By the end of this weekend I might be back to where I thought I was two or three weeks ago, before I discovered how much the wheel arches were off. But first, a look at how much this car is fighting to stay derelict! (Or maybe I’m just projecting…)

I sent the instruments off to be rebuilt in January, to Morgan Motors of New England, where all of the E-Type money has gone, effectively. (They are good folks and a decent company to deal with, once you accept that any transaction that involves the Morgan factory directly rather than an item in stock is going to take a period of time geologists refer to as an epoch.)

I don’t know for a fact, but I would guess MM uses Nisonger for their instrument rebuilds, as they would be “just down the road”, but they could easily use another specialist. In any case, I was fairly convinced the instruments were lost, just based on the two-month turn-around and the extra half-year it’s been since the expected return date.

2016-07-30 23.56.37

But lo!, a box, which Ms. Rusty Heaps signed for as I was on a conference call.

Hm. Box is pretty beat up.

Hmmmmm. Box is actually soaking wet inside. (It hasn’t rained around here in ages.) Really? A crushed wet box, probably containing fragile instruments? Oh no.

2016-07-30 23.56.42

On the left you can see one of the starch-based packing “peanuts” melted to the side of a crushed box-within-a-box. C’mon. I swear every aspect of rebuilding this car has gone like this.

2016-07-31 00.00.47

Thankfully, the instruments were packaged within bags, and seem OK. I have no way of testing them at the moment, so hope they’re fine is all I can do. They sure look nice, even if they are about $500 more than expected (and $400 more than the instruments on the E-Type). So if you’ve ever been curious what $2,000 in rebuilt instruments looks like, your curiosity can now be sated. Crushed wet box and all!

2016-08-02 22.16.38

The fourth arch came off the form with a bit more spring-back than the third, here it’s being marked up for cuts. I ended up bolting both arches to each other and rather tediously making them pretty much mirror each other, to within a 32nd or so of an inch.

Because of the extra spring-back, the lower front outside edge of the latest one twisted outwards a bit, so while its upper surface mirrors the right arch, the ash is about 1/16″ thinner where it will attach to the sill board at the outside edge, if that makes sense. Hopefully not a big deal; if it turns out to be critical, epoxy-as-filler will be used once more.

2016-08-06 23.50.18

And here are the finished arches with the fuel tank/storage frame bolted back up. I have a spacer board clamped up top and one resting inside at the front. I had to make a minor adjustment to the rear fuel board, looking at my marks I realized I had cut the board slightly wonky on the right side. Oh, well, it’s mechanically sound and it’s all getting glued, so…

2016-08-06 23.50.59

The original frame had this half lap joint starting in front of the arch. This shows the inch I will be moving the seat back. I will have to make corresponding changes to the top cross-piece (by moving it behind the top pivot bracket instead of in front of it, and to the seat bases (which will have to take into account the cross-members now). I may have to make a sheet-metal cover for the spring-hanger, as it may be in back-poking range now, but maybe not.

We’ll see.