It’s on a plate
Gary misses a track deadline, but nears road-readiness
Best laid plans and all that. One thing I didn’t mention last month was my quiet determination to finally get the Peerless to Le Mans Classic. It was the 60th anniversary of a Phase 1 car competing, and finishing, at the event, so plenty poignant.
With about eight days to go before I should have been heading towards a Portsmouth ferry, I had to concede the car wouldn’t be ready. Eight days was enough time, but not when work and family commitments can’t be ignored. Try as I might, the list of small jobs needed to make the car worthy of a 700-mile round trip kept on building. Some were details, others were safety critical. For example, I replaced two of the balljoints on the driver’s side steering arm, replicating precisely the length of the old items, but the resulting steering geometry was all wrong. There was so much slop in the old, worn joints that they simply disguised the bad geometry. Then there were the brakes… again.
Weeping again
Last month I recalled how a rear wheel cylinder had leaked due to a bad seal. The new seal arrived pronto from David Manners, was painlessly replaced and the cylinder bled. I had also cleaned up the drum and painted it a more fetching black. Having removed the front wheel to replace the steering ball joints, I noticed more weeping fluid. Not much but still a weep from the pipe. Worryingly, the caliper bridge pipe had a nick in it that looked like a clean cut, but how? I refitted the wheel and discovered the bridge pipe had been making contact with a high point on the inner wheel pressing. Crikey. The wider TR6 wheels fitted shouldn’t have such clearance problems – but having checked, it’s a tight fit.
I removed the pipe, made up and fitted a new one and ensured it didn’t snag by making it a tighter fit, lower down over the top of the caliper. I also checked the run of the pipes on the Peerless in my other workshop undergoing restoration. Its bridge pipes are routed in front of the caliper, directly above the brake disc, which I don’t like either! Out of curiosity and concern, I also checked my LH caliper and, you guessed it, the same thing was starting to happen. I replaced that pipe, too. By now, I’d lost a valuable morning and the pressure was mounting.
Seat belt mounts were next on the list, and it was a relief to get started on them. Six were required in total for the front seats. I’d saved and cut to shape three meaty mounts from a scrapped Volvo V70 seven-seater, the
remaining three were bought new. These would be positioned on the ready-welded plates on the chassis, meaning the GRP floor panels had to be removed. These panels have been in and out more times than the yellow card in that England versus Colombia World Cup fixture.
Each mount had to be positioned and then two holes drilled; one for the main bolt, the other for securing the mount. With the body already fitted, welding them wasn’t an option. With the top mounts fitted, the inner arch closing panels could be fitted with butyl strip, sealing the filler necks’ pipes and fuel feeds in both sills. Fitting the mounts hidden by the fuel tanks also finalised the fitting of the tanks and allowed me to put fuel in them for the first time. This naturally resulted in a triumphant drive around the yard, just because I could.
Comfort zone
Making the interior fume-free is a key priority, so other jobs such as fitting the bespoke handbrake closing panel to the gearbox cover and making up the fixing plate for the gearlever rubber gaiter (sourced from a Volvo Amazon), plus fitting door and window seals were always going to take more time than expected, pushing that deadline further and further away. If I was to road test the car, I’d have to get my skates on. As it turned out my skates fell off, to be replaced by a strange mixture of relief and frustration. Knowing Le Mans wasn’t a reality, I cheered myself up by fitting the registration plates for the first time and my remade Peerless badges. Both bonnet hinges are past their best, with one painted red as an experiment in colour coding, but chrome is the way to go, so new hinges are required. I managed to fit the bonnet locks to the bonnet using Sikaflex to eliminate vibrations that cause gel-coat stress cracks when the captive bolts are used. With the bonnet inverted, I also made a paper template for the Dynamat sound deadening to be fitted next. Additional Dynamat also went onto the parcel shelf panel. I then made a wood panel to fit the parcel shelf, covered in ⅛in Dynaliner foam to be trimmed later. Still no road test, but the strands allowing me to do so are being pulled ever closer together.