Caesar the 1275 E - Diary of minor changes

[Vinay-RS]

Box of Minispares arrived early week. Most of the big stuff in the box isn't mine, but it does have some new bits to get my car going again. New bearings and some uprated drive flanges should do the drivetrain a world of good Time to get it all installed in the next few days.


Started stripping last week the hubs to get the new bearings fitted and the hub didn't come free from the CV joint, tugged at it for a bit and boom:



So the whole side shaft came out and the outer bearing and seal were completely trashed... The inner bearing and seal were stuck on the CV joint too. Very odd things.


Anyway, since it came out anyway, I figured I'd get new thicker GTS side shafts, which should be better. Also, it means the car won't be running quite so soon. I'll need to get the new shafts, clean them, drain the oil and then remove the pot joints. Clean and assemble everything on a bench and then fit it back. I also need to adjust the top ball joints on both hubs as they seem pretty loose at the moment.

On Friday I got the hubs rebuilt.


This weekend I was hoping the GTS side shafts would arrive, but sadly they were only going to get here on Monday. Anyway, a friend and I decided to crack on with some other jobs. We figured we'd get a start on fitting the carbs and manifold with the car not being used. Also decided to paint the calipers in situ to brighten them up as the paint had faded quite a bit.

So, we disconnected the carb and using a hacksaw, we chopped off the old manifold. It is really a rubbish example of an LCB when compared to the Maniflow one. Once they were out, I was hoping to fit new manifold studs and nuts, but I couldn't find them in my box of spares, so we called it on that job and I decided it was a good a time as any to clean the back of the engine and the firewall.

Some Clean Green and a spray bottle seemed to work quite well. I need to try something else to get out more of the gunk that's on it and the gearbox housing. Going to get a more powerful degreaser and some copper grease from the spares shop this afternoon and get some paintbrushes too. While there, I'll pick up some rust remover and gloss red rattle can spray paint and tidy up the back of the firewall. It may not be an exact match, but it will look better than rusty metal.

Then for the week the goals are to get the shafts rebuilt and bolt it all together with some copper grease on the threads for the drive flanges. Then clean and paint the back of the engine bay. Fit the manifold, twin carbs (Yay :proud: ), firewall sound deadening, side shafts and discs with new flanges.

I really wanted to fit that detent spring kit and the roll pin replacing kit for the gear selector but we had real difficulty knocking out the roll pins. I'm not sure but perhaps we were using the incorrect tools for the job. Anyway, once those are out I can get the spring kit thing fitted too.