Ray's been busy

Vince was out of town on a long trip, so Ray got the joy of doing the initial work on the car.  And he's been busy.

First, here's the new battery installed plus a cutoff switch.  Cut off switches are important in cars with old wiring harnesses to prevent fires.  This location also works great, driver just reaches right behind passenger seat and turns off battery when done driving.

Next Ray worked on the brakes.  New flexible lines and rear wheel cylinders are normally replaced, the pads and shoes plus drums and rotors all looked just fine so were left alone.

The handbrake cable was missing the portion for one side of the rear drums, so Ray installed a new one:

One shock absorber was missing it's link to connect it to the suspension, here replaced:

Ray replaced both brake and clutch master cylinders, could have tried to rebuild the old ones but new ones aren't that much more expensive and our success rate on rebuilds is not real high:

Clutch slaver cylinder installed:

Exhaust system installed:

Radiator was cleaned out by Dave at  Brown's Radiator and reinstalled.  Fuel tank was determined to not be repairable, too many rust holes.  We are looking at potentially getting a good used tank from another source we know in Arkansas.

Ray has done a lot of great work, Vince is anxious to get his hands dirty too when he returns!

New Project - So It Begins Again

After the success of the 1974 TR6 by RayVin Enterprises, we of course had to find another project car.  Vince found a 1964 MGB on Craigslist in Sterling IL.  This is a very early car, metal dash and pull handles for those MGB fans, making it one of the most valuable.  Wire wheels also add to the value of the car..  The buyer was selling on behalf of his elderly father who was moving to Florida.  We were told it had no rust and had not been run since 1979.

We had a british car club member from Rockford IL go look at the car on 7/27.  His assessment was this it was restorable.  He did express some concern about the inner sills, but also stated there were no rust bubbles on the car.  So we closed the deal with the seller, sent him $$, and made plans for a day trip on 7/31 to get the car, after the seller had returned to California.

We were disappointed to find that the car had pretty extensive rust, and had been repaired in the past.  The inner sills are missing, and the outer sills are home made from galvanized steel.  The floors were also replaced with home made materials.

Here's some good pictures of the car.  The car it quite a bit rougher than it appears in the pictures.

We do have a hood, but it was not attached to the car.

As seen in the last picture, the original color of the car was red, which we plan to bring back.  Our first steps will be to get the car driveable.  Once that is complete, then we'll dig deeper into the body work issues.  Ray and and I have both thought about taking bodywork classes (welding and painting), looks like we may have our reason to sign up now!