OP
OP
Well, James did lots of work to it... 
I helped out here and there.
The heater was one of the first fixes - James put in a spare valve and matrix, flushing the cooling system several times.
The left electric window was one of the last fixes - motor was seized. I got it apart and now it's freed-up and lubricated with spray grease, though judging from the noise you'd wonder if it was lubricated with anything at all!
The brakes were an interesting task. I changed the master cylinder; no difference long-term (would work OK after bleeding but soon stop working again). Eventually I took apart the rear brake cylinders and basically replaced the seals using rubbers from other rusty cylinders... somehow this worked.
The gear linkage was rebuilt by James with new 'top-hat' bushes; an amazing improvement.
I adjusted the tappets. Loud clicking noise still there...
James did quite a bit of welding (my welder lives there) to fix the rust hole at the top of the door, and a couple of other bits at the bottoms of the doors. There was a fair quantity of filler and a pretty good job of sanding on James' part - not many scratches
James got hold of some matching seats from another red 70S and rebuilt the seats after washing everything - resulting in clean, un-worn seats that are far better than you'd expect in a 1984 car. They are still really soft - think that's just the design (with the wire-sprung base). Carpet is really nice too (the early cars had better carpet than the later ones, especially the awful furry-plastic fitted to 45 models).
James did a super job of making the check panel operational; mostly in changing door locks and making up some wiring for the rear doors, since someone had cut it out (perhaps in frustration!) Related to this, the central locking was re-commissioned (I think it was dead before).
Lights (front and rear) received the usual clean-and-tighten treatment, so that everything works correctly.
James repainted the panels piece by piece - the roof was the first and it didn't turn out particularly great - bands of orange peel just like I used to get
However James then borrowed my trusty old-skool Devilbiss JGA spraygun and the results were staggering - tailgate and side panels really very good (tailgate replaced with another red spare, by the way)
Since I tend to need my spraygun around, and since James likes to paint with small quantities of paint, the next purchase for him was a gravity-fed spraygun ('Wellmade') rather than the el cheapo suction gun that came with a compressor 'starter' kit. There was somewhat of a learning-curve for this and so the bonnet has runs along the front edge
Finally there were some gearbox oil leaks to overcome (the gearbox had very little oil in it...) which of course meant swapping the driveshaft boots for some spares, including one with the later type of boot having a sealed bearing (post '88 I think).
Basically the little car now looks like someone has really cared for it, and will probably give someone some characterful transport for a few years to come.
James and Ben's Dad never did warm to the idea and so Ben now owns his sister's 92-ish grey Honda Civic sedan - his sister being overseas on a 'working OE', think she's in France now.
I got a front-right indicator lens out of it not a huge reward but then it's nice to have combined skills with James and 'rescued' another Uno...
-Alex
I helped out here and there.
The heater was one of the first fixes - James put in a spare valve and matrix, flushing the cooling system several times.
The left electric window was one of the last fixes - motor was seized. I got it apart and now it's freed-up and lubricated with spray grease, though judging from the noise you'd wonder if it was lubricated with anything at all!
The brakes were an interesting task. I changed the master cylinder; no difference long-term (would work OK after bleeding but soon stop working again). Eventually I took apart the rear brake cylinders and basically replaced the seals using rubbers from other rusty cylinders... somehow this worked.
The gear linkage was rebuilt by James with new 'top-hat' bushes; an amazing improvement.
I adjusted the tappets. Loud clicking noise still there...
James did quite a bit of welding (my welder lives there) to fix the rust hole at the top of the door, and a couple of other bits at the bottoms of the doors. There was a fair quantity of filler and a pretty good job of sanding on James' part - not many scratches
James got hold of some matching seats from another red 70S and rebuilt the seats after washing everything - resulting in clean, un-worn seats that are far better than you'd expect in a 1984 car. They are still really soft - think that's just the design (with the wire-sprung base). Carpet is really nice too (the early cars had better carpet than the later ones, especially the awful furry-plastic fitted to 45 models).
James did a super job of making the check panel operational; mostly in changing door locks and making up some wiring for the rear doors, since someone had cut it out (perhaps in frustration!) Related to this, the central locking was re-commissioned (I think it was dead before).
Lights (front and rear) received the usual clean-and-tighten treatment, so that everything works correctly.
James repainted the panels piece by piece - the roof was the first and it didn't turn out particularly great - bands of orange peel just like I used to get
However James then borrowed my trusty old-skool Devilbiss JGA spraygun and the results were staggering - tailgate and side panels really very good (tailgate replaced with another red spare, by the way
)Since I tend to need my spraygun around, and since James likes to paint with small quantities of paint, the next purchase for him was a gravity-fed spraygun ('Wellmade') rather than the el cheapo suction gun that came with a compressor 'starter' kit. There was somewhat of a learning-curve for this and so the bonnet has runs along the front edge
Finally there were some gearbox oil leaks to overcome (the gearbox had very little oil in it...) which of course meant swapping the driveshaft boots for some spares, including one with the later type of boot having a sealed bearing (post '88 I think).
Basically the little car now looks like someone has really cared for it, and will probably give someone some characterful transport for a few years to come.
James and Ben's Dad never did warm to the idea and so Ben now owns his sister's 92-ish grey Honda Civic sedan - his sister being overseas on a 'working OE', think she's in France now.
I got a front-right indicator lens out of it
not a huge reward but then it's nice to have combined skills with James and 'rescued' another Uno...-Alex
