1957 Standard 8 - Enjoyment

Well work on the Standard ground to a halt in typical old car fashion.
A day before a weekend show the BGT decided to leak water on my trusty ME221 ECU.....:-( Rather expensive exercise.

This ended up being a rewire of the ECU harness away from the footwell and into safety behind the seat.















Does mean it's going to need a remap before RRG, but now it somewhat runs time to move off the lift.


Back to the car in hand..

Drivers sill is now done, as the owners club still don't have any in stock I decided to just make it!
Once that was all stitched up I decided to go and find most of the areas that need repair so we can get a list together.





This panel/repair was mostly tiger sealed into place GRRRRR
As you can also see if you look into that uncapped sill, the A-post support is gone! they just welded the sill on top and the inner sill isn't stitched all the way down. I'll end up making an incision here to repair the A-post support.










Cutting some of the grot out..









My attention then moved to the boot and why it was full of filler, it seems the back end has had a knock (well at least this boot is off a car that has) . Just under half an inch of filler, I'll attempt at putting a better repair in, it wont be perfect but the boot wont weigh 500KG in filler then!









That's where we left it for the evening, I'll get more done tonight.

The replacement doors are here, which in comparison are miles better. They must have been dry stored as the rot is only small localized to 2 doors.

Yeah we did notice, the doors are miles better than the ones on it and the price was just too low to say no.
Yep internal latches are different, but I do have a plan for those.

Another update!
Took a few days off work to finally button up all the welding, a few hours after work just wasn't cutting it.

Frontend alignment had to happen before I could weld the tabs for the new radiator. That top hose will need some work but the rad does need to be shifted to the left 50mm or so.


Wing needed the front under light area repairing.


Side repair going on.




Then there was the spare wheel well which has the tank sitting above it in a strange affair that obviously allows leaks.

Tank out as I'm not welding near it as there is a hole somewhere.






The early sliding window doors were miles better than the crusty OEM ones we have, they just needed a tiny repair at the bottom. Skim of filler and you'll not tell from a far!




The last part of the welding (Apart from that boot lid, I am holding out for a better replacement) was the rear spring hangers. So the hangers were OK, it was the new floor pans the previous owner fitted I didn't like. Basically from factory the hangers are part of the floor pressing, when the floor was cut out this wasn't reintroduced so a good 20mm of the hanger wasn't welded to the floor!!

Knocked up two support panels that would fit into the leading edge of the hanger and weld to it and the floor.
I'll end up re-doing them in the future with the engine swap and possibly doing the anti-tramp bars in the same vein as the BGT.




Lastly we took a trip down south to pick up a mint commercial bonnet, no rust of any kind so that saves a massive job.
Quick frontend refit to see how it all aligns.




Back apart again for the radiator fabrication.

This really is an excellent thread,
Your work so far is great,
Looking forward to seeing future updates,
Nigel

Doesn’t take much to annoy the club members. Good work there.

Photoshop from a long time ago. One of these would make a neat little roll top coupe, like the Figaro.

Updates have slowed a little due to waiting on parts.

Slung the back axle outside so the GF and my father could go to town cleaning it, should look nice in some chassis black. The shocks are still in working order (not much goes wrong with Armstrong units anyway), obviously come engine swap this unit won't really be of any use.


Next up was checking the brakes.
It's a common conversion using early Herald parts but you know sometimes the internet is wrong. Fitted up and look to be OK, the hubs will need turning down about 3mm as they just clip the calipers, nothing we cant handle eh?


The shocks were obviously original and shot, the springs had also welded themselves to the wishbone pans meaning I need to crack the welder out repair them.

At first I thought some off the shelf Herald units may also fit, but the spring wells in the crossmember is different. So instead a universal narrow Gaz coilover will do.

Bit of measuring then ordering.



Taa Daa......

Another..

And another...

Updates are a little slow due to delivery issues :-(


The GF got on with cleaning and painting the suspension components as we knew the shocks were on their way.
Sadly and don't shoot me, but for now it's going on cut springs! (basically the backlog is in months, so for now cut ones will do).



Slapped the discs on once more to make sure the hub clear the calipers


Fit the new shocks and sort the ride height.



Without the rear axle on this was a bit of guess work.
Measuring the rear axle in it's flipped setup it should look like this, which IMO is PERFECT! It's not too low that I cant get it on the lift, or that speed bumps become too much of an issue. Rear springs need to come off before the axle goes back on as the bushes are shot



Next up was the radiator (again).
Knocked up a simple bracket to pull the rad forward so I could build the bottom drop mounts.
Bang on, the hoses will need some work but again all this is temp until we switch the engine.

And driving backwards all the time then? 🤔As flipping the axle around also reverses the rotation of the diff😊