It's tricky

Last weekend, we drained the brake fluid, took out the brake line, and removed the pedal. In addition, we removed the starter solenoid, voltage current regulator and what I believe is the horn relay, so the body is looking quite bare now. I spent a decent amount of time labeling all the wires with masking tape, now the trick is pulling the wires out of the body without tearing off the tape labels.

A few months ago, we abandoned efforts of taking off the windshield finding that simply unscrewing the nut at the bottom of the base was not enough. Chris looked up how to remove the windshield online (thank goodness for the internet) and figured out that we need to also remove the clamps that held the base stakes to the body of the car. We were able to remove the driver side clamp completely, but the passenger side clamp would not budge. The windshield does lift off of the body now, enough to the point where we noticed some cancerous rust on the driver side (holes through the body right underneath the windshield). Add this to the rust list, and the rust list has gotten pretty sizeable. The $350 I'm spending on welding classes at a local high school is looking more and more worth it.

On a side note, I learned that running shoes are not the best welding shoes. On Monday, we started practicing Arc welding. Arc welding sprays sparks everywhere and everywhere also included the tops of my running shoes. Every now and then a spark would melt completely through my shoe and give me a pinpoint burn on the top of my foot. This left a few freckles on my running shoe and more noticeably on my sock. I should probably invest in a pair of steel toe boots, that may be a good idea.

If this weekend stays warm, I'm hoping to take off the windshield fully and be ready to FINALLY take the body off. I spent $20 at Home Depot this past weekend buying 2x4's so I can build a rolling body rig for when the body comes off. Instructions on how to build a body rig yourself can be found on Andre's 1968 Triumph GT6 MK1's site. This definitely solves the issue of where to put the body in a one car garage.

Slow go

Today it was 60 degrees in New England! So I got a chance to work on the car some more. Before we did that, Chris got free shelves from a co-worker, which we set up in the garage. We finally organized the Triumph parts that have accumulated in numerous boxes and laid across the garage floor.

As for the car, Chris drained the clutch fluid and removed the clutch pedal from the car. He also took off the master cylinder, but left the slave clutch cylinder on the transmission, since it wouldn't be in our way when we tried to remove the body. Meanwhile, I removed the windshield wiper motor and WD-40-ed the heck out of the convertible top hinges and finally got the thing to collapse and open properly.

What's left to remove before the body can come off:
- brake line, fluid, pedal, etc.
- gas pedal
- some sort of air block under the dash
- steering wheel, shaft, mount
- wiring mounts attached to the body

...slowly getting there.

How to remove the headlights off a 1968 triumph

I could not find how to remove the headlight rims from the Triumph - neither in the Haynes Trumph Spitfire auto repair manual nor online - so I've decided to post my lesson learned here.

The headlight rims are snapped into place with a ledge behind it at 12:00. Using a flat head screw driver, carefully pry off the headlight rim from the thin, rubber ring, starting at the bottom-most part of rim. Be careful not to scratch the chrome headlight. The bottom part of the headlight should pop off and you should be able to lift the headlight over the ledge at 12:00 and the headlight should come off.

Sounds easy when you know how to do it, but i had tried screwing off the lid, prying but stopped because I thought I would scratch the rim, and checking the underside of the hood to see if I there were screws holding the limbs on.

After removing the headlight, be careful not to remove the screws that adjust direction of the light. These should be left on and the headlights can be removed without taking out these screws off. Luckily, Chris read the Haynes page with this helpful hint.