Breathing Life Into a Neglected '75

Ha Ha... "The serviceability engineering team" Reminds me of a trip I took during my working days at Caterpillar to look at a new engine installation with a serviceability auditor (as we called them). During some discussion I asked him to sum up what his job entailed. "I get to tell the product group their baby is ugly" was his reply. I've never forgotten that analogy. 😄
 
abarth4 said:
Ha Ha... "The serviceability engineering team" Reminds me of a trip I took during my working days at Caterpillar to look at a new engine installation with a serviceability auditor (as we called them). During some discussion I asked him to sum up what his job entailed. "I get to tell the product group their baby is ugly" was his reply. I've never forgotten that analogy. 😄
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Product Engineer/Platform Engineer/Design Staff and all the usual suspects: There is no problem. If you remove the front sheet metal, you only have to drop the subframe down, not remove it to get to the oil filter.

Service Engineer: I see your point. I'll just add a Sawzall, angle grinder, and cutting torch to the essential tool list and send out a TSB.
 
jimmyx said:
Product Engineer/Platform Engineer/Design Staff and all the usual suspects: There is no problem. If you remove the front sheet metal, you only have to drop the subframe down, not remove it to get to the oil filter.

Service Engineer: I see your point. I'll just add a Sawzall, angle grinder, and cutting torch to the essential tool list and send out a TSB.
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Yup, I’ve got all those when you get here. lol.
 
Just attending to the final details on this pedal box. For those that have never done one of these there are a few tips that may help. Take the opportunity to get out the shop vac and compressed air and blow the 45 years of garbage out of the plenum (you might want to clean the drains while you're there too). It's human nature to just want to stuff the hoses in and be done with it, but that will come back to bite you. The hose run goes close to front wall of the plenum and in front of the frunk release latch. Fluid hates climbing hills, so if you take the easy route behind the latch, the fluid will have a heck of a hill to climb due to the raised fresh air intake. The is just enough room to snake all 3 hoses through properly, that's why it's important to start with a clean plenum. Spend whatever time it takes to get it right. If you don't, you can pressure bleed your system and it all may seem fine, but as pads wear your master will eventually run dry without gravity flow and you'll be doing this all over again. Make the hose cuts to the reservoirs "tight". You don't want excess hose laying on the bottom of the plenum and introducing another uphill issue. Make sure the grommet where the hoses enter the plenum is in place and seal the back side with some dum-dum to keep water from finding it's way into your interior. If any portion of the hose run looks a little off, use zip-ties, dum-dum (as a hose support), or whatever it takes to make sure the fluid has the easiest possible path to the cylinders.

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That's a good point. I installed clear lines and it was easy to see how air gets trapped in a low point on the supply hoses. It's not the greatest design, making the hoses run a few feet in basically a horizontal run, or worse with a low spot. This is why pressure bleeding to get a dry system filled is needed on an X.
 
Got the ignition switch installed. I figured while I was fooling with wiring why not upgrade to the Lada fuse block. Would be a 15 minute job, but all the fused connectors need to have shrink applied - the connectors are VERY close together. The Lada block is a nicely made unit for anyone considering it. Not sure how they sell them for no money. I ordered one for the car and one for the parts stash. Arrived from Ukraine in a couple of weeks.

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Decided to finish up the wiring with a BWM. Looked at all the posts and grabbed an idea or two from each, so this was a kind of "best of" mashup. Ran an aux. 10ga. to the fuse block and a relay to unload the blue/white and pink wire on the ignition switch. The main 8ga. feed wire took 8ft. to the inch. It takes quite a bit to run it in the tunnel, but it keeps it out of the way and doesn't interfere with taking out the heater box. Ran out of steam today, so later in the week I'll add another relay for the starter solenoid to unload the red wire on the switch.

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As shown earlier in the thread, both front floors needed some work due to water issues. The point of entry is the rubber ducts that feed the outer fresh air vents pulling away from the hole in the plenum. I wasn't going to remove a crack free dash to repair these for fear of stressing it and ending up with a crack. I decided to give something a try before cleaning up the right side of the dash after the BWM and buttoning up the Bertone grill. If worse came to worse, I would have sealed them off inside the plenum and go without the vents.

I "played" a heat gun on the lowest setting over the rubber connector through the dash opening for about 2 minutes. When I first started the connector was hard as a rock. After heating and letting it cool for a few minutes it gained quite a bit of flexibility. From there it takes a good amount of gentle prodding with some wooden utensils on the inside, and pulling it forward from outside the car through the opening. Not fun, but done! The downside is now I have to do the left side which means pulling the wiper motor out, but hey, it's all good as long as the dash stays undisturbed. Have to pick up some strip caulk to run around the edge (cheap insurance) before final assembly too.

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Almost had enough, but not quite enough to finish........

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Finally got some 70 grit aluminum oxide delivered so I could get that front fender blasted. Nobody had any in stock so I had to order 25 lbs. from Harbor Freight. I used their handheld blaster and it really needs their media to work properly. Does a fantastic job on the small stuff, but still a mess to clean up. Carpet finally arrived from the UK after a couple of months, so I'll get to this shortly. Hopefully dropping off the seats at the upholstery shop tomorrow so maybe I can finally have the interior done in a few weeks.

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Moved on to the left side vent duct and was surprised how easy it went. I was able to heat it a little and actually slip it off the vent and pull it out. Cleaned it up and put some serious heat to entire duct and fit it back into place without needing to access it from the frunk or having to remove the wiper assembly. Overall goal was to finish up everything in the interior that required cutting, grinding, or fluids, and I'm almost there. Nothing worse than installing carpets, trim, etc. and having to work around them - never works out well.

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It's carpet replacement time, and there are as many opinions on how to do it and what to use as there are cars that need carpet out there. I chose to use a multi-piece carpet, not because it is easy, but because the other alternatives have some drawbacks that are difficult to deal with. Mass produced cars almost universally use a one or two piece (front/rear) molded carpet because it is virtually idiot proof during assembly line installation. Molded carpet is perfection, but not really a viable option outside of an assembly plant. The carpet is heated, steamed, and pressed in a die. The molded carpets are stored flat and nested in neat stacks. Aftermarket molded carpet is not stored flat, it is packed into the smallest box possible and is sitting on a shelf for months or even years before reaching the end user. What you end up with is not anything remotely similar to what the factory originally installed. Cut and sewn carpet is another choice, but still suffers from the same packaging issues. Because they are folded and creased during storage and shipping and much of the damage is not reversed by simply sitting in the sun. They bunch, crease, and pucker. They all do it - it is what it is. They are tough to correct, if not impossible even with a commercial trim steamer. The fact that most, if not all have an underlayment material bonded to them really presents problems with wrinkle removal and makes for a difficult installation (especially cutting openings and bolt holes). Multi-piece sets have the advantage of being able to be shipped flat and have no bonded underlayment. It's just the carpet material which is much more flexible and far easier to work with. Older European classics that had a high degree of hand assembly normally used multi-piece carpet. Yes, they are slightly more work, but the end result I think is worth the effort. On the typical seven piece set, there are only three pieces that require installation, the two sills and the central tunnel. The two under the seats and the two footwells are already cut and trimmed with edging so they just get set in at the end.

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It's getting there! The car came with a pair of new, really high quality mats. First the seat covers were too light, now mats that are almost white; beginning to think the PO might have been colorblind?

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