It's a base/clear urethane. Pro-Spray and Eurostar, or something like that. I have an industrial coating place I go to, not a real body shop place. I'm not sure about the test cards but I will ask and I will bring in the can when I buy a gallon for the body. It mixes 1:1 but with the jambs and door backsides I now need to spray, I'm now kind of forced to buy a lot.

Probably only 2 gallons sprayable - that's about what the 242 took.

I got some fiddly stuff done today, which took all day but I finally have the front suspension mapped.

With the 550 lb-in springs a 1G hit should compress the suspension 3.5", but I think I only have about 2.5" before hitting the bump stops so I'm assuming a "normal" travel range of about 5".

Total wheel travel is 7" from bump stop to bump stop. At ride height I set the static camber to be 1.1 degrees negative, and the average camber gain over the 2.5" of bump is about 1°/inch, while the average camber loss over 2.5" droop is about 0.8°/inch. The average camber loss over the full 4.5" of droop is about 0.4°/inch, so it actually slows right down in that last 2" of droop.

I set the static toe at 1/8" in at 23", at ride height. At full compression it's the same as at ride height, 1/8". At 2.5" droop the toe is less than 3/16", so the variance over the 5" of normal travel is less than 1/16". At full droop this rises to 5/16" toe in, but that's not so bad because there's no load on the tires at this point so toe is irrelevant.

I think this shit's nailed down.

Is that the stock suspension or the one with the lowered UCA?

This is for the modified one. I lowered the dogbone by 1.25", and the added camber gain should give toe-out on bump but the bump steer can be adjusted by tipping the crossmember. I started with the crossmember tipped all the way up (no caster shims between the front of the crossy and the front frame horn) and this is what I got. When I ran it like this, but with the stock dogbone position, I got a lot of bump steer. I thought I'd need to play with it a lot more, but sometimes you get lucky!

Here's a shot of the (temporarily) installed product. Eagle-eyed viewers can see a 3/16" bar of stainless bolted to the original mounts as well as behind the dogbone. This is not the method of lowering the dogbone, it is the top end of a shim/reinforcement plate. It's probably not necessary for strength, but "strong enough" isn't strong enough for me:



I lost concentration for a few days, and fell inside the car. Craig's super-clean and rust free 122 still had rust where the firewall meets the floorboards, so I pulled up the seam sealer in this location. Yup, no holes here! It's a little surface rust, and I'll take care of it when I redo the cheezy patches on the kick panels and clean up the surface rust at the floor "drain" holes.





I did find a little rust, though:



I had a nasty diamond-tufted dash upholstery abortion thing going on, which I ripped off to find a destroyed dash cap, which I also ripped off to find this. I ground it all down, neutralized the rust, and coated it with some POR-15.

While I had the dash cap off, I got a little more sidetracked:



The drive gear on my speedo was very noisy and would rattle at highway speeds. The coating on the brass fascia was also flaking off, the lens was a little foggy, and the chrome surround wasn't looking too hot. I pulled it all apart and scraped the rest of the grey coating off the fascia, polished the clear plastic, and gave the inside of the cluster a coat of fresh paint. I really dig the gold look so instead of painting it grey, I scrubbed the fascia with steel wool and clearcoated it so it won't discolour. I reassembled the speedo with a drive gear from a donor speedo, and called it done. No, I didn't reset the odometer while I was at it.





Installed:



I have an old but not TERRIBLE dash cap to go back on. Good enough for the next guy.

I also got the pedals, much of the hydraulics, and most of the wiring harness installed. No pix of that, but more later.

Sweet Matt! And wow!! I had no idea a dash could look like that!

I know, me neither. The windshield was leaking, I knew that, but I assumed it would hit the floor, soak the jute, and kill the firewall/floor panels. Instead it got soaked up between the foam and the dash panel and attacked that.

Wow. Amazing work on the speedo. You've motivated me to do the same!

Today I got most of the engine work done, but like a bloody idiot I took no photos of the work done. I built an oil pump reinforcement ring out of a 9/16" grade 8 bolt (15/32" hole and 7/16" long, perfect fit) and installed a steel timing gear. The guy who pulled the gear did me no favours though: he hammered the crap out of the crank gear, deforming many of the teeth. I spent much time grinding and checking, filing and checking, testing the mesh with machinist dye, until I was satisfied. A new thrust plate went in too, after I adjusted the fit until it was perfect.

So now the bottom end is pretty much bulletproof and the way it should have been when I put it together the first time.

For posterity, not for art:





After buttoning up the engine it was time to get it back home. The flywheel I was running had some ring gear issues, and when I went to spin it around I noticed that someone had already done it, so I rummaged around and came up with another flywheel. The one out of my 123 GT was in nice shape, I sort of forgot about it... i've never seen one that hadn't been surfaced before, there's a little step I never knew about.



The cluch was almost new, too!



So on the engine and in the car.





It got a reduction starter and the proper B18 bellhousing (was using a B20 before with no way of closing off the bottom half), and I test fit the big rad. Looks like I need to do something about the fan...



I don't want to run an electric fan but will if I have to, Craig suggested I try one of the old metal fans first to gain some space, though it will sacrifice some air movement. Will try tomorrow.

Sweet Matt! Love seeing it in the car. Wiring looks tidy too.

More great work Matt, and fast too. Seeing that dash made me queasy thinking what can be hiding in cars of this vintage...

I've never seen a step like that before. That's not stock. The little step to the inside is there for clearance and a sure sign of resurfacing is when it's gone or almost gone. What clutch is that? The PP looks different to me - not a Sachs?

I don't know, maybe the PO tried to get more grip from the clutch and had a step machined into it. The clutch is obviously newer than the mileage of the car even if you assume it was never wrapped. I remember seeing a name on the diaphragm cover, but I can't remember if it was Borg & Beck or Fitchel & Sachs or something else.
I think it was a Sachs but don't trust my memory. It did suggest it was made in America thiugh.