Chrome bits and pieces.

Not much has happened over the past couple of weeks as I always seem to be in wait mode. I hope my panels will be back next week and to be ready for that I have sent off the door handles to be re chromed and a heap of bolts, clips etc to be zinc plated including the clips that hold the side trims in place.

Other than that I have now put the rear brake lines in place. From the factory they have a rubber tube over the top of the copper lines, this becomes brittle with age and breaks away from the line. To renew the rubber protection I bought some rubber tubing, cut it to length and sliced it along its length and fitted it to the copper line. I then glued the slice together using super glue which gives a good finish which sets quickly. I bought a couple of 1.2m lengths of 12.5mm heat shrink from the local electrical supplies shop ($4.00 each) and pulled that over the new rubber on the lines and shrunk in into place. This gave the brake lines a nice smooth finish which should stay in place for many years.

If you use a lot of heat shrink and usually buy it from your local parts shop you are really paying a premium for it.$12.00 will get you about half a metre in various sizes.

Go to your electrical wholesaler and you can buy it in 1.2m lenghts for around $4.00 and that's for the larger diameter sections 12.5mm plus, the smaller sections 4mm-10mm are even cheaper.

Brittle and broken protective rubber on brake line.

New section of rubber hose placed over line and slice

glued together.

  12.5mm heat shrink is a good size to fit over all fittings

and rubber hose.

 Heat shrink left a bit longer than hose.

Section completed.

Tail lights and wheels.

I have cleaned and stripped all the paint from the Cosmic wheels and sent them off to Circle Track Wheels in Bathurst for some minor repairs. I have the gloss black urethane 2 pack paint here ready for their return. I intend to paint the back of the wheels as well for ease of cleaning.

Cosmic wheels stripped and sand blasted ready 

for repairs, painting and polishing.

I spent a lot of today working on the tail lights (not much else to do until the panels come back). I have 2 sets of used Australian lights and a new set of European ones. The European tail lights have ridges and hollows instead of the diminishing circles seen on the Aussie ones. I picked the best of the used Aussie lights which had a degree of over spray, dirt and 40 year old scratches on them. I rubbed them down with 2000 wet and dry to remove the paint and minor scratches then polished them on my polishing wheel on the grinder (being careful not to heat and melt the plastic). I removed the new rubber seals from the new European tail lights and put them on the polished Aussie ones,  picked the best screws and cleaned them up as well. The screws are an odd size and I was unable to replace them. The photo does not do the lights justice, they look like new.

 Used Aussie tail lights polished and ready to be fitted.

European style tail light.