Here, I am now posting a lot of what has been done to fix the fiberglass, the rear deck, the doors, sills and the front end.  If there are questions, I will make comments, but here they are without additional text for each one.  Most should be self-explanatory.

The reason I have not made any posts lately is not because nothing has been happening, it’s because what has been happening is not so photogenic or very interesting.

The shop itself became inadequate for me to finish the painting.  Whenever I sanded using air tools, my wrists were getting wet – the lines were full of air.  Neither priming nor painting can be done with that much water in the lines.  I drained the water separator, no water there.  I drained the compressor, no water there.  It was ONLY in the lines from the water separator and the tools.  Something structurally was wrong in the system.  I went to the shops that sells paint and equipment for painting; then I went to Google for more information.  Everything had been wrong with the way the system had been installed, and technology for this issue had improved in the past 17 years.

As it turned out, the way I had set up this shop 15+ years ago was all wrong for keeping water out of my air lines; who knew?  Anyway, to make a long story short, I had to buy a new and much improved 21st century air drier system, and I needed to re-plumb the mounting of it, so that it was at the lowest position possible, incorporating a passive trap.  That required that I move everything out of the shop to access the plumbing; that required a complete reorganization  of the shop.  That is why there have not been any progress photos lately.  I don’t think anyone wants to see photos of that operation.

The bodywork has continued, though even that has been somewhat boring to look at photos of.  The floorboards, rear bulkhead and roll cage have now been primed, and sanded several times with minor bits of spot putty along the way.  The goal has been to make the interior look like an Osca, which was all aluminum and had no carpeting.  The transmission tunnel has over 100 hours in it so far.

This photo is of the Osca that inspired me to do the dash and interior the way I am doing it, which has been very time-consuming.  My color scheme is obviously BRGreen rather than red, but you get the idea.  Hopefully, the photo communicates both the reason I am doing it, and the why it is taking so long.  Elva never built their cars to this standard, they were cars a middle class guy could afford, unlike the Osca.

I have been working pretty hard on the bodywork but the pictures don’t really show how much work it is.  I will try to add some photos here to tell the story.

Anyway, I have put together this gallery to show the progression of rebuilding that corner of the car.  Hopefully the pictures speak for themselves.  I will just say that the dark brown goo you see in many of the  photos is epoxy mixed with phenolic microballoon, and what looks like pieces of wood, is actually balsa core.

In among the boxes of parts I got was a piece of a dashboard that I later found was the instrument cluster from an Alfa Romeo Giulietta.  So I built my dashboard out of that cluster section and two other metal dash pieces from a 1967 MGB.   The final assembly into one welded unit was both a nightmare in the process, and a better-than-expected success in the end.

Add to this, the interesting quandary:  First, it should be functional for the race track;  secondly, it will occasionally be driven on the street.  So, because I will have two separate engines, I also have two separate sets of gauges for the oil pressure and the water temperature.   One set is electronic and feed information to the original-style 3-in-1 gauge.  The other two will use a mercury tube and oil capillary tube to the separate instruments.  The two recesses which were used on the MGB for heater and defroster controls are being replaced with low oil pressure and high water temperature warning lights.

Every part of the car has been tested mechanically at this point, and it has been apart and back together so many times that I am pretty sure if I finish the paint job, it will run, stop and steer.  What I am learning is that even if all the individual parts worked on the bench, and were shown to work in car position, it does not mean they will all necessarily do that in car position all at the same time.

Several interesting problems emerged which hampered my completion:

1. The starter position interfered with the placement of the engine in the chassis.  This required the transmission to be removed and all the innerds placed into another bell housing.  So the whole transmission was re-built in the process.  The rear backing plate between the engine and the flywheel-clutch assembly also had to be changed.  Fortunately, I had one of those, but I did not have one for the street engine.  This was also made easier by the fact that the body is not yet fixed in place, and the engine hoist was in place.
2. The original MG engine-mounting brackets are at a different angle than the Elva chassis points meant to receive them.  On the right, side the needed change was easy to make (oval out two holes), but on the left side, the mounting bracket required significant welding to add material and move a bolt hole to a place which did not exist on the original metal bracket.  Then once that was done, I had to take it back apart to paint it.
3. The bolting flanges of the new wheels hit the new front brake calipers, just enough so that the car would not roll.  This will require spacers be made, but two washers under each lug are doing the job for now.
4. The full compression of the rear suspension (without the springs in place) was shown to cause the driveshaft to hit the new rear bulkhead at the top of the transmission bulge.  The interfering part of the bump was cut out and re-glassed to make it clear the driveshaft under any circumstance, such as the full compression of the suspension.
5. The new gear-reduction high torque starter didn’t fit between the distributor and the chassis, (at first), but I was able to make an easy adjustment to the mounting position (clock it over 90 degrees) to make that clearance.  Now it just interfered with the fiberglass inner fender well, right next to the battery box.   This led to more fiberglass cuts and re-glassing the area around the starter.  I still have not had a chance to smooth it out in the engine bay and re-prime the area.  It will need one more lay-up before the primer.
6. Finally, the engine was dyno-ed on the bench, last year, but the engine had never been in car position before, so I hadn’t been able to tell what the velocity stacks might run into.  It turned out to be the pedal box, right next to the accelerator pedal.  I am going to my engine guy’s shop later today to pick up a pair of shorter horns.

While 4 hours from home and 3 hours from the Glen, the Durango’s input shaft snapped, leaving me and the boy stranded in the middle of nowhere.  AAA paid to tow it to a Dodge dealer who offered to sell me a Jeep Liberty, which could finish the trip, or charge me $4,000 for a new transmission.   AAA then towed it halfway home on Monday and I had to pay the last 120 miles, as well as renting a U-Haul truck to bring the unfinished racecar home in the rain, (and snow).

A good time was had by all.

In the area in front of the flares, I shaved a LOT of material off with a long board (80-grit) to make the flare look more gradual.  Then, the whole thing was covered with more epoxy and microballoon.    It now has a much more natural-looking shape.   It’s not finished yet, but it is getting there.   The important thing to me is not to use much bondo in the end, because that just adds dead weight.  The next step will involve wetting out a scrim, a thin layer of glass to become the new top substrate layer before the primer.