Appia furgoncino - A fettler's voyage

[simonandjuliet]

I find it does. I tend to put it on quite thick and leave it to dry fully before polishing.

I may be wrong but, I think it works .....

[fay66]

Simon,
Do you have a photo of the screws your looking for as the heads sound similar to Fulvia screws, if so I'll look in the stock of odds and sods that I inherited from Mike Matthews about 15 years ago and see if I can help.

Brian
8227

[simonandjuliet]

Thanks Brian

Photos and dimensions below - I would be looking for about 30 in all to do the rear doors as well

[lancialulu]

They look chrome plated. I have used ebay in the past to get domed c/s self tappers, but NOS is best....

[simonandjuliet]

Thanks Tim
They are chromed and looking through eBay I found lots of pozi , but very few philips of the correct shape. There is someone supplying the right shape and nearly the right size for Fender guitars ! So it should be poss.

As you say, older slightly tarnished ones would be best

[fay66]

Simon,
Do you have a photo of the screws your looking for as the heads sound similar to Fulvia screws, if so I'll look in the stock of odds and sods that I inherited from Mike Matthews about 15 years ago and see if I can help.

Brian
8227

Sorry Simon,
I searched and found what I have, but the majority are set screws wiith the same head, but in no better condition than yours.

Brian
8227
 

[chugga boom]

pretty sure Wurth do stainless steel Philips screws 

[simonandjuliet]

Thanks James, will have a look

Re paint colours - Very good news, they were there all the time ! Having cleaned up the partition with a view to using it as a reference for new paint, I then compared it to the colour on the roof.

The roof is so faded it looked the same, but then I compared it to scuttle around the engine bay. It looked a bit different so I polished up the scuttle for a better look and guess what - different colour, so I do have both ! There are 2 greens, but not that different, especially when they are faded, dirty and not next to one another !!!

I had assumed that the interior colour and the roof were the same darker green and we had "lost" the lighter colour, but, not at all ......

That means that the interior and the boot are the lighter colour and not the darker one as I first thought, and the only dark bits are the roof, bonnet, door tops and scuttle under the bonnet. Now need to check the underbonnet colour to see which it is, light or dark ?

Next thing I did was polish up the glove compartment lid so I could put them side by side properly and take a couple of pictures. I don't have a loose panel with the darker colour, so I will have to load the van onto a trailer and take her to a friendly paintshop for the spectro - oh well .....

Final picture shows the partition ready to prevent "Fido" joining us in the front !

[DavidLaver]

There are portable ones now - for example:

http://www.xrite.com/ma98-portable-spectrophotometer

[simonandjuliet]

I spent an age cleaning up the engine bay and inner wheel arch. Dog masked it all up and did a coat of Zinc primer yesterday.

It has highlighted a couple of small areas that I missed so small tidy up, tiger seal around the joints and ready for the satin black (engine bay) and underseal (wheel arches)

Start on the roof today?

[DavidLaver]

This stuff?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tiger-Seal-TIG-NB-Polyurethane/dp/B002SQY852/ref=sr_1_1/277-6061633-8023054?ie=UTF8&qid=1381315825&sr=8-1&keywords=tiger+glue

[simonandjuliet]

The very same ......

The zinc primer was another UPOL product, Isopon Zinc 182. Sprayed straight from the tin (can dilute by 10%). Takes a while to dry fully but sands nicely

[simonandjuliet]

The engine bay was painted today and looks very good - still a bit shiny even though it is a satin black that we used. I am hoping it will calm down a bit once it is fully cured (used 2pack) . If not there are a couple of things we can do to make it look a bit more "used" !!!

Have kept a couple of the original runs and imperfections .....

[St Volumex]

Simon, your thread is one that keeps on giving & never disappoints!  

Don' worry about the gloss - a few times around the block and it will look quite normal.  

[westernlancia]

Nice to see my baby is in good hands - this is the first time I have been able to bring myself to look at the thread, because I have missed the van so much. I can confirm that, having had a skim-read through, everything Simon has done has been correct. If I had seen the query about the steering box earlier I could also have confirmed that it was satin black - the reason it was bare ally is because Mick (the guy who used to work for me rebuilding Lotuses and Lancia engines) is a genius, and he has this magic jollop for cleaning ally that brings it up better than new. He had cleaned the steering box (in 2004!) and the jollop is so effective that it had removed every trace of the old paint. But I would have painted it myself (although I did think it looked pretty good in ally!), so Simon did the right thing. I was also unsurprised to find that it had no discernible wear - the van had only done 39000 miles, and virtually all the mechanical parts I had removed from it were in 'as-new' condition! As Simon says, it is a fettler's dream - I am just sad that it wasn't this fettler that got to do it (but I've got plenty of other things to keep me busy...).