Sunday 14 April 2013

Radiator shroud repair and air filter stickers

Spring is here again, and its time to continue with all those small weekend projects I didn’t finish.

Some time ago I discovered a strange noise coming from the engine bay. I was some kind of "grrrrrr" sound but only made on certain rpms, specially at high idle.

After checking all the components, I found what the problem was. The radiator shroud is soldered on several points to the radiator itself. Three of this solders where broken making the metal shroud to vibrate.


The fix was easy, I just had to resolder those points. To do so, I scrapped the old solder points to remove the paint, then applied some soldering flux, and used a home kitchen gas torch and some 5% silver solder rod (same used to solder copper tubes). The result was good and I just need to repaint the area with some matt black paint to finish it.


Months ago I bought from Classic Repro some tickers and a new chassis plate, to give the perfect final touch to my car. Believe it or not, I just never found the moment to fit the nice Cooper stickers on the carb air filters, so now was the moment. Placing the stickers on some warm water would make the parts to separate and I was able to fit them precisely.


Now the engine bay has the perfect touch and finish with those lovely yellow Cooper stickers.


Just compare them with the original situation!!!


Finally I made some cleaning inside, and used some metal polish to clean the dial bezels, which proved to be so effective.  


Years of crud are easily cleaned and the chrome parts now look almost new.