My Le Mans has been in a state of "hold" for several years now, in reality I did work on it but I worked on components and I did do the important thing, I spent money on it but it showed very little to no progress when you looked at the car.
The motor went in almost 2 years ago and it is still crooked in the frame since I never have finalized the new motor mounts. With the recent death in my family and with the fact that I have to move in 4-9months depending on how fast the legal system moves, I thought I would work on my car. After the move I will be busy remodeling the house and won't have time to work on the car so I have a few months of car work
I thought it was time to get the motor in straight! The problem is that the distributor is on the side of this motor and directly in front of the steering column, so if you place it wrong you can't get the distributor cap off to set/change the points and the plug wires get bent also. This means removing the steering column everytime you want to tune it up, absolutely unacceptable. The only way to get it correct is to put the body on, so 8 years after the body came off, I put it back on. Its in worse shape than I remember and it caused me to change my tactic on this restoration. I am going to stop doing mechanical work on the car and rebuild/redo the body now instead of later, I will also build up the car and put the fenders/wings back on, they are brand new and will need fitting along with the new grill shell. Think of it as a "mock-up" of the car, after its all built up, I will take it back apart and clean up all the paint I damaged on the chassis and do the final body work and paint and then the reassembly will be super easy since I know it all fit perfectly.
I will do the motor part now since some of this is based on the motor location. One thing I noticed is that the motor is awfully close to the wooden firewall and since I have no floor or firewall and I have no idea what it should look like, I will be making a real firewall from sheet metal. I think it will look better in the long run and like I said, I don't know what it should look like anyway. This is all minor and still within my rules of "Do No Harm" to the car, it will be very easily restorable to original by my heirs many decades away from now.
Remember you can click on the pictures to see the larger version.
- The way it has looked for a while now, just a few parts added on over the years.
- Yes, I know the motor is crooked that is the point of this, to get it in the place.
This pretty much shows the car as its been for several years, just sitting there waiting for more time from me. Now it has it
- Those brake drums sure look GOOD
- I notice I have to get those little brass sleeves in the leaf springs but otherwise the suspension is finished.
That pretty much shows it all, now onto this weekends work.
- On the ground on her very own 4 wheels with her body on, looking like progress
- Think I can polish that out ?
Now for some problems, one is the body hits the frame, this has not changed since I took it apart 8 years ago but it also keeps the last bracket from touching the frame, originally when I took it apart that bracket had a half-dozen or so thick washers, I have to figure out the problem and fix it.
Mike Rambour. Site Administrator
1953 Singer 4ADT (sold), 1934 Singer 9 Le Mans, 1934 Singer 1 1/2 4-Seater Sports (sold), 2009 BMW K1300GT
