This update takes us through the stripping of the inside floor (long, unpleasant and dull job). All the bitumen was removed from floors, sills, seats, seat back and rear shelf. A lot of it was brittle and easily chipped off, but quite a bit of it was soft and time consuming to remove. No solvents were used, only pure dogged persistance.
Most of the brakes have been hooked up as well, which meant taking the IRS off again. The brake lines could have been done easily in situ, but when I put the IRS together, I was sill in RHD mode, hence the handbrake calipers had to be take off, apart and reconfigured to work with the cable coming in from the left hand side of the car.
I've also modified the front seat mounts to allow the XJ40 seats to be fitted. A bit of head scratching and trial and error, but version 3 appears to work as planned.
The final biggish job was to get the fuel tanks back into place. Remarkably these were entirely free of rust inside, but the straps and fittings for holding them in place were too far gone. Using the principle of the original fittings, I made new straps from galvanized steel straps (with a triple layer of bicycle inner tube to prevent rubbing), welded in new slits for them to hook into, and voila! it doesn't look too bad. And didn't cost me a penny, as the metal was left over from when we built the workshop. Nice.
Looking ahead, more brake work, vacuum lines (a bit of a nightmare) and a new fuel line from rear to front (had hoped to not replace this, untill I noticed it was flattened where it enters the engine bay).
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