My first car by S. Barrett - Actual progress (sort of)

[Barrett]

I think most of you know the story by now, but let's have a quick re-cap anyway. Firstly it's probably worth taking a moment to explain how somebody who has been genuinely obsessed with old cars his whole life has waited this long to actually acquire one. I'm not sure there is a satisfactory answer really; When I hit 17 I was still avidly reading C&SC, but that was about the level of my involvement in the 'old car world'. I took driving lessons but I was only half-interested, most of my time, money and energy was spent in on Girls, Music and Getting Stoned, which were gradually pushing cars to the bottom of my interests (a familiar situation; I'd had a brief dalliance with dinosaurs when I was 6). This was the situation for a few years, until I discovered there was a pretty massive online community of people into 'my' sort of cars. First I found Retro Rides, then Autoshite and OJC and my passion for rubbish old motors was all of a sudden rekindled. I gave up on women & weed and tried to limit my vinyl addiction whilst gradually becoming a bit more involved in car stuff. I've still somehow managed to avoid actually getting a license and I hadn't really considered buying a car before I was a fully legal driver as it seemed a bit pointless.
That very tiny sensible streak was abandoned as soon as I saw a shitty Valencia Blue Bond Equipe pop up on Ebay a few weeks ago. I've long been fascinated with these funny plastic cars from Preston - I bought a copy of Autocar from a car boot sale when I was 9 purely because it contained a GT4s road test - but I've only actually seen a couple in person before now. There was actually a brief point about 10 years ago when there were TWO in Brighton at the same time - one a tatty daily driver and one laid up under a tarp in a nearby garden.
Even when I saw this one, I didn't consider the possibility that I might buy it, merely knowing it existed was enough to make me happy, and anyway it was much too expensive not to mention on the other side of the country. A day after I first clocked the ad, the car was still very much on my mind; It looked so helpless in the grainy photos, sitting in the corner of a muddy yard with a big hole in the roof and some very questionable paintwork. Clearly it needed somebody to take care of it. Somebody who could appreciate it for what it is, and look past its many quirks. Somebody to..... Oh shit! That's me isn't it?

A quick message to friendly local Autoshiter 'Betaboy 2.0' who agreed to go and have a look at it for me armed with a list of things to look out for. The prognosis came back more or less as I expected, but I had worked myself up so much this point that I already knew I'd be buying it... I'm not sure that's what they advise in the typical cla**ic buyers guides. Before I could really commit to buying it though I had to arrange some transport, which was sorted entirely by our very own I.K. Brunel who went way above and beyond the call of duty to help me out. Cheers mate. You are what is known as an 'enabler'
With a rough idea of how much it was gonna cost to get home, I made the seller an offer which he accepted and OPERATION GET POINTY was underway!

OBVIOUSLY the delivery didn't actually happen as the twatburger who'd agreed to get it chickened out at the last minute, sending me an email at midnight the night before it was supposed to arrive. Much annoyance but again IKB stepped up and got another quote for me (from these guys who I would thoroughly reccomend) and the date for delivery was once again set...

... So this morning, at 7am I was already up, washed, dressed and full of coffee, staring out the window waiting for the truck to deliver my new toy. I'm sure you all know how it feels when you're just about to buy a car, the mixture of excitement and nerves creating a sort of internal tumble dryer effect in your stomach, and I'm sure you'll understand how much this feeling was amplified by this being my FIRST car, finally, aged 26 (& ½) a car that was MINE. And it was a silly old plastic car nobody has ever heard of with some rather questionable styling. YES!



... more anon (please excuse that rambling intro. I'm too tired/excited to proof read my drivel)

[Vulgalour]

I'm looking forward to seeing more in depth pictures of this so I can [s]point and laugh[/s] congratulate you on your thoroughly sensible and totally reasonable first car purchase. If ever you needed motivation to get a full license, this is most definitely it.

[garethj]

Great news, all the best people have stupid plastic cars.

My best skillz are electrics and welding so with others here who know actual useful stuff, I'm sure you'll be fine for help. As IKB says, work out what's wrong and how much you want to fix, and go from there. I've had reasonable success with getting it MoT'd first and driving for a bit rather than a full restoration all in one go. It shows you that if the rear axle is bent and the gearbox jumps out of 4th, there's not much point getting the bumpers re-chromed yet.

[I.K.Brunel]

A superb synopsis.
That 'washing machine stomach' feeling never really subsides to be honest, every new purchase being a mix of giddy excitement and unremitting worry.
Sure, you have broken all 'the rules' of old car purchase, which - if you believe the duller end of the classic end of the motoring press - seems to entail endlessly slogging round the country not purchasing cars because they're not quite right. (This approach is, if you ask me, rubbish, you could easily waste more time & money rejecting cars than actually fixing one that is slightly pup-like).

As for your way forward, yes writing notes & taking photographs has already been mentioned. Also try to obtain as many relevant books/manuals as you can - obviously herald-specific repair manuals for the mechanicals, but look out for the period-written ones on things like carbs, tuning and glassfibre-car-specific things.
Be as methodical as you can and be prepared. Put up some shelving in your garage (ebay/freecycle/begging for cheapness) and furnish those shelves with an assortment of boxes and tubs for storing tools and bits of car. LABEL EVERYTHING. Stock yourself up with tools but don't spend a fortune - again freecycle can turn up some good bits, or local auction houses - the sort where old people's stuff gets flogged for peanuts when they die by their horrible 'modern' relatives - are good. Don't discount high-street chains for some tools/equipment - Halfords Professional tools are reasonably priced and excellent quality, and their £30 trolley jacks very useful.
All of this you probably know already, some of it you will probably ignore or forget (I do, frequently)

Welcome to the world of rubbish old car ownership.

[Vulgalour]

LABEL EVERYTHING.

This is top advice, If I hadn't labelled all the bits we disconnected on the Polo engine I would not have known where it all went back together. Taking photographs to back up the labels helps too, as it turned out one or two of my labels didn't make enough sense without them.

[garethj]

I've got a workshop manual that says to label everything; it says that wires and hoses are like snakes, they have two ends and the difference is important.

Just something to bear in mind when you've got the masking tape and pen out

[Barrett]

All excellent advice guys. My budget (or lack of one) means things will have to be purchased very slowly over time, but I'm hoping this will help create a somewhat methodical approach to the actual repairs.
I have a notebook ready which is already home to a couple of lists. I'm hoping to keep track of all the spending too, though I'm not sure that's a good idea in the long run...

Anyway, where were we? Ah yes. IT ARRIVED!


This was as much as I could do until I had some help to get it into the drive, but Gary turned up after about 20 minutes and we got it into its new home without too much hassle. Luckily the brakes work (very well), the handbrake 'sort-of' works but I've not quite got the hang of it yet.


Looks pretty neat down there. My neighbours 'love it' at the moment. We'll see how they feel after a 6 months....


We strapped in the new battery and managed to get it running with no hassles, although it was idling at 2000RPM... A sticking choke cable wasn't helping but it wasn't wholly responsible for the problem. A totally ill-informed fiddle with the carbs got the idle down to about 1100RPM, but after that the car didn't really want to start, and it started leaking fuel out of #2 carb. Probably time to leave it alone before I break it even more then.

We had a proper poke around the car and there is good news and bad news... The chassis looks totally sound, but the floorpans are pretty borked. I knew this anyway so it wasn't much of a shock. The rear inner arches have gone at the bottom near the sills, and there is some seriously questionable 'repairs' at the bottom of the bulkhead/sill area, but it looks relatively solid so I'm not even going to think about that area for the time being.


The interior is seriously minging and full of crap and muddy water marks, but it's complete and everything looks to be in fairly good condition. The dash and wooden door caps will need stripping and revarnishing and everything will get a deep clean but I reckon it'll come up pretty nice without too much work. Sadly nothing actually works (lights, wipers, horn etc) so I forsee some serious electrical ballache happening in the hear future. Electrics are fuggin' Greek to me so hopefully somebody with half a clue can give me some advice about this stuff.
This photo was taken about 5 seconds after Gary opened the passenger sunvisor, which deposited a huge pile of rusty metal all over his lap... hmm. Looks like the metal brackets that the roof bolt onto, and the flat-ish piece of steel that runs the length of the 'screen between them have turned into cornflakes... I was sort of expecting this as it's directly under the big hole in the roof so there has obviously been some serious water ingress here over the last few years. Looking at Benzboy's thread on RR, he has just done a similar repair on his ex-Dollywobbler Equipe and it can be done without removing the bodywork and simply unbolting the roof and lifting it a few inches to gain access. Well out of my league though, but this area isn't MOTable (I think) and therefore will be left 'as-is' for the time being with a bit of bodging to stop anymore water getting in.


The other problem area, and one I wasn't expecting at all, is the rear end. It's obviously been shunted up the backside at some point which was deformed the entire rear tub... The boot should be flush there, for once dodgy Triumph panel gaps aren't to blame. I really have no idea how to fix this, or if it's even possible without cutting off the entire rear end and replacing it with a new section moulded from another Equipe. It doesn't seem to have done any damage to the chassis or the rest of the car from my cursory look at the underside, but it's still a big issue that needs fixing if the car is ever going to look 'right'. Something for the distant future though, I don't even wanna think about it yet!



So despite the fact that it's a shonky POS that I probably paid far too much for, I'm still pretty happy with it. I spent most of yesterday just standing in my drive looking at it, which I'm going to do again right now (with the excuse I need to try and find out the part numbers for the headlights) because even though it's not the prettiest car in the world, I have fallen in love with it all over again and I think it looks amazing, even in the grim state it's in now. I really cannot wait til I can drive this thing on the road - I'm grinning just thinking about it.

I'll do another update in a bit with some of the history and some close-up shots of some of the grimmer areas of bodywork...

[I.K.Brunel]

With regard to the ill-fitting hatch...
I would have thought that being punted up the bum would be pretty terminal for one of these, split & splintered 'glass and obvious repairs - that doesn't look like the case here.
How does the boot actually locate at the top? You may find that you have some scope for adjustment at the hinge end, slackening/tightening things may get it to fit better. Be a bit of a fiddly pain in the arris, but worth a go. Remember than a couple of mm skew-whiffness at the fittings could translate to 10mm at the other end!

[garethj]

Depends how it's been bent, if it's hit with a sharp thing then the GRP can shatter, but if it's pushed slowly or over a big area then it can flex a really long way,

Somewhere in a Herald workshop manual there's a diagram of all the adjustment places on the chassis, the parts where you stick shims in to get the panel gaps you want.

[Barrett]

Sadly it has been whacked up are bum, it's not just a misaligned bootlid! there is evidence of the damage inside though it's really hardly noticable from the outside unless you are specifically looking. It doesn't really show in photos and I'm not sure how to explain it properly, but needless to say it's royally fugged. Not even worrying about that for the time being, hopefully it'll be really easy to fix.

Anyone know if GRP becomes more malleable when warm? If I were to heat the area with a heat gun thingy and tap it out with a rubber hammer would that do anything, or would it just set it on fire?

Anyway, one of the nicer surprises was the small amount of history that came with the car. There was nothing mentioned in the ad so I wasn't expecting anything, but there is folder with a few old MOTs and tax discs going back to 1979, plus invoices for all the new parts it had when it was restored/bodged in 2006. Judging from the photos and the ownership history, it looks like it was given a freshen up and a repaint with loads of new bits, and soon afterwards it must've been in the accident that has deformed the rear end. I guess the owner got a bit despondent and flogged it not long after this as it's not been on the road since 2007.




Shame there isn't any more history, but I'm going to contact the club and see if they know anything more about the car (looking forward to joining the B.O.C, they look like a pretty fun* bunch)

Anyway, today I had a bit of a poke around the car. This came off the bottom of the door. Ah well, I knew that was gonna need replacing anyway.


Here's the passenger side after I'd cleaned it out of the pile of soggy gaskets and old dizzy etc. Lovely. and damp.


Then I took up the carpet in the driver's footwell to see the extent of the rot.


hmm... not entirely sure that's how the accelerator pedal is supposed to be attached. The bottom bracket/ spring bit is just a solid lump of rust now, so I need a new one if anyone sees one anywhere... I know a real man would just make his own, but I'm not quite ready for that yet.



This is before I scraped all the glue holding the sound deadening off, it looks a bit cleaner now. Ideally the whole panel needs replacing as there are lots of holes and the metal that is left is on its way out too. The join at the bulkhead has gone too and been replaced with some bathroom sealant or something. Happily, the transmission tunnel is fine and despite the horrible scary lumps of GRP on the inner sills it actually seems pretty sound underneath. I can see one small hole in the rear floorpan but that's it. The fact that there is no throttle pedal anymore means this bit has been bumped up to the top of the queue so I may splash out on a new floorpan pressing to speed things along a bit.

After this horror show I was pretty apprehensive about the other side, but the entire pan has been replaced already, though just with a flat bit of steel not a proper panel, it looks like a solid job and there are no immediate signs of bodgery. The carpet/ sound deadening was sopping wet though so that's all come out. I think I caught it just in time.
So my first day of actually doing 'stuff' to the car has had mixed results - the driver's side is quite a lot worse than I was expecting, but the passenger's side doesn't appear to need any work at all, which cancels each other out and leaves me with the exact same amount of work I was expecting to have to do to the floors.... er, that's a good result, I think?