Caulk, cabinet plywood, and screws.

Answer: Caulk, cabinet plywood, and screws...

Question: ...what are things this Triumph's battery box has in common with the bathroom aisle at Home depot...

While taking off the steering wheel, I noticed foam hanging out underneath where the battery box would sit under the hood. After looking closer at it, it looks that the previous owner had cut out a rectangular piece of cabinet plywood and used caulk and screws to hold it in place over the badly rusted battery box. The foam was used to fill the gap between the plywood and original battery box bottom.

After using utility knife to cut out as much caulk as possible (there was a ton of caulk), I ended up using a crowbar to pry the plywood off. The original battery box is in super bad shape. It is rusted on 40% of its edges and some of the metal easily broke off. Good thing I just signed up for an introductory course to welding at a local vocational high school, looks like I'll definitely be putting that to use.

MA winters are frigid.....

Massachusetts winters are absolutely frigid. For health and sanity purposes, I set my outside temperature threshold to 45 degrees. 45 degrees and above is an appropriate temperature to work on the car. Anything below, I'm staying indoors, which is why I have not updated this blog since November.

Today was the first day in months that I worked on the car. A high of 48 degrees satisfied my requirement in being outside. We started working on where we had left off - removing the steering wheel.

Chris had borrowed a different type of steering wheel puller from a friend that appeared it would do the trick. The puller clamped is suppose to clamp right behind the steering wheel with ends shaped like metal hooks. However, the metal hooks were too wide to squeeze underneath the Triumphs steering wheel. There was not a large enough gap to fit the clamps.

So, we decide to fashion clamp extenders out of scrap metal Chris had around the house. The idea was to jam these metal pieces behind the steering wheel and clamp the steering wheel puller to the metal pieces. We even grinded the metal pieces so that they would have better contact with the steering wheel puller. Though every time we tried to tighten the puller and pull the steering wheel out, the metal pieces would eventually fly off from the amount of pressure applied.

Taking off the steering wheel with the shaft is looking to be more and more tempting...