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This weekend has seen some progress and, as always, some “whoa, didn’t expect that”s. Let’s see, where did we start? Brakes!

Brakes. The parts had finally come in from NAPA, so even though the steel performance brake hoses hadn’t arrived yet from Victoria British, Jimmy started in on the brakes. He soon discovered that the new seals were the wrong size for the calipers. We went back to NAPA, but they said the ones we’d bought were the only ones their database showed for the car. We came back and checked the Moss catalog, and Jimmy thought the calipers looked a little different, because the ones we have don’t use the banjo fitting shown in the catalog. We started wondering if someone in the last 40 years might have changed out the front brakes to bigger caliper, but hours of searching various forums got us nowhere (other than discovering that there seemed to be 2 other people asking the same question based on part numbers, and not finding answers). The housings are Lockheed, item numbers 3243223C and 3243331C. NAPA couldn’t find those parts, and neither could the guy at Moss when I called to see if they had any insight. I’ll be posting in a couple of forums to see if the Spridget community has any answers. Hopefully someone will know the answer, so we can finish the brakes! The cylinders and shoes are done for the back brakes.

Fuel Tank. The Kreem kit hadn’t come yet from carparts.com (due to get here on Jan 6, though it’s already in Atlanta, so I’m hoping it will come sooner), so the task assigned to me was to scrub the outside with a wire brush to get off the rust and caked on muck, then remove the fuel gauge sending unit. The screws were kind of rusted in and the indentations in the screws were filled with a cement-like gray substance (probably old dirt) that left no room for a screwdriver edge. After wire brushing for a chunk of time, I took a small screwdriver and used it like a pickaxe to gouge out the petrified gray stuff. I was able to remove three of the screws after this. The other three required a ratchet. Jimmy had some detergent left over from a previous project, so we figured we would do a pre-wash with it so the Kreem would be more effective. We poured the stuff in the tank and sloshed it around. I sloshed it around every 10 minutes or so for about 40 minutes, then we let it sit for a couple of hours. When Jimmy started to pour out the detergent, he saw there was a lot of caked muck coming up, so he decided to take the tank down to the car wash place to use their pressure washer. When he came back he showed me the size of the chunks that came out of the tank. It looked like samples of sedimentary rock.  Now you can actually see the whitish inside of the tank.

Windshield. Since the windshield would be arriving next week, I thought I’d take out the cracked windshield glass in preparation for the new piece. Harder than it sounds. My windshield frame looks nothing like the one shown in the Haynes manual, so the instructions about which screws to loosen where were totally useless. We took out all the visible screws, but everything else is rivets, so we decided to wait on it until the new glass arrives and the body is being painted. I am mildly concerned about it, though… if the frame is not the right frame for the car, the glass may not fit.

Window regulator. The passenger door window wasn’t working quite right, so Jimmy took out the window regulator. We need to figure out why it’s not moving, then make it move. “Hose it down with oil and beat it with a hammer until it submits,” says Jimmy.

Seat rails. We set up the sandblasting cabinet, and I’m working on cleaning up the metal bits, getting rid of rust and paint. When it is working, it’s very satisfying, but the tube keeps coming up out of the sand, making it annoying. The compressor is crazy loud, too. I’ve taken to wearing big headphones attached to my iPhone and singing super loud while I’m blasting. Jimmy gave me weird looks during Pantera Fans in Love.

Floor surfaces. I vacuumed out the trunk floor, the interior floor, up under the wheel wells, the battery tray, and any surfaces in the engine compartment where it looked like debris and/or spiderwebs had collected. Uncovered some rust in the floor beneath where the seats go, including one small hole on the rear passenger side.

Driver seat. We needed to rip out the seat bottom to be able to weld the metal. I pried off the clips, ripped off the diaphragm and jute layers, pulled out the foam insert, and yanked off both the original red covering and the black over-cover. It was more beat up than expected, so we’ll be talking to a local upholsterer this week to see how much it would be to rebuild the seat bottom. The metal supports are rusted through, so we’ll be welding it all back together. Fingers are crossed.

Convertible top. I’ve decided to buy a new top rather than trying to repair the vinyl tears on the current one. I took off the retaining strip in the back and undid the velcro wraps, but the attachment at the front of the convertible assembly is a little more sturdy than it looked at first, so I wound up leaving it on for now.

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