Poppy the P6

Wot no Irn Bru or Tennents Lager :shock: .
I do hope the BBQ was not set up at the other end under the bonnet!
How did you get the water out after the ice melted (or is Poppy's boot now going to be a new type of garden feature in the form of a pond :D).
Assuming you helped finish that lot off, hope you weren't too hung over :wink: and Happy Birthday to your GF.
 
I can't go tennents. yuk.

I have a Brick BBQ or Braii as my inlaws prefer.

The boot was lined with plastic to for hygene mostly. It was very water tight but I have drill a few holes in it to allow water to drain out. I only had to slit the plastic and it all flowed out.

Been a busy few months but I want to get back on to the car. I eventually found the front bumper irons I thought I had lost/binned. There were hiding in the garage and I appear to have painted them too. I just need to get some bolts.

Does anyone know the correct bolt sizes for the front bumpers? (bumper to irons and irons to body)

Colin

WANTED LIST:
Rear bumper with over riders
door cards
front brake calipers (2200, 4 pot)
front wing stainless trim
 
Well tonight I rolled up my sleeves and did a bit of work on Poppy.

The Fuel tap seal was the priority. I had hoped that I could pop the little screw and pup the tap apart to replace the seal. It wasn't to be so I had to dig out a spare tap from my stash and get the old one off.

I am always amazed how much petrol can come out of a seemingly empty P6. Once the tap was off and the spare cleaned and fitted with a new vitton seal.

The old seal on this tap was hard and broke when removing.

After a few turns of the key and the car fired up for the first time in months. I still need to tune it but at least she runs.

Don't worry about the oil gauge it has gremlins.

a few things I found out tonight is:
The rocker gaskets is shot
The"kevlar" hoses are shot
The clutch has no fluid (I did suspect the slave was going so have a new one)
There are a few more rust holes to weld up
The carbs are overflowing onto the exhaust manifold.

So next plan is to
strip and clean the carbs which were overhauled 8 years ago but never really ran in anger
replace the rocket gasket
replace all the coolant hoses
fix clutch
fix brakes.

If I can get it running and stopping the other bits are not so hard.
 
It has been a long time since I have updated this thread.

Work have been slow and random, life always gets in the way.

So what have I been doing or not doing.

Brake parts have been gathered but I am still to rebuild the calipers. I have stainless pistons to go in them so hopefully this will be the last time I do them.



I need to get some work done on my roof so ideally I want the p6 to be drivable so it can be moved out of the way whilst the guys are in.



I stripped off the carbs to check the floats as I was getting a lot of petrol running out on to the exhaust, the floats were fine so I used the air line to blow them out suspecting dirt. That didn't work so will need to get them back off and adjust the float levels.



Last year I bought a load of new coolant hoses, gaskets and a clutch slave from Mark Grey. When I finally got around to fitting the slave cylinder in January (2014) I found the master cylinder seal had gone and I couldn't get a decent pedal. The fight to get the push rod out of the pedal resulted in the complete removal of the pedal box and a mangled rod.







I also found that my brake master was needing a rebuild. My solution as to find a suitable substitute for both master cylinders, the brake was a bit of an issue due to the bore size, I got one which was slightly different but as the car is a long way from going on the road so I will be able to get my original rebuilt.


On Wednesday I got a a replacement rod from one of guys at our local meeting and as it was such a nice afternoon I got them fitted.





I will need to make up a few pipes and bleed them but everything looks good.

Whilst the car is up in the air I decided to replace the dif pinion bush which was completely shot. I had to use my bolt grip and big torque wrench to get bolt off but got there in the end.





I managed to break the choke cable but have a replacement to go on.



So lots of things still needing done, I will be getting friendly with my mig again, there is bits I know about and a few new holes to be dealt with. I am really missing driving a P6 and have been considering getting a series 1 v8 or anything just to get behind the wheel of one but I need to get Poppy sorted.
 
Stick at it. If you get another one Poppy will get left down the list again. I think that is why I am resisting getting another car.
 
Been quiet on the forum and I had some spare time at the weekend so decided to get some work down on the p6.

Since the last update in 2014!!! Not much has happened but i have managed to get it running a stopping. The breaks abd clutch havent lost any fluid which is good.

Still need to get to the engine running nicely and fit the new cooling hose, i have run the engine for short periods without coolant.managed twice up the driveway which is the longest it has moved under its own power in years.

The paint was quite pink so I gave it a cut and it looks better.





Also repaired and reconnected the side lights and have ordered up some creamtic headlamp bulb plugs to replace the grotty wiring, i have new plastice bowls to replace the metal ones i took off years ago.

There is a few bits i still cant find like the rear bumper irons, also sure I ordered new bolts for them which are also missing.

Will 2015 be the year she goes back on the road? Hopefully a few bits of welding in the rear. I would like to get a front inner wing to tidy up an earlier attempt at reconstruction.

Photos to follow at some point.

Colin
 
Good to see Poppy's making progress, Colin!


arthuy said:
There is a few bits i still cant find like the rear bumper irons....
Click to expand...

If you get stuck for these, I think I've still got the pair from Rebekah in the garage somewhere. Give me a shout if necessary and I'll have a hunt.
 


I have finished sorting out the lights other than relays, I had a fuse box melt with standard head lamps and I have Halogen units so it is a wise preacaution.

One thing I noticed when going through the wiring was lots of the bullets and snaps were grotty. I replaced most of the bullets with proper brass ones which I solder , I prefer the solder but also the crimping tool is ridculously expensive for the odd job.

I highly recommend renewing the snap connectors with new ones. I traced a side light that would only come on when the indicator was flashing to the 6 way snap for the earths.





The ceramic lamp plus are great, bought via ebay for £2.50 each which was a reasonable price compared to the plastics. The come with short wires. They are just a bit short for the P6 so I replaced them with longer wires to make it easier to get into them. I did have a funny fault which was a terminal on the back of the switch. I had a spare but had to cut the knob off to get it off thankfully I still have a few good spares.

The big achievement is replacing the coolant hoses. I would recommend replacing any hoses marked 'Kevlar reinforced made in england' they were never great and pulled off the car. I have standard hoses which came via Mark gray, the water pump bypass was a pain but other wise ok. I have a new thermostat which was bought for my dads morris and never fitted. I put an air hole in it so this it the first time it has had a thermostat fitted in ages. The radiator seems to have survived the lay up thankfully.

With the cooling system sorted I managed to make and attempt at tuning the carbs. Just to eliminate any problems I bought a new dizzy cap and red rotor arm. It does some and feel better but cleaning the soot off the plugs also helped. To be fair to my neighbours I havent ran the car for too long. I have a custom stainless exhaust which booms out a fair bit. A few years ago I got a baffle meant for motorbikes and exhaust wool. Putting this temp in the tail pipe does reduce the noise a fair bit so will play with that.



With the new stainless bumper bolts I fitted the front bumper and for a moral boost the bonnet badge which the car has never had in my 14 years of ownership.
 
just looks it.

found some welding that needs sorting. worse bits is under the steering idler :( will need the get some quality time with the welder.

The brakes appear to be holding since the new master cylinder was fitted.

Colin
 


Before poor old Poppy goes on her final journey she will be a guinea pig.

I went and bought a basic car roller from CJ Autos which should arrive any day now.

Meantime I got a chance to play with my scissor lift today. I didnt go full height because I didnt quite have the car balanced properly, it was slightly nose heavy.
 
Final journey made today.

Pretty sad but when the car was stripped down the horrors became worse.

Lots of parts have been reused or been passed on to help other cars.

One really bad section of rust was below the passenger side engine mount, where the inner wing joins there was a whole perforation along there and below the steering idler and bulkhead had dissolved.

I didnt take any photos to give the old thing a bit of dignity. :(



 
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All those years i had the impression that it was a long term project close to be finished and on the road again, so i was surprised to learn that you were breaking it.
But when i saw some photos you posted a few days ago i understood.
Well, i guess we cannot win all the battles, can we?
 
There was always just a little bit to do but the bulkhead rot was just a step to far. It is a reminder of how our cars car rot unseen before your eyes.

Has been good fun tinkering over the years. I have bought another p6 but with a sound base unit so it should get me back behind the wheel of a P6.
 
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