With the shell pretty well stripped and up on stands and the major bits reduced to workable pieces I got to a stage which I suppose everyone goes through when the weather gets late autumnal and cold and there seems to be no further rapid progress in sight.
The obvious next thing to do was to get on with the welding since all the rusty bits were now exposed. The snag was that I was waiting for Tony to come and bail me out on the welding front and he is a very popular man. First in line for attention was Peter Humpherson‘s P6 (very much in need back then) followed by Tony‘s Range Rover. Autumn and early winter saw no progress on the shell at all.
I did get some work done though and more to the point, having identified some of the missing/worn out bits, I was able to start assembling replacements.
Two wings and a carrier bag of electrical bits came from a shed in York to which we were guided by the local grapevine and the other two, via an ad in P6 owners club mag, from a farm at Holme on Spalding Moor. The alternator and starter motor went straight to Bell Autolectrics and are now in boxes in the warm waiting their turn for reassembly. The autojumble at Newby Hall yielded the gear box extension casting, mud flaps and some small bits and the P6 owners rally at Lotherton Hall provided a pair of fully refurbished front calipers for about the price of a repair kit, shock absorbers, ball joints (remember those?) and a couple of catalogues to mull over in the long damp days.
From one of these I acquired a rear caliper repair kit and set to: The workings of the Rover rear caliper are not obvious at first sight. In fact they look pretty complex at second sight to say nothing of being pretty scruffy. However when the first two nuts are removed and the cover prised off then lo and behold, inside is something resembling a Swiss watch, albeit a pretty greasy one. The instructions in the manual are not bad and without too many lost springs I was able to renew and reassemble without tears. My new found skill came in very handy when on opening the second one I had to take the first one apart again and put the seal on the right way round. Remade, polished and boxed they too are awaiting their time.
With little or no hope of an early visit from Tony I got out the angle grinder and cleaned much of the rust from the rear suspension parts and drive shafts. Then I spent a day getting all the red dust off all the previously cleaned parts. Remember to do the mucky bits outside next time! Red dust went down like the proverbial lead balloon in the house as well. Why does it cling so tenaciously to your clothes until you get indoors and then drop off in heaps?
On a dry day I managed to get the shell down onto a homemade trolley and nosed it out into the fresh air to clean the engine bay. I doused in well in Gunk with a paraffin gun first and then hit it with the pressure washer. I got very wet but the engine bay came out pretty grease free. Knowing my luck it will now rust.
Finally, towards Christmas, the first indication that Santa Simons was imminent. He organised me to equip my garage with bottles of gas. Welding must be in the offing. I think I‘ll have a bit of practice at it on my own before he comes.
Oh and Norm, you were right. That prop shaft did fall off. Still, no bones broken.
