Wow… It’s been a over a year since my last post. I guess this is the challenge for anyone with a project car, a young family and a house that needs maintaining. I’ve been focussed on some other projects around the house and dealing with an increasing guilt at not touching the RoadRunner. On a positive note, here are a few pictures of the projects I’ve been working on!
In true Reddit style, here is a before picture of the thing that’s kept me most occupied. Bit of a grassy hillside that was a pain to mow and a tree that turned out to be my nemesis.
And that’s what it looks like now. Still some work to do with cleaning the cement off the wall, making that breeze block retaining wall look a little prettier and finishing off the patch on the right. I’m properly happy with it all in all though and look forward to getting plenty of veg on the go next year (we had 50kg+ of potatoes out of it this year to start breaking up the soil).
I’ve also been knocking up a firewood shed, growing my little helper some more and making him a balance bike (on a weekend I got rained off from the garden). Anyway, the guilt has finally overwhelmed me and I’ve started chipping away at the car again.
This has reminded me that I have lots of part cleaning and preparation to go before I get into the interesting work of assembling a working car. Ahh well… I just need to learn to enjoy cleaning corrosion off the surface of metals for a bit.
Here’s the diff after taking a first pass at it with a dremel and a small polishing stone. I’ve marked the casing in a few places, that I’m not happy about, but a big part of this for me is learning as I go. Before fitting to the car I’m planning to;
- Go back over the aluminium half of the casing and try to get a better finish on it
- Replace the differential bushings with a set of these PowerFlex ones. I’ve read reports of them increasing noise / ride discomfort, but in an open top kit car I don’t think that will be my primary concern.
- Paint the cast iron half of the differential casing with some Satin Black Hammerite.
- Pull the taped up bits that the driveshafts attach to and replace the oil seals.
- Replace the gearbox oil in the differential.
I’ll update the last couple of points with links when I’ve spent the time researching and sourcing with parts.
Wish me luck anyway. I’m going to try and get moving as much as possible over winter before the wife starts requesting I start on the front garden come Spring 😉
