A few quick things

In the same spirit as I mentioned in an earlier post, I took 30 mins tonight to go and do a couple of quick jobs on the E21.

First I loosely fitted the tailshaft bolts. I was sitting here thinking about it earlier and realised they were not in and as a result the tailshaft could easily be knocked out, not only that but the bolts in question are very particular and so it would be a hassle to lose them - for this reason I've put them on the shaft. They're not torqued up yet as I will probably still have to remove the tailshaft again to weld the tunnel and to make the center bearing mount, but at least I know where they are and the tailshaft isn't going to hit me on the head next time I get under the car.

The next job was the door handle on the passenger side. I'm not sure why, but the paint appears to be separating from the handle.

I removed the handle and gave it a quick rub down with some sandpaper. I could have gone right back to bare metal but this car isn't a show car, so as long as these are one uniform colour I'm not overly fussed on the finish.

After one coat of K&H Roll Bar and Chassis Black (my favourite no-primer required gloss/matte paint these days)

While the first coat was tacking, I attended to another task - the Bottom Radiator Hose.

As you can see, the bottom hose in standard form collides with the pushrod for the brake assembly. It actually exerts enough pressure on the pushrod to make moving the car around difficult.

Note that two hoses are used as this is a handy trick allowing the use of an EA-D radiator with an EF-AU Falcon Water pump for fitment of the serpentine belt setup to the earlier cars. The later radiators have a smaller ID for the hose and as a result, if like me you had an almost new radiator at the time of conversion, you need to upgrade to the newer style radiator, make an adaptor pipe, or double clamp the bigger hose. Double clamping worked completely fine for me for many thousands of kilometers of hard use without any dramas.

Initially, I'm going to see if I can make a single shortened hose fit

Cut to size with a craft scalpel, these make short but controllable work of this sort of task.

In place - you can see there is much better clearance now for the brake lever, however I fear the hose will be too tall as the cutaway to the left is where the radiator output sits. I may need to start with a different hose, or fit some sort of aluminium bend (and more hose cutting) to alter the location of this hose to work.

Second coat on the door handle

For the last coat, I spray lightly (dust) from approx 30cm away from the part. This allows it to dry to a matte finish. If I decide I want it shiny down the track, I've already seen that my Dual Action Polisher can make this paint look like glass. Note that the gloss shown in this image should dry matte.

Lastly, I removed the radiator from the bracket/support to allow me to finish up the welding on the underside and ends, as well as to prep it for paint. This will mean that when I have time at a suitable hour of the day for welding and grinding, I'll be able to tend straight to these jobs and get stuck in rather than wasting that time doing disassembly and prep work.

I also re-installed the power-steering pump ready for new hoses to be made.