Collecting the special parts

As our Wood and Pickett set was quite incomplete, we started to collect some items. With an awfull lot of work and effort, we found a set of seats and an incomplete set of Elf/Hornet waist trim. If anybody has a complete set, we would be rather interested.

Front seats: Aston Martin DB5

If we use the JA Pierce alloys, we will need a set of wheel arches. Theese are WP items.

Color

Finding the right color is not an easy task. Wood and Pickett usualy repainted their cars in premium colors of the are, like Rolls Royce or Ason Martin. Visualizing the color from a picture is impossible, soo I usualy paint samples. Best sample is a scale modell of the car for sure. This time extra-extra care and efforts were taken for this operation. We had at least 20 shades mixed and at least half of it painted on sample minis. It was a real fun.

Pacific Blue 

Solent Blue

Sage green

Regency bronze

Regal Red

Midnight Blue

Seychelles Blue

Sierra Blue

Suspension 1

After sand blasting the suspension, we painted them.

The trailing arm bearings were replaced fron and rear.

JA Pierce Magna wheels...

...polished.

Twin SU HS2 rebuild

The carburettors.

As we moved on with the restoration, the carbs came in the view. They looked to be in rather acceptable condition according to their age. Inspite we had an awfull lot of work with them later on.

The first task was to clean and replate the replateable parts. The cleaning we do here in the worksop, soo it went as it should. Unlike the plating. Normaly we have the parts plated at a company specialized in galvanizing. Usualy they do good work. Not now though. The finish was rough and uneven. They definitely used too high current density, and I suspected a contaminated bath also. Later it was proved. I had to remove the plating, which has left a black oxide layer on the parts. A clear indication of some kind of unintended material in the electrolite of the platers. The layer was very passive, not reacting with anything. After a few hours of experimenting, I had to remove it by blasting. I was rather suspicious what the contaminating was, soo I sent one part for x-ray laser analization. My bet was lead, but it was not correct. The analizers found copper, sulphur and phosphate on the surface. Copper dominating. Copper is the material of the hangers in the bath soo I think the workers left the items in the bath for an overnight for some reason, and copper was disolved in the electrolite from the hangers surface. No good. Ayway I redid the plating myself, and now it is correct.

Alloy can distort quite badly after soo many years, thats why I I checked the mating surfaces for flatness. I had to regrind each and every part. if the carbs do not seat properly, they wont seal. Twin SU setups are very prone to false air. Thie slightest air leak and you will never be able to syncronize them.

I checked the damper spring tension. It turned out that the two springs in the two bowls were quite some different. Luckily I have some springs here. I went for a nice maching set of slightly higher tension as originaly.

Just as the springs, the float bowls were also not identical. As I prefer the adjustable version, I picked that as a pair. 

I assembled and checked the float dampers. The piston should travel all its way at a modest speed driven by its own weight. No spring should be put in for the check. I had to polish the inside of the piston wall slightly at points where alloy oxide built up.

The SU carb is schuber-type, which means that the fuel for the engine is matered by a needle that is moving in a a small pipe, the main jet. The main jet should be centered perfectly around the needle. Failing to do this will result in carburettor that wont idle properly, and will eventualy missfire at low revs. The float piston should seat at is own weight, and move completely free.

The float needle valve was replaced with viton-top items.

I set the static float levels. They will be reset once the system is filled with petrol.

The carburetor body itself was in a remarkably good condition. I replaced the butterfly assemblies, but the bores only needed a bit of polishing. They are in perfect round shape.

Setting the butterflies to completely seating position was somewhat a challenge again, as the parts are realy-realy tight.

One bolt in the carb was replaced with a metric item once. I restored the thread and bolted the part with a proper one.

 Nearly done. We still need a set of heat shields, as the originals are in very bad condition. with crack everywhere.

Also we need a valve for the brake vacuum.

Wood & Pickett trim

The spice of this car in my humble opinion, is definitely the W&P touch. Not much of the original work is present, soo I focused my efforts on saving that could be saved. I was facing a hard task. without the necessary care, the leather has a aged and shrinked badly. It became brittle and hard to the touch. Moreover the paint faded and the leather became discoloured. The wooden back of the panels became bent.
Becase of the special technick, the wood could not be replaced soo my first task was to make the panels straight again. in order to succeed, I first soaked the wood in a special water based lotion, which contained latex glue. After a nightover, I put the panels into a special press and left it there for a day. After 2-3 sessions, the panels straightened to an acceptable shape. My second task was to clean the leather througly. After cleaning the surface, It came into light how badly the original paint discolored. I had to find a solution to repaint the leather, without applying a complete coating, which would distroy the originality. I finaly ended up with an alcohol based paint, which I filled into a dry felt pen. It worked nicely. The same paint I used on the carpets covering the bottom of the door cards. After finishing the painting I slowly reoiled the leather to make it soft again.

Now we have something at hand. Many interiour parts will need to be reupholstered though. We will try to find materials close to what we have now.

Panel beating 5.

One door skin had a few small holes on the bottom soo we decided to replace the panel. When we removed the original metal, we realized how good idea it was to replace that part. The seams were quite badly rusty. The replcement door skin was perfect fit. Now we are quite puzzled about the other door. Although it is not rusted trhrough (yet), but we are quite sure the it looks like the same as this one on the hidden side. I think it would be better to replace the other skin also.

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