Dug into the antenna tonight, to replace the mast.

This is a ridiculous contraption, but ingenious. But heavy. 3 lbs 9 oz:



It works a bit like an old cassette deck- rubber pinch roller winds a nylon cord in and out of a storage drum, pulling and pushing the antenna up and down. Ingenious set of limit switches that magically stop it at both extremes.

First step is to make sure there's no old leftover busted nylon cord in the drum. Nope, just some petrified grease. (Cleaned and re-lubed)



Then load the new nylon cord up to the pinch roller, and draw it in:



The connector is 3 pins- middle pin is ground, one +12V pin drops the antenna. if the 3rd pin also gets +12V, antenna extends

 

I re-masted my antenna motor a while ago, and it was fun working out you needed 12v on both sides available. I only had 1 FM station that worked, and when I followed the antenna feed out of the box I found a poor quality piece of tin box , labelled Hirschmann (sp?), with a coax aerial lead going towards the front of the car. The box was rusty inside, and at first I thought this was my lack of station cause, but checking the coax cable found it was open circuit. I removed the box altogether, fitted a new aerial extension under the carpets up to the dash and everything worked as expected. If you havent found this aerial booster box, you are probably better off without it.
jp 83 Euro S AT 56k

 

Not sure there's a booster box in the car, don't believe so. Since we don't have a proper radio for the car the antenna is kind of moot at this point, but hey, want to be ready when there is a radio...

William and I knocked out a bunch of stuff today- I assembled the soda blasting add-on for my blast cabinet, so I could do the various engine bits without worrying about glass bead contamination.

First pass on the upper tower, vs. 'before' on the lower:



William removed every last vestige of overspray from the various rubber seals carefully with lacquer thinner and linseed oil. Rubber looks almost new! Everything is reusable except for the bumper beading and the upper door window seals (928 537 323/324 03), so that's all set.

I finally got around to cleaning the carpets- Pre-soak in Napisan, then wash on the heavy duty cycle, cold water only.

Before, back in November:



Still needs to be vacuumed to get the pile to lay down uniformly, but much better:





Close up on top of trans tunnel carpet where it’s faded:



Litmus test is always the dead pedal carpet.

 

cork?

 

that is how it started in 1978, lol!

 

Carpet seemed to clean up nicely. But, I'm having a hard time locating the drivers floor carpet (with the rubber foot rest area attached) in your pictures...was it too wasted to use?

You two are doing a great job, and at lightening speed.

Brian.

 

It is the last of Rob's pictures, it is just turned sideways.

My fingers are just starting to uncramp after yesterday's rubber and hose cleanup session, I can type comfortably again!

there was overspray from previous paint work on many rubber pieces, but with perseverance looks to have cleaned up quite nicely.

Rob has been staging all the new/refurbed parts for reassembly, and we look to have run out of parts to clean.

After a good garage cleaning, we should be ready to start the clean reassembly process in a clean garage once we get the newly plated bits back next week.

We were making super progress yesterday until Rob's friend pulls up in a brand new GT3, Speed Yellow no less. Talk about shiny objects distraction! That killed about an hour, would have been more if he offered rides.

 

Wow - that carpet is amazing! Had a nice visit with Alex this morning at his stable (friggin awesome early collection btw), and he was telling me about these carpets.
Btw you have got to see Alex's exceptionally rare orange car. Can't wait for the restoration some day of that one!

 

Actually the floor carpets are not in the pic, I haven't attacked them yet, I think their backing would completely dissolve in the washer, so will steam vac them instead. They're in pretty decent shape, though in 25 years of working with mice in lab I have become allergic to rodent dander (or maybe just rodent ****...). When I shook these carpets out, I ended up sneezing about 100 times, felt like my nose was going to fall off.



The one truly bad carpet is the backing on the rear hatch area carpet- trashed. Not sure whether a source exists for this backing (I think this is 'jute' backing cloth, not sure...), but I'm not sure I'd put it back on if it did exist. My bias is to cut it all off but don't know what backing to replace it with...



Turned attention to the engine again yesterday - Lots of time soda blasting the cam towers and intake pieces. Very satisfying but one goes through a lot of bicarb pretty quickly. I was cheap and tried reusing the media, and it can sorta be reused 1 time, but it's pretty much done once it's been through the gun three times. Starts out as granular sugar, ends up as powdered sugar.

Cleaning head stud holes, gotta get all the loctite out of the bottoms. Clean:



Sonicated the lifters and lifter sleeves, then cleaned, and sprayed with some WD-40, as the sleeves begin to flash rust if they sit when wet :

 

Rob Edwards is our top cleaner, no doubt about that. I am impressed.
Åke

 

Yes, these are the pieces I was looking for...especially the driver side. Just wanted to make sure about that notch in the rear edge and that they were on yours, too.

Was kicking myself in the butt about half way home from Rob Budd's place yesterday. Wanted to ask him about this matting/backing and if it was available. My 84's is in kind of rough shape and needs attention. Granted, after seeing the rolls and rolls and rolls of materials he had available...my guess would be he has some.

Was just thinking about snapping a picture and sending it to him this morning.

Brian.

 

I keep thinking I'm done with cleaning parts, then the goal posts move a bit more. Spent the afternoon stripping black parts and cleaning structural bits:

 

I say we tackle that garage floor tomorrow! Don't want to drop clean parts on that, lol!
Happy New Year to all!

 

William- Whatcha want to do with the backing on the cargo area carpet? Preserve (and have it shed for the rest of its life) or remove?

 

^^^^
Bob Budd has the repro jute backing. It is very nice.