Blair's Blog

Like the old song “Dry Bones“, the progress on the Midget is a string of connected activities that I trust will end up with a resurrected vehicle; preferably before freeze up. Although prescient, my list of things yet to be done back at the start of April seems to have fallen far short of reality and a lot of work is accruing to the “fix other stuff” item on the list.

As I’ve worked away on the car since the start of April, I’ve discovered that the clutch hydraulics bone is connected to the brake hydraulics bone,
   which is connected to the pedal box bone,
      which is connected to the “buy a sandblaster” bone,
         which is connected to the rear brake shoes bone,
            which is connected to the leaf springs bone,
               which is connected to the rear axle bone…

I think you get the picture. To make it even more interesting, some bones were connected with 35 years’ worth of rust and corrosion that did not yield gracefully to the gentle persuasion of the spanner. Much to the delight of aftermarket parts retailers in the US, I’ve had to order another few hundred dollars worth of bits and pieces – mostly for the rear suspension. The price for the parts isn’t too bad, even with the 35% exchange rate premium on the US dollar – it’s the shipping that is the killer. The last order was for about $200 CAD worth of parts and the shipping, brokerage, duty and taxes was another $125 CAD – 60%! Unfortunately, getting parts in Canada is basically impossible.

So, after more than two months of this project I still haven’t actually fixed anything, but I might. I’ve removed the entire rear end from the car end have completely disassembled the rear suspension. The clutch hydraulics are still out as is the brake master cylinder and all the rear hydraulics. I made a false start on the rear brake shoes, springs and wheel cylinders – re-shoeing the left side before deciding to take out the axle. I’ll end up re-doing that bit of work later on.

Lately, I have been working on taking the rust off the axle and suspension parts, lots of hours of cleaning up oily gunge, wire brushing, sanding and media blasting to get the parts cleaned down to bare metal. Just this past week, I finally started to reverse the process of undoing stuff by priming the suspension parts, pedal box, clutch pedal and brake pedal. Hopefully, the next few weeks will see the rear axle and springs repainted and then I can start reassembling some of dem bones that I’ve disconnected.