Exciting day - rebuild of 78 coupe

johng

CCCUK Member
Finally, my car has gone to be sprayed :) After 3 years of working on it, I can start to think about actually getting to drive it. Paint is going to take at least a month and then I've got to put everything back into the passenger compartment, but at least all the bits are cleaned, repaired, painted, recovered, etc and ready to go in. However, I've discovered a minor problem with my gearbox (a TH350), Once it has warmed up reverse gear is slipping :(. First gear works fine and had plenty of torque to drive it up onto the trailer, can't really try 2nd or 3rd yet. Hopefully I'll be able to drive it forwards for a while before having to take it off the road again and rebuild the box! Still I always wanted a project and the car hasn't disappointed in that regard.
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trailer-jpg.7627
 

johng

CCCUK Member
Yes it was my first check as well. Thinking back, I don't think the previous owner used reverse gear when he took me for a test drive and when I drove it home I didn't go into reverse either. After that I didn't drive the car for 6 months as it clearly wasn't road worthy. When I did have to move it out of the garage for a bit the gearbox was slipping, but at that time the fluid was very low as it had multiple oil leaks. After I'd fixed all the leaks and got the car back into a semi driveable condition I re-filled the gearbox and tried out 1st and reverse in the garage, which seemed fine. A couple of weeks ago I went for a short drive along the private lane that leads to my house. The car reversed out of garage along my gravel drive, but I couldn't reverse it back in 10 minutes later. No problem driving in in 1st gear though. Yesterday it reversed out okay again, but when I tried to turn around in the farmyard next to my house it wouldn't reverse up a very very slight incline. An hour later when the trailer arrived , the car did then reverse up this same incline! My guess is that there is a leak in the reverse clutch seal and as the oil warms up it gets thinner, leaks past the seal more and doesn't provide enough pressure to clamp the clutch. I was told the car had sat for 15 years before I bought it, so it may well be that the seal dried out then and reverse gear has never worked since I bought it. Any other suggestions?
 

johng

CCCUK Member
Yes, you are supposed to have it up to full operating temp. I've been leaving it ticking over for 15 or 20 mins. Might be it's not fully hot, I'll be able to take it for a proper drive when it's all rebuilt and re-check the level then.
 

hurtzcsa

CCCUK Member
I thought about doing mine burnt orange with a white Baldwin Motion stripe over the rear, roof and hood with the panel panted white as well
 

johng

CCCUK Member
Top scraping ๐Ÿ‘
It might be, but I can't claim the credit for it. The preparation and painting is one of the few jobs I've outsourced. I haven't got the skill to do the painting properly and I wouldn't want to learn on my own car. Now if someone else wants their car sprayed, I'm happy to give it a go. :)
 

johng

CCCUK Member
My painter has made good progress this week. The tops of my doors have never been quite the same shape as the wing, as you can see in the first photo, but that has been fixed nicely now. He also felt that line along the top of the wings was too rounded (probably because it is a replacement fibreglass front clip), so he sharpened that up. He's done most of the car in polyester primer and just has a few more bits to iron out before moving on the a 2K primer and then some colour :):):)

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Before
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After
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Sharp enough to cut your finger on!!
 
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