Re: HM Ambassador - At 45th year. Reincarnation process in progress. Dear Rudra - you shall always have my "all kinds of" support. First of all, my apologies for not replying for some time due to work, work and more work (you all know what that is!).
I am sure old man Gopal knows what he is doing, his body language conveys it clearly. I am happy to see that all the trim has been removed. This is the correct way. I hope they have been marked and preserved in plastic bags. Please arrange to remove all the wiring harness / trim parts hanging out there. The body shell must be stripped down to the last brake bundy tube. Next, as you are replacing the load bearing members at the front of the body shell, it is extremely important to align the new long members / front cross member with the old rears members which are thankfully OK. Although Gopal understands this in his own quintessential way, you need to check the chassis cross dimensions and confirm that the squareness of the chassis is integrated into the system. Normally, we make jigs for such work. In R&D, we can do anything, outside it is easier said than done but there can be no compromise in this area. However, you have an advantage as you are doing only one car, so you can do what you want. Here, we do not have that luxury. Please take a conscious call now and add gussets in critical areas like control arm / shock absorber mounting locations. The idea is to optimize the bending and torsional stiffness of the body shell.
There is another area where you can make a difference on how you work on your car during restoration. I am sharing this with you as it happened to me during restoration of my 1967 Fiat 1100 Delight MRF6466. The body shell integrity was basically OK as the single owner car had covered only 27000 odd kilometers from 1967 to September 2008 when I bought it (works out to only 660 kms per year). The car was painted badly a couple of times and a lot of small holes were there all over the floor / dash area. During my restoration, I changed all doors, engine hood and tail boot, went down to absolute bare metal and completed the whole job in around 5 months. What is important is that during this time, I had to spend many days just sealing the body joineries and blocking at least 150 little holes in the floor which were made to hold the old rubber mats in place by using self tapping screws. It was a dirty job which I had to essentially undo. Each and every seam was sealed, each and every old and rusted self tapping screw was removed by heating and melting and then each hole was filled in by welding before underfloor coating could commence. The biggest headache was that I had to physically stand there and do it, we all know how garages work. I suggest you do the same, as you are going to keep the car forever, it is worth the effort. The intention is that when the body shell goes in for paint, you should see it as if it is a new car body shell going in for paint. When the body shell emerges from paint, you can stand there and quietly smile at the differentiation you have achieved with respect to what most others do out there.
I have seen the power steering as mounted. Please ensure the integrity / stiffness of the body mounting brackets, otherwise the whole assembly will shift during use. Please finish off any rework on the dash panel's removable center part before starting paint. I think in one photograph, Gopal is holding the ackerman arm. It is possible that by design, the length of this arm will be different. Please ensure design intent of the power steering pump mountings is respected and all hoses are properly routed and clipped. Avoid acute angle bends as far as possible. Please finish off all mechanicals before paint. I suggest you complete the car, drive it once, get satisfied that things are in place before you paint.
Somewhere you have mentioned that the crankshaft center line is changed to accommodate the power steering gear. Please be extremely careful as any error here can affect performance.
Please post more photographs. I will give further comments.
Coolant temperature of 90 degrees C is OK if the syatem is pressurized and there is no coolant loss at all. Of course, using a degassing tank is the perfect solution.
Best regards,
Behram Dhabhar |