Record, restore, rejuvenate...

It's been a very busy few weeks since my last post. The upholstery work has been rolling in, so I've been working 7 days a week just to keep ahead. The work is inspiring though, I'm grateful that I'm able to make a living doing what I do, I don't take it lightly. More to come on that later -

Meanwhile I have been getting in a bit of work on the B in the evenings at home...

I purchased a zinc plating system from the Eastwood Company for doing my own zinc electroplating of all my hardware. A lot of restoration shops send this stuff out for re-plating and it inevitably comes back in a box with all of the hardware looking great but all mixed up. With this kit, I can set up on my work bench and just plate what bits I need to as I go along, no need to mix up all my individually tagged bags of hardware.

Speaking of plating, I have also been getting into restoring my brake and clutch master cylinder's. I have found enough evidence that I believe the outer body's of these were originally Cad plated in golden cad. And the early cars up to about mid '64 had metal filler caps instead of the more common plastic ones.

I've carefully disassembled both cylinders and will be sending the bodies and pedal arms out for re-plating. In the meantime I'm tracking down some original metal caps and have purchased rebuild kits for both M/C's. When they come back from plating, I'll lightly hone the inner cylinders before rebuilding them.

The other night I also started documenting and disassembling the intake manifold, breather, and carburetors. My B which was built in Feb. 64' was one of the first 3 main bearing cars that had this second style of crankcase breather assemblies installed. Earlier cars would have had just a simple pipe going from the top of the rocker cover to the front air cleaner. Here you can see the original breather on top of the intake manifold, with a pipe going down to the front crankcase side cover.

I also documented the HS4 carburetors, and the original "Smiths Petro-flex" fuel lines. As you can see a few of the clamps have been replaced, but I have new original style ones to set them right. I will also replace the fuel lines with original style ones and transfer the original Smiths logo to the new ones. The carbs I'll just clean and rebuild.

Here is the original golden cad plated heat shield that protected the carburetors from too much heat from the exhaust manifold, preventing vapor lock.
As you can see these original panels had asbestos riveted to the back side, I wore a proper mask and gloves while briefly handling this. I sealed the entire panel in a big zip-lock bag and then double bagged it before safe disposal at a designated facility.
Moss sells new identical panels as these with a convincing non-asbestos insulation on them and correctly finished in new Cad. To avoid dealing with the hazardous removal and replacement of the asbestos, the new panel seems an obvious solution.

Until next time -