So today I had to take the e30 to the shop for some brake work.  After that fiasco was solved, I headed over to Ardon Vinyl graphics in Alston MA to get those gauges printed.

I’ve been starring at that illustrator line art for too long, they’re finally getting done.

This is how they turned out.  The black is a bit warm and it bled into the white a bit.  But that’s ok.

Application.  The match isn’t bad no?

One done.  I actually ripped that off, it took me 3 tries each.

Polishing the surrounds.

Repainted the needles.

They’re in!

Friday night, I headed out to Providence with Mike to check out an M coupe, then went to pick up some used parts for the Healey.  Got a steering wheel, gear shift lever, and miscellaneous bolts and washers.

A quick shot of the steering wheel.  It was no where near as good condition as the previous one I leather wrapped, but oh well.

First thing I did was stripped the hub down.

Hub… Primed

While that was drying, I started sanding the valve cover bolts.  I couldn’t sand everything off, but they created some cool patterns, so I decided to just clear coat them as is.

Everything’s hooked up under the hood.

Saturday I started working on the brakes. Up on all fours.

As I jacked the car up, the exhaust fell off.

They’re bled and ready.

Off to get sanded down.

Sprayed!

Lastly, the fuel pump.

Well actually this was the last thing.

The carbs that is!

The internals of the intake manifold were rough.

Look at that buildup of carbon.

A lil’ bit of port polish action!

With the manifold ready, I moved on to the heat shield.  The original one was just beat.  It was cracked on one side and rewelded.

So the most logical thing to do was make one.  Everything’s marked up and ready for cutting.

Almost done.

The time consuming thing about custom fab work is the constant on and off while test fitting.

Not too shabby right?

As the post states, they’re in! and I’m one happy camper.

The two carbs have taken over the entire table.

Cleaned the chambers and matched the two air pistons.

Everything cleaned and ready for assembly

Here’s a jinormous post for the days I’ve missed… Work kind of took over.

A box of goodies arrived on wednesday…

Started to work on that front bumper, I was determined to get that front end done.

That 3M metal polish is pretty damn good.

Fabricated a small bracket so I didn’t have to drill into the body.

I was also stripping the intake manifold at the same time.

Almost done… the text casted into the manifold: “firing order 1 3 4 2″… Awesome.

Got a spare off fleabay for 20 bucks!

Saturday… Front end was going back on, the panels weren’t aligned perfectly, but it was the best I could do.

Done!  I’m glad the over riders cover the misalignment of the fenders.

Deep breath, I’ve been putting these carbs off for too long.  We tend to do that with things that are out of our comfort zone, but it wasn’t THAT bad.

Look at that gas reservoir, filthy and rusty, time to get clean.

Everything is apart and cleaned…

The casted text is actually visible now.

One down… one to go.  After the second one’s done, all that’s left is to match the air pistons.

Not much done today… just some small details.

Remember that valve cover?

Well it looks like this now.  Nothing big, just a quick and dirty brush down and clear coat.

I finally got around to revising the safety gauges… Hopefully I can send them to the printer tomorrow… I just hope the gauges are functioning.

Finished masking the block up.

I ended up going with a matte black with a mist of semi gloss…. while that was drying… I got to working on the driver’s side door glass.

I was pretty excited…. but the vent glass I ordered was just shit quality.

At least the door glass was a bit better… But taking that channel off was a pain in the ass.

Scraper + Soap + Liquid wrench + elbow grease = gets the job done.

Sanded the inside of the track down… and put the new seal in.

So here’s the block… I know you can’t really see the speckle in this pic… it’s different and not the right way to go about spraying a block… I’ll do it properly when I rebuild the thing.