Thanks Johnny, here it is! :
A couple of weeks ago I came home, parked the car and went inside. About 15 mins later I noticed from the kitchen window a damp patch on the tarmac under the Red Rocket, uh oh....
Sure enough the radiator that had been limping along from day one of my ownership had finally waved its white flag and given up!
The following day a call was made to Wadhams, who said they had a 3500s radiator in stock. Result! The one small snag was that as apparently radiators for manual cars are harder to come by, they need you to send in your rad first before they will dispatch the replacement. The car was going to be off the road a few days...
So, I thought while the rad was out I would clean things up at the front a little and get some paint on it - help protect it from the salt that is just starting to be put on the roads in this part of the country.
The passenger side had some filler on it, I was keen to see what was underneath, so out came the wire wheel:
No holes, but a slight ripple - looks like it may have been nerfed into something a fairly slow speed at some point (would also explain the white bonnet, and the fact that the headlamp bowls on this side are not riveted in).
End of night one she looked like this:
Next evening:
Disaster! I knocked the tin of paint into the engine bay, I wiped up as much as I could:
Shot of trigger wheel and sensor:
Couple of nights later things started to go black again:
And the inside of the valance was wire wheeled, and painted, as were some other bits:
Start of reassembly:
Valance black inside (not the neatest, but better than it was, with no paint at all!):
Shiny!:
Went to fill her up, when disaster! Water was pouring out straight onto the drive! It seems that the recon radiators are not supplied with a drain plug installed. I had sent my old radiator off with the plug still fitted. Damn!
Rad back out to measure the hole (see my thread in the v8 section), and a call to Wadhams the following morning - they sent me out a new plug and it arrived the very next day - excellent service! Thanks
Fitted the plug last night, reassembled the car and after pretty much 2 weeks of not being run she started right away- lovely.
Bumper fitted this morning, just got to fit the spots, headlight surrounds and grille.
Hardest bit of the whole process was removing the bumper iron- they would not shift at all- even after hours of soaking with plusgas, then hours of attacking the nut with a dremel and smashing half of it off the remaining 50% still would not come off! I ended up sawing the end of the bumper iron off- with the valance removed and better access the last portion of the nut quickly yielded. Will weld it back together, paint and refit.
Heres a couple of shots of how it looks this morning - the first time I have seen it in daylight.