[Plodder]

A the begining of this year the next job up was the camshaft cover refurbishment.
Not only was the camshaft cover astecially in a poor state but  I'd had an oil leak over  the last few year that needed fixing





The MOT said the oil leak was from the cylinder head gasket but I believe it is unusual for this to  occur and it's more likely to be the camshaft cover.
With the cover stripped off  and with the cover  seal removed I noticed  some scratches across a small area of the oil seal groove at ithe distributor end where the oil was leaking

However  I've owned the car for 27 years and  I'm not aware of the cover has ever been off in that time (the honest truth guv) so where these marks come from I'm not sure.
I tried polishing them out with a bit of wet and dry and a small honing stick  but wasn't able to remove them completely but I was able to make a visible improvement.
The cover was then  sent to Redditch Shotblasting for powdercoating and spruce  up of the lettering and ridges.
I don't have any experience of different  shotblasting company's  but I've seen these guys at a number of shows and their work looks really good.
Since the camshaft is really in your face when you lift the bonnet I decided they were my choice over a local company that had done some coating on the battery tray. The returned cover looked pretty good and gave me something to look at in the middle of the living room floor!



Before fitting the seal to the cover I applied a bit of extra sealant to the area of the markings and followed the instructions from the workshop manual  about sealant on the areas around the camshaft cover gasket.
Once fitted with a new set of HT leads the end result was definetly an A+



But I was still left with an oil leak. The level of the oil leak was definetly less but a leak there still was.

However with the area now cleaned up it seemed that there was oil weeping from  TDC sensor joint.
A quick replacement of a £2 oil seal seems to have fixed the problem completely.

Whilst under the bonnet was starting to look good the hole left in the bonnet insulation by the squirrels nesting in the air box was beginning to get a bit frayed and dumping insulation into the engine compartment.




A search using Breakerlink yielded a nice second-hand insulation panel and clips which was quickly swapped over with no issues and another step improvement under the bonnet



Next up those tatty corroded wheels get the treatment

[Plodder]

The wheels on the car are original, as far as I'm aware, as they haven't  been changed since I brought  the car in 1997.
I'm not sure what they are called but I think they have always set the car off well.
However 23 years have taken their toll  with the paint  lifting in places and  the metal underneath corroding.
All this wear and tear has lead to them looking pretty poor and leaking air. Two of the wheels required regular maintenance to keep the pressures up.
Ad hoc repainting of the wheels over the last 15 years  hasn't really worked.
The picture below doesn't really show just how bad they were.



So in February I took them to a small company called B J V Engineering  near Hemel Hempstead.
They stripped all 5 wheels back and powder coated then in a similar silver colour to the original but with a more metallic element to the paint. They said this would disguise any surface roughness in the paint finish caused by any underlying rough areas from the corrosion showing through.

After powdercoating it is almost impossible to see any of the areas where corrosion  had taken  place.

The centre pieces had also lost their colour but the company charged a lot of money to wet paint them so I decided to do these myself.

Initially I purchased 4 new centres from Rimmers " Mega Clearance " sale for the huge sum of £2.50p each. But these were either a slightly different  size or made of an inferior material  because the first one I struggled to fit and eventually the clip  broke off.

So I went back to the old centres and resprayed them using a metallic silver wheel rattle-can  and within a couple of hours I had four almost  perfectly matching centres to compliment the wheels.

[Plodder]

Furlough in April , May and June this year brought me a lot of spare time.
During that time  I decided to recoat the long  fascia strip on the dash.
30 years of sunshine had lifted a large amount of the coating and given it a yellow appearance.
Removing it , despite  sound advise from the forum, resulted in a segment  of the veneer coming away from the end of the strip  and the first clip pulling out of the wood as the end of the clip had lodged behind the  edge of the opening cut in the dash.
Once removed the extent of the problem was fully realised. Rubbing my hand up and down the strip resulted  in a huge amount of the varnish simply falling away.



I removed the rest of the  varnish using successively finer grades of wet and dry using a block to avoid rounding off the edges of the fascia and losing the edge of the veneer.
Once cleaned up I  stuck the chipped veneer back in place and used Chesnut Cellulose Sanding Sealer and Chesnut Acrylic Gloss lacquer  spray to bring the colour back up.





The result colourwise is really good but it lacks the shine of the other interior wood trim. I've  read you can spray varnish over lacquer to give it a glossier finish so I'll  have a go at this some time  , probably when I fix the clock which now fluctuates between bright and dim of its own accord. I think I may have damaged the wires to the plug when disconnecting it from the clock.
 

[Plodder]

This is the last retrospective  installment and it covers the restoration of  the bodywork but not the paintwork.
I would say the bodywork was ok (It passed it's MOT's)  but definetly not good. It was a workhorse over the first 9 years of ownership covering the best part of 100k miles and the only TLC to the bodywork  over those years was a wash and polish.
Over the years the sills rusted through in a number of places.
These have been repaired with varying levels of competence.
The n/s rear wheel arch lip had also  corroded under the rubber edging strip but I managed to catch this before too much damage was done although it was a bit rough.








Recently though I discovered that the lip around the boot catch had also rusted through.



Then  just before the cancelled  Restoration Show in March, where the car had been selected to appear, a small bubble in the paint on the leading edge of the o/s rear wheel arch proved to be hiding a ,  you guessed it , a small rust hole.




I looked around a number of companies but finally decided  to give the work to Silsoe Classic and Modern in Bedfordshire .
In the end they repaired the rear ends of  both sills and all the other outstanding issues.












All in all I'm please with the repair and high on next years list is to get the car rustproofed to maintain the good work done.

All sorted ,I thought , until the windscreen sealant dollop above  was discovered.

Currently the vehicle is back with Silsoe Classic and Modern to be sorted  - although once all the trim is  back they'll  be nothing to show for all the time , effort and money spent!

[Paul_1978_yorks]

Really enjoying this thread - thanks for all the updates!

[Plodder]

Bodywork update
Few pictures from the garage.
Looks like the original area of rust on the roof had extended a little further down so having the screen out has definitely  saved some future heartache.


The area of rust at the base of the A pillar had not extended too far so the repair didn't throw up any more problems.



Windscreen broke on removal so a new one is being sourced - Rimmers only do a green strip at the top of the screen whereas mine has a blue strip. Garage also think they can get it cheaper than £350 that Rimmers charge.

Also discovered before taking the car to the garage that the plenum gallery was covered in limescale from water from the windscreen washer jets ( I live in a very hard water area) this will also be cleaned up whilst they have all the grill and bits off.
Currently waiting in queue for the paintshop to do there bit.

[Rover dave]

Looking good well done

[Plodder]

More ugly stuff uncovered under the windscreen sealant.
Looks like the windscreen fitter did a bit of damage to the paintwork when the windscreen was replaced all those years ago and our good old friend rust has had a bit of fun in the intervening years. Luckily it's surface rust with no major loss of metal.



They've also managed to find a new windscreen with a blue sun strip at about 60% of Rimmers price.

[crepello]

That mirrors my experience about 10 years ago. The (young) Autoglass guy who did my first windscreen replacement wrenched the side trims off,
and evidently damaged the clip apertures such that the next time my screen needed attention they had corroded around their edges, as well as in
the areas you show. He also bounced a dent into my bonnet!

I probably made a mistake in de-rusting and re-painted with Halfords rattle cans myself, as a couple of years after fitting the current screen, it
started letting water in to either footwell, depending which direction the first turn was after starting a journey. I suspect it's the paint that has
let go. It has been tucked away for a while now, needing corrosion repairs. Being in Herts like you and lacking a local sympathetic bodyshop,
I'm following your story with interest!

[Plodder]

Finally got the car back today - great to see it in the Autumn sunshine.



Not much to show for all the time, money and effort except a new windscreen, new A post finisher, new top windscreen seal , that actually fits , and some nice paintwork on the edge of the roof.

Still at least it's all now done.



Needs a through clean inside and out ,

Does anyone have any tips on smartening up the A pillar finishers. I now have a new and old finisher so I need to spruce up the old finisher to finish off the job.