A relaxing week a little east of Ierapetra on Crete turned into a wet weather catastrophe. As you can see in the picture below I made sure to stay hydrated and enjoyed the sea view. After some nice hiking trips in the beginning of the week, the rain started. I have never seen that much of it before. No shower head delivers that much water in a minute.
The road to Ierapetra was essentially washed away and without electricity and running water we headed home a bit earlier. The detour via a mountain road wasn’t easy as many rocks and landslides often left just enough space for a small car to pass. It hit the island hard and I hope they will recover from this desaster quickly.
Back at home it is now time to tackle the Mini rebuild. KS Motortechnik has not completely finished the block yet. The cylinders are bored out, but the cam follower bores still need to be honed. We will also be decking the block and take off a little. The compression ratio should be somewhere between 9.8:1 and 10.2:1 – not as high as I went on the MGB but it should fit well with the MED HT camshaft.
Most of the parts are back from power coating. And they turned out great – much better as my rattle can work a few years ago. My goal for tonight was to rebuild the swivel hubs. Unfortunately, I did not prepare the hubs well enough. Removing the old races and ball joints revealed lots of sand from blasting that needs to be washed out. For cleaning I took the steering arms off – but did not bolt them on completely before coating. With the powder-coating material they would now not fit back onto the rings that are between them. I also forgot to order new bolts as I originally intended.
I used the Dremel to remove the power-coating where needed. While doing this the top of the tool flew off. I try to keep my garage halfway clean – it is certainly not a kitchen floor. Finding the little springs on the floor and putting the tool head back together took quite some time. The shock mounts also needed some attention. On those I forgot to tape off the threads – which meant I had to use a threat cutter and clean them. All of this took the entire evening.
But now I have all parts ready now for assembly. I am especially excited about the new Japanese maintenance-free enclosed ball-joints. The no-name bearings will be replaced with a good Timken set. Along with those hardened spacers from Swifttune will be installed.
Tomorrow the front subframe will be painted. And fingers crossed – if all works out the body work on Mildred should also start again….
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