't just refit the original rusty drums after all that work so I set to with a wire brush on an angle grinder, followed by rust remover gel and then painted them both with high temperature black spray paint.
Since I had the back of the car in pieces anyway, I also fitted the new rear suspension locating arms I'd bought ages ago but not got around to fitting. The old arms were fine in themselves but the rubber bushings were almost non-existent and the bushings aren't available on their own.
You can see the two arms hanging down in that picture.
There was one more job to do here which was to come up with a way to retain the fuel pipes better. They run in the top of the offside rear wheel arch and they have always rattled about on my car.
Not surprising really since the only thing protecting them seems to be a bit of loose foam. They just bounce between the top of the wheel arch and whatever that thing is below them (I suspect it's something to do with emissions control but never quite figured out what it does!). I don't know if that bit of foam is supposed to be part of a retaining fitting that's missing or quite how it's supposed to help to be honest.
I am quite well supplied with cable ties though and I also have a supply of stick-on plastic bases that form a nice attachment point. The self adhesive on those bases was never much good but I removed the original and, after cleaning and degreasing the metal of the wheel arch I attached them with 3M VHB double sided tape which is about the strongest sticky tape you can buy as far as I know.
All of which further proves that there's almost nothing that can't be fixed with cable ties!
Having fixed all of the issues at the rear of the car and reassembled the bodywork I turned it round and pulled the front brakes apart too.
Yes, I know I already changed the front brake pads and that's what started me on this whole process but I knew I'd fitted them to some pretty rusty calipers and that just wouldn't do now I'd expended all that effort at the back.
Of course the unions here were seized solid too so I had to cut and re-make some sections of copper line. I did already have a pair of new braided flexi-hoses on the shelf though that I'd bought in a fit of enthusiasm a long time ago so they went on as well.
The calipers themselves I sent off to Bigg Red for a full reconditioning. This was expensive and meant the car was off the road for another few weeks but it was well worth the cost and the wait.
What came back was barely recognisable as the same items I'd sent off!
With everything finally back together and the fluid flushed through and bled properly a test drive proved everything was working. With everywhere still in at least a partial lockdown though I don't have many places I need to go now.
After all that work I finished things off by replacing the very tired and faded wheel centres with some new ones I found on Ebay. They're cheap Chinese-made replicas and like many such things they're a tiny bit the wrong size but they fitted OK with the help of a largish mallet! It's amazing how big a difference such a small detail makes to the appearance of the car too.
That's the update for one car then. I've a lot more to report but I'll keep that for next time!
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