Project 240K

After a good couple of weekends of rain, we finally managed to get the 240K mounted onto the rotisserie, and after a small wheel failure (one of the wheels on the stand bent and snapped off as we tried to get it into the garage) we were finally in the position to try and get it onto it’s side.

The instructions for the rotisserie asked us to count on the large 3 foot threaded bolt at the top of the rotisserie to adjust the car’s centre of gravity up and down the stand, somehow I just couldn’t trust this with a 500kg shell! so instead we dug out the large trolley jack and a couple of blocks of wood to make the adjustments.

After a couple of trials (guesses) at where the car’s COG would be, we finally found a setting that allowed the car to rotate 90 degrees without too much effort. The rotisserie has 2 large bolts on each end which clamp down on the main rotating cylinder (without any holes to “lock into”), again, we didn’t trust this so used a long piece of wood (and a couple of metal bars) to wedge the car and arm in place.

It was a weird sight, seeing the car set up this way, but there was no doubt, it gives awesome access to the underside! the Plan was to strip the underside back to bare metal and epoxy prime, but the bottom of the car (bar some grease around the transmission) is as immaculate as the top side is. Instead, we will give the underside a good scrub to get rid of any grime, then give it a good etch and then epoxy prime it.

Mark also started scraping off some of the previous bog work off the rear. The car appears to have been repaired well for rust previously (there is a lot of good metal under it), though it doesn’t appear to have had any rust converter put on it. The majority is good, though bubbles of rust have started again in some of the usual areas… but no where near as much as i have seen in other cars. While we were removing the last of the remaining rubber bungs, we also cut out the battery tray. The underside of which, showed no rust at all, another good sign of this car’s past!

It was good to actually have some validation for my decision to sell the old 240K!