Getting close...

The final days are upon us. Yesterday I refit the bonnet after a quick sand. It still needs a buff, actually the whole car needs a thorough rub down to flatten out some of the orange peel further.

The transmission lines were a nightmare, they should have been installed when the motor and gearbox were out of the car as they are mainly steel tubing that needed lots of massaging to snake back into place.

Bonnet back, grillle in, almost ready

The new water pump fits properly and I used a NOS fan belt! Woo. Ahem.
I'm still waiting for a pair of radiator hoses and a fuel filter to arrive, the fuel filter needed to be found online as some of the disposable parts are now deleted. I found a distributor cap at Blair Athol parts, but they want $75 for it! I cleaned up the existing one, but if I were to keep the car long term I'd have to toss the Lucas distributor and fit a Bosch one just so I can get parts.

The grille had been painted flat black, so I sanded that back and returned it to almost the correct dark grey.

Remaining work to get it back on the road:
- Radiator hoses, and coolant
- gearbox fluid
- fuel filter
- Battery
- Brake Master cylinder and bleed
- Rego and license plates
- test all wiring
- rebuild and refit the rear licence plate light. These units rot out really quickly. 
When I bought the car there were literally dozens for sale on eBay all the time. I kept thinking, eh I'll get it later, there's no shortage of supply. They sold for $29 with free postage from Thailand. Now it's 'later' and they stopped selling them about a year ago. Nowhere to be found anywhere. The odd second hand one of ebay goes for upwards of $80 plus shipping! I've missed out on two. I'm just going to have to make mine presentable again.

I suspect I might be able to start it and possibly drive a little over Easter, but given the all new front end, I'd be loathe to go too far without an alignment.

Engine back in

March is re-assembly month. It's now the last few days and I only have the last few things left to go.
After reattaching the body trim, the bumpers and lights, and after searching for one small piece of trim from the front right guard that went missing for about two weeks, it was time to put the mechanicals back in.

Close enough mirrors for now

But first to mirrors! You may recall in the first posts that I struggled to find suitable mirrors. Well I still am, I bought these aftermarket ones which are similar to the originals, but still not quite tall enough.

I am so glad I bagged and labelled nearly every nut and bolt as this made life so much easier when finding the correct bits. I admit I do have a jar of random stuff which I keep finding the perfect bolt in now that I've exhausted the bags I had labelled.

I stored most of the parts in the one cupboard too, so nearly everything was on hand.

The cleaned and painted 2R motor with gearbox reattached.

I attached the rebuilt gearbox to the original motor, after giving it a thorough clean and repaint (the motor that is) and tracking bits of engine grease throughout the house :/

Most of the engine back
together and in place

This entire unit went back in very smoothly and easily I was quite surprised, especially given the hassles when removing it. I guess cleaning everything makes life a lot easier.

I bought a replacement water pump off ebay some years ago only to find when putting the ancillaries back on, that it's got the wrong shaft on it, way too long, the pulley doesn't fit and the fan would hit the radiator. Off to ebay to find another, which fortunately arrived this week.
I found engine enamel that is pretty close to the original rocker cover/air cleaner cover colour so gave them a squirt.

Next up is the rest of the motor accessories and radiator.

Time for paint

2  more months have passed and it's been full steam ahead.
January was front end and brake rebuild, February was respray time. 

Sanded and ready for primer

A fair amount of prep went into the body work, from some bog wipes and plenty of sanding and priming. All chrome was removed and the rubber was carefully taped up. All surface rust was rubbed out. There was a fair amount on the roof, but the rest was pretty normal.

A couple of prime coats done

I used Proform brand primer, which was excellent. Smooth thick coverage and a pleasure to sand (well as pleasurable as sanding can be). I choose off white primer too as it would mean less top coats to get full coverage as opposed to a dark primer.

Painted, sanded, buffed and with some chrome back on.

Top coats were with the Pro-tec paint I bought 5 years ago. 5 years of sitting the paint had separated in the tin to a yellow colour. Upon first opening I thought I'd bought the wrong code! After ages stirring it finally blended back together top the correct colour.

I wasn't particularly pleased with how the paint when on. I admit I'm pretty rusty with spraying (it's been 15 years), and the hot weather probably didn't help but some areas were very powdery and full of orange peel. I rubbed back with 1500 and then again with 1200 and then a machine buff and it's smooth and shiny, but the orange peel is still evident in several areas. I'll give it a hand cut next, but if it were a concours resto I'd be starting again.

3 years later...

The HG wagon at a club event 

Has it really been 3 years?

Shortly after my last post in early 2012 I purchased a HG Premier wagon to replace my ute. This vehicle became the primary focus for several months, getting it up the scratch, both in appearance and reliability to become my new daily driver. It's actually pretty nice to drive, and looks awesome from a few feet away. Up close the paint is old and patchy, but it's a cool machine. 

New tie-rods and ball joints
can be seen here.

Anyway then I got sick. Pretty much all major projects were put on hold until I got to a better place with my health which took a couple of years. The Corona sat still gathering dust supported on axle stands as I'd taken all of the front end out.

2 weeks ago I was cleaning the shed and suddenly decided to get back into it. And a busy fortnight it's been! Back in 2012 I'd had the control arms rebuilt, new pivots, bushes and ball joints. Given the rarity of parts it ended up costing over $700 for the four of them, mainly because the pivots were so hard to come by. So I re-installed these, rebuilt the front brakes with new cylinders and cleaned them up. The shoes are still at about 60% so I refitted them after a clean. New tie rods, idler arm, and sway bushes and after a grease up we were back on the ground after 3 years!

Bootlid repaired.

In between this I had been attacking the body work. You may recall I had some 'pinholes' in the chassis rail. Well as always this was actually worse than it looked, and I had a friend weld them up with new sections installed. He also welded up a split in the engine bay, and some mild repairs to the guard. A swipe of body filler and the guards are pretty smooth.

All of the doors have pin holes in the corners. I've treated these, but I've chosen the fill them, rather than cut and weld. Only one of them I think would warrant a cut and weld, but at this stage I'm looking to get it back on the road and looking neat. It's not a concours resto.

Tomorrow I will start the pre-painting rub down. Once resprayed I'll refit the motor and gearbox. The gearbox was rebuilt back in 2012 by the same person who did the diff, probably unnecessarily now in hindsight. The rebuilder told me it'd gone on for another 10 years like it was, worn from age, with 1960's tolerances, but serviceable. I still got it completely rebuilt, so there's probably 40 years of life in it again.
The motor however, I'll probably just do some gaskets and give it a clean. A compression test was done when I bought it, with readings over 130 on every cylinder, so it's probably unnecessary to pull down. I might get the head redone for unleaded later down the track, but just dose it with lead replacer in the mean time.

Body dismantle begins

With the engine out, and the engine bay easy to access, it's time to start removing all the mechanical stuff in there. Brake master, heater hoses and tap, fuel equipment and so on. All must be out before I can paint the engine bay before the motor can go back in. I'm kinda on a timetable as I only have about 3 months left of suitable painting weather. I'm under no illusions that the car body will be done this season, not a chance, but I'd like the engine bay done at least and then all the mechanicals can go back in and be finished during the colder months.

Coke Can bog repair

So naturally I get distracted and start taking the guards off. It only started as I had to take the grille and radiator support out so they can be painted and also to allow easier replacement of the motor. And then the bumper came off and finally the passenger side guard. The guards have rust in the bottom corners, but alas I hadn't expected to find a coke can in there as a base for an earlier bog repair job! Home repairs from the 80's I say! I can hardly comment though, given my bodywork skills are mediocre. I can paint pretty well, but rust removal and panel beating?  No way! 

Chassis rust

So the guards, and the doors will be going to a crash shop for rust removal and priming. Oh as will the bootlid. It has a weird rust hole through the back of it. Where the guards have rusted, the chassis has a few small holes, which I will grind back and just fill with Mig weld (the picture makes it look worse than it is). The rest of the chassis appears pretty darn good.

Bootlid with weird rust hole and the side of the car without the guard / engine. 

Engine out

The blog's been a bit idle that past few months, but I haven't been with the Corona's progress. Following the installation of the diff and rear brake rebuild, attention turned to the front. First out was the radiator and I was surprised at how healthy the radiator appeared. Granted I'm not an expert, but compared to others I've had, this one looks like it won't need a recore. I'll still take it to Burton Radiators for a clean and a pressure test and we'll see then.

Why ropes? The chain I've used for engine lifts the past
maybe 20 years finally broke partway through this lift.
 It was then I found it was inherited from my Dad's dad
and was close to 90 years old!

I was also surprised at how much stuff required removal before the engine and gearbox would come out. There are more bolts and ancillary attachments than your average Old Holden. I probably should have read the Gregory's manual. Anyway after some false starts, and with the assistance of my Dad we managed to get the engine and gearbox out in one piece with a hired hoist from Kennards. The little 2R motor and auto trans weighs as much as a Holden red motor too! Talk about heavy casting! We had real issues clearing the front radiator support and also getting off the rear cross member. A rounded bolt saw the cross member have to stay in the car until after the removal. Man it was painful jiggling it up on an angle. Then the engine chain broke at the back, fortunately it didn't damage anything and only dropped at the back a few inches. 

So the cross member came out with a lot of time, some vise grips and persistence. Still have to replace the rounded bolt though. A couple hours was spent degreasing the motor and transmission... this thing was filthy. 40 years worth of grease and crap that I'm still accidentally tracking through the house on occasion. The gearbox came away from the block pretty nicely and is now at SA Race Transmissions and Diffs undergoing a freshen up. These were the same guys that did the diff. He recommended the bloke situated behind him for the engine rebuild, although I must save up some dollars before that though. Estimated cost for a full recon of a 4cyl is a little under $2K. 

Diff back in

So as mentioned in an earlier post I had to take the diff to a specialist to have the front seal done. Axles were not coming out either, even with a slide hammer or levers, so I asked him to remove them, replace the bearings and reassemble it, which he did. Total cost was around $350, which I guess wasn't too bad I guess, given he had to heat the housing to get the rusted bearings out. Boy am I glad he changed them! So a mild freshen up (well, he tested the clearances and stuff and replaced the seals, front bearing and the axle bearings) and away we go. Re-installed it with no hassles.

Wheel cylinders were somewhat hard to come by, I found two very dusty ones on the shelf at Sprint Parafield Gardens. I had a score with the rear shockers too, new ones normally retail for around $130 a pair, but I found some on Ebay that a surplus parts place was getting rid of for $50! Snapped them up. They had them listed as Commodore Vacationer with some particular suspension option which is uncommon, and thus they sat around for years. Fortunately I looked up the part number cross reference. 


So, the back end is almost complete, wire brushed and repainted the wheels, which came up a treat, almost a shame to cover them with hubcaps :/