What did you do in your shop today?

[gr8kornholio]

Ordered some more stuff from MED. if anyone is thinking about it they have a Black Friday sale going

[MiniDave]

what did you get?

[gr8kornholio]

Their crank pulley and stub stack carb setup.

[94touring]

Med's stub stack and filter hif44 setup is the best one out there hands down! 

[cstudep]

Was doing some cleaning up in the shop today and came across this. Any ideas what it might be from?

[BruceK]

Stromberg carb makes me think Triumph.  Spitfire intake perhaps? 

[cstudep]

Could be I suppose. I had no idea that is why I tossed it out here since there seems to be a bunch of British car knowledge here not just Mini.

It was buried in a crate with some mini stuff I acquired some time back, all I knew is that it was not for a mini.

Edit: looks like you are probably correct, searching for a spitfire manifold I found some pictures of others like this one marked as midget 1500/spitfire

[MiniDave]

Could be either - Midgets used the 1500 Triumph engine from 75 till 80 when they stopped making them. Not exactly in demand tho, most people replace them with a Weber conversion.

[cstudep]

It will probably go in the scrap pile then. Thanks gents!

[BruceK]

This is not Mini-related, but I thought I'd share anyway.   The JDM Toyota truck I imported came with a thin, hard plastic steering wheel that I did not like.  Any surface texture it originally had was apparently worn down by someone driving with work gloves or very rough hands. So it was polished slippery and shiny and it had to go. 

I looked for a replacement steering wheel on eBay - something that would have a similar deep dish style (needed to clear the column-mounted shifter) but one that didn't have any extra wheel switches (eg cruise control) or an airbag.  So it had to be from the 1980s or early 90s. And I stuck with looking at only Toyota steering wheels because I was pretty sure they would have a standardized steering column spline on all their models. I ended up finding a wheel I really liked the look of: a simple black steering wheel with the needed dish.   It was originally fitted new to a Toyota Tercel wagon so I thought it would fit okay, but the seller was in Greece.  I decided to take the risk and it arrived arrived via DHL about three weeks later.   Like a cheap paint job, it looked great from about 10 feet away - which is apparently how the seller photographed it for the eBay auction.  But as I got closer to it I could see that it was really beat to hell by the mediterranean sun.  The rubberized plastic of the wheel had deep cracks all over - it looked liked the parched soil of the desert.   Plus the rubberized cover of the steering wheel had broken loose from the inner metal frame of the wheel, so when you gripped it it just rolled around in your hands.  Crap.

It really wasn't practical to try fight and return the wheel to Greece, so I decided to try and refurbish it.  First step was make sure the outer cover was firmly attached to the inner wheel frame.   I went to Tractor Supply and got a big animal vaccine syringe with a large bore needle. I drilled holes on the backside of the steering wheel around the perimeter and injected Gorilla Glue deep into the cover, and manually moved the cover around to internally spread the glue. Success!  The glue worked great and the cover was now firmly attached to the inner wheel frame. 

Then I researched products that could be used to try and address the deterioration and cracking of the rubberized plastic.  This is the type of wheel where, when new, the plastics is intended to be slightly squishible with your hands. So I needed something that had some flexibility to it.   I discovered the SEM line of high quality interior finish products.  All the reviews I could find on this brand were very positive.

I sanded the wheel down with 400 grit for good adhesion and to remove the rough edges of the little plastic "islands" that existed between the big cracks.  Then I used some SEM soap to thoroughly clean the wheel and remove all hand oil and loose materials.  I spoke to technical support at SEM and they informed you that since the wheel was probably made of urethane plastic I did not need a special adhesion promoter. Plus there were so many cracks on the wheel that I figured any paint or covering would have plenty of places to "key".

I hung the wheel from a tree in my backyard and applied many coats of the flexible plastic paint over the course of about 45 minutes.  I probably applied 6 to 8 coats and I ended up using the entire can.

Considering everything, I think the wheel turned out great. It looks kind of funky when you look at it close up but it has a great grip and retains the flexibility of its covering.

[MiniDave]

Wow, that looks great - at least in the pic!

You're a never say die kinda guy!   77.gif

[BruceK]

Thanks Dave. That SEM product I used really filled in all the little cracks and evened out the surface pretty well.  It can also be used on plastic interior panels, fabric, and carpet too.   Looks like a great way to freshen up an interior or even change the color entirely.  It's very high-quality, but it's also not cheap.

[bikewiz]

Spent a little time setting up a 4 jaw chuck for my lathe. Turned the backing plate true and then drilled the holes for the chuck on the milling machine with the DRO. Something oddly satisfying making two pieces fit precise enough to need to heat one and cool the other to make them go together.

[cstudep]

Nice! I would love to have a lathe, milling machine a water jet and the knowledge of how to use them well. "operating" a small machine shop of sorts is my retirement years goal LOL.

I did manage to get my "winter work area" mostly cleaned up and ready for the 67 tear down process to hopefully begin soon. I call it my winter work area, it's actually a downdraft paint booth that was built into my shop by previous owner. Since I am not an auto painting guy and it is insulated, unlike the rest of the shop, I use it to work on things over the winter as I can easily heat the smaller space up to a temp that I can tolerate working in. The large pit in the middle of the floor makes it difficult to use things like jacks and such when working on a car so I think I will build some sort of temporary platform to level it off with the floor. Would be handy to have an overhead gantry/lift of some sort as well, but that HF one isn't all that cheap.

[Jims5543]

Thanks Dave. That SEM product I used really filled in all the little cracks and evened out the surface pretty well.  It can also be used on plastic interior panels, fabric, and carpet too.   Looks like a great way to freshen up an interior or even change the color entirely.  It's very high-quality, but it's also not cheap.

Umm... you installed it back on on the wrong side of the truck.


My 04 Taco has a beat to hell steering wheel. I was going to replace, it I may give this a try.  LMAO!!  Like I have time!!

[cstudep]

Thanks Dave. That SEM product I used really filled in all the little cracks and evened out the surface pretty well.  It can also be used on plastic interior panels, fabric, and carpet too.   Looks like a great way to freshen up an interior or even change the color entirely.  It's very high-quality, but it's also not cheap.

Some how I missed seeing this earlier, that did turn out great! I have an old truck with really bad sun faded plastic door panels and dash. I tried painting a sample with some supposedly interior auto trim paint and didn't really care for how it was turning out. I may have to give this SEM stuff a go and see how it works, it looks great on that steering wheel.

[cstudep]

That SEM place has some pretty interesting products. Just watched a few videos on a sprayable 1k seam sealer that comes in a tube like a caulking gun so you can use it that way, or they have a special gun that looks like a paint gun that holds the tube. You can adjust the pattern to spray a wide area for like a sound dampening application or adjust it down to where it actually sprays a fairly decent "bead" of sorts. You can also use the spray gun as an air powered caulking gun with different tips to lay different types of beads.

They also have 2k seam sealers that use the same tip attachments for doing things like door seams, or that funky factory ripple bead. obviously that sort of stuff is geared toward body shops that are trying to get a factory look to any repairs they do.

I found it interesting anyway, but some may say that I lead a fairly boring life so take that for what it's worth.

[jeff10049]

We use a lot of SEM products check out their panel bonding adhesives badass stuff.
Their Quickset 50 is also one of the handiest things to have around.
The 2k seam sealer is paintable instantly and works very well

Lord Fusor also makes a similar line of adhesive products but not paints.

Then I think it's Valvoline that makes pilobond another very useful product.

Another really cool product line we use is sika products like sika flex 252 literally hold buses together for millions of miles with no other fasteners.

Some of these completely eliminate traditional fastening methods like welding, riveting, bolting.

[tsumini]

Is the SEM panel bonding products better than the 3M 08115 panel bond? I used 3m to bond a Freightliner fiberglass Hood together.

[cstudep]

At my place of business we recently (in the last year) started investigating the use adhesives in place of some fasteners and welding operations on a new product we are developing and we have used some LORD adhesives. I'd have to look back at and see what specific product we settled on but in our tests on strength we never did get the actual adhesive bond to break, the galvanized coating or sheet steel always failed first but even that was at some rather tremendous strength.

We had to spend a lot of time testing things because we are fighting with people who are very much against change and are convinced there is no way it can hold up like fasteners. We easily proved it not only bonded as well as a fastener but far exceeded it in most ways. They then move on to the "it's too time consuming", "the set up time is too long", "it really smells bad", etc... etc...

[jeff10049]

Is the SEM panel bonding products better than the 3M 08115 panel bond? I used 3m to bond a Freightliner fiberglass Hood together.

I have not used the 3m but after reading the 3m tech sheet some of the sem panel bond such as their multi-purpose panel adhesive sound very similar.

[Willie_B]

Not quite in the shop. Went to a friends estate sale to help fund his long term care. He is not an import guy so was surprised to find these seats there. If they are not new they are very close to it as there is no wear on them. They are old though as the seat bottom/squib is split on both. No idea what I will do with them but I am only into them for $100 total.

[Red Riley]

My old favorite belt buckle broke, so I made a new one out of what I had in the scrap bucket.

[Willie_B]

My old favorite belt buckle broke, so I made a new one out of what I had in the scrap bucket.

Bet they love you at the airport.

[MiniDave]

That looks like pretty small rebar - did you heat it to bend it?