This past Thursday I went to tech control for the 73 and.... it failed!
Because of the Dutch laws not allowing you to drive except the day you must drive to and from the tech control, so I've picked a station I know 15 miles away from my place so I could at least test the car a bit.
Car drove fine and felt super strong, and it passed the control on every points, even my new LED headlights were no problem. They were bits low but alignement was corrected with their test lense in 3 mins.
But when they lifted the front wheels, we've found out the front wheels were not turning easy.
Somehow the pressure isn't released totally and pads stay a bit in contact. With no way to buy brake parts at the corner and repair/inspect there, I've returned home without my papers
I've rebuilded them a while back and turned the wheels with no issues many times after but of course never really drove the car since then. As I suppose it's no biggy and likely related to the pens, I've ordered 2 calliper kits with new bushings, plate, pens etc...
I should get the kits today and all should be fixed soon. If of course the problems is coming from the pens... For the papers, I only have to return there and show that the brakes are fixed and I'm good to go.
I'm not really desapointed, as this 30 miles drive was a blast and was lucky enough to have found a hole in clouds. It's been raining non stop here for days and the only time it really stopped was during this trip and it started again one hour after I was back.
Anyway, this thread is about the 71, sooo no being able to look at the brakes because of not having parts and this terrible weather, I've been busy whole weekend on the 429.
One of the must do, was to salvage and restore the top reinforcement as the provided apron doesn't come with one. It's clear that without it, the top is pretty weak.
So first was to again drill weld points out, to find out the quite thick piece of metal was rusty. The apron being new, I wasn't planning to place it back with some basic clean up.
So the baby enjoyed first a nice acid bath, then been electro zinc plated and ended up being a pretty looking piece of metal correctly protected.
Another detail dimmed unnecessary by the manufacturer are the fender nuts holes. The original designed to receive u-bolts, it was time to tripple check measures, alignements with the ones on the car and make a template to slam the metal for each holes, where 6 are necessary per bolt location.
As they are all 1cm from the side, I've taped the apron and draw a line and made a floating template that would have the lines on it so it would act as a rail.
One easy mistake to make is that the front one are actually inverted, where the bigger square hole if first while on all the others its the reverse.
Bough new small drills of quality this week for this job and ended up with nice holes gradually increased to 4.5mm at corners for the square and 9mm for the more round one. Once done, used a dremel disc to connect the holes and finished them with different files.
On the picts, the shape doesn't look that precise... well, they are quite acceptable to me, but if you look at the surface, you then see that not only the manufacturer did not measure anything, because they've pressed down slots than are not at all at the right locations for a fender and even worse: there should be no pressing down there, in fact according to the other side and the old one, only one should have a bit of volume going up. Another sign of the love placed into the fabrication...
I'll correct this only when all will be welded in place, as I do not want to stress the shape of the metal at this point.
Now that the top holes are ready and the reinforcement ready for another 50 years, it was time to weld it in place. One thing they did good is the 2 alignment holes, they do match the original ones in diameter, in distance and are placed at the right location. So using them after triple checking on car, I've marked the destination welds location, as I needed to remove sink there for a solid weld. Then using a more powerfull stand on my welding machine, welded it in place.
Once that was done its clear that little detail brings quite a lot of strength to the apron and should not be skipped... but betting it's often the case considering the work involved for what looks like a detail.
Just like it take ages to drill all the holes to get it out, you then need to make more holes to weld it back on. Using the old one and checking on car, you need check that you keep the holes 1/2 inch,/1.5mm away from the holes that need be made at the end after welding, for the 3 tower plate bolts/stud.
Unlike the top where you can only use a drill, for these, I've bought a puncher and all the holes were made in matter of seconds. The tool makes 5mm holes, so on the tower side, I will likely enlarge them to 6 or 7 to make sure the points are having enough contact meat. Also added 2 extra on the bottom where the originals were likely forgotten on this side but present on the other.
David, kindly sent me the missing batt reinforcement that I need and with bits of luck if it arrives before the end of the week, I should be able to weld this baby back in next weekend.
If not, no problem, I've already found a new hidden perl on the other side that should keep me busy!
More about that one next update.
All with all, was another productive weekend, glad that thingy is done.
To be continued...
