While I had the front RH guard off and the front brakes dissembled, the front suspension received a good inspection. Initially, I was quite concerned as to what real damage the prang to the guard had done to the rest of the car including the RH suspension. It appeared that nothing was out of place, bent or damaged, so this again, was very fortunate. All the bushes looked in good condition, however both rubber boots on the steering rack were split & will need replacing. I intended to leave things as is and just gave it all a good cleaning & then sprayed it all in black paint. This car seemed in much better condition that my white XL which needed a fair amount of attention to the front suspension. It may be that when I get it on the road, things may be different.
The next major task of the restoration involved the engine & engine bay. As I have previously stated, it was not my intention to strip the car but to renovate and to restore the car to good working order. The engine itself seemed pretty reasonable with good compression in the cylinders and not blowing any smoke so I was not going to remove the engine, just the cylinder head and clean up the valves & associated bits. At the same time, I was going to respray & clean up the engine bay as best I could.
So on 9 January 2009, I set about removing the cylinder head. My main concern, as with many restoration projects, was that I did not break any bolts or strip any threads in the process. What was surprising was how easy everything came off & without too much trouble, even the rather rusted looking exhaust manifold bolts. I also removed the fan & alternator so that they also could be cleaned & painted. All the electrical wiring was also unscrewed so that the guards could be painted and any superfluous wires could be removed. There seemed to be wires going everywhere. The only thing left to do was remove the oil filter & drain the engine oil & I didn’t anticipate that this would take long. Famous last words!!! The filter undid without too much drama but the sump plug was on very tightly. With a fair bit of muscle it finally turned but just turned round & round and was not really undoing. As is usually the case, everything else had gone really well but a stripped sump plug was not what I needed. I tried for ages to get some movement and I managed to get a small screwdriver between the sump & the plug but it was not looking good. It was time to quit as I could see the axe close by and some really dangerous thoughts were entering my head!!!
After reading a lot of info on the internet that night I became even more depressed as most of the advice revolved around removing the sump & I really didn’t want to take the engine out. During the night I woke up with a brilliant idea! I had managed to loosen it enough to get a thin piece of wire around the plug & that would give me some leverage as I also tried to unscrew it. This wasn’t very successful but I may have loosened it a little more. I spent most of the morning trying to get this f****** plug out. When I managed to get a reasonable sized screwdriver between the plug & the sump, it started to unscrew & little by little it came out. What a relief this was & it was one of the more difficult & frustrating jobs to date.
LESSON 10A: There is a lot of good info on the internet. It is surprising how many other people have had the same problem & have shared their solutions.
LESSON 10B: Stripped sump plugs are not much fun so be careful each time you are replacing them.
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