My first name ain't 'baby', it's Rustpit. Metropolitan if you're Nashty
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Weekend wrenching - removed the wheels to get the tires off, will sandblast and repaint:
Is that a delaminating retread on a 13" whitewall?
Yes, it is!The reasoning behind how this car had little baby jeep tires on two of its original wheels on back and had the spare and one of the front wheels as wheels stolen off another Met may never be fully explored.
After I had the wheels off, I was going to get back to tying the front and rear halves of the car together, but then decided, what the hell, might as well fix the front suspension first.
The Nash marketing:
How it actually works is that it's sort of the same suspension as a Midget, but wearing the coil spring on top of the Wacky British Kingpin like a hat.
Midget suspension (not mine, stolen from another forum) for reference:
...and with a full top A-arm instead of a link on a rotary damper.
All was not well with my upper A-arms - however, a gent was selling fresher used ones on eBay - complete with a spare kingpin - for $45 each:
A-arms work better when they're one piece. The one on the right is also shady, so good thing I bought both spares.
The lower ones are available new, because (as indicated) Midget.Getting it out required smaller spring compressors than I had, so I bought new ones at O'RLY and cut them up.
"Special delivery - a beumb. Were you expecting one?"
Now to ask @Bloody-the-resident-LandRover-apologist an important question:
Cloth Lucas wiring harness with rubber tape, Lucas voltage regulator, two-fuse fuse-block, Lucas bullet connectors, and inexplicable firewall rust?
No? How about now?
"I am a... Smiths".Funny story here, actually. It's a normal Smiths heater like in a Landy, but on the Met it was marketed as the Weather Eye heater system. The reason is that it has a capillary-powered variable heater valve (!). That's right, instead of a variable position heater valve like your typical Chevy, Ford, etc. of the period, it would actually vary the coolant going through the heater with a thermostat (!). If the car heats up, the heater slacks off - if the car gets colder, more flow.
Anyway, due to the fact that the broken A-arm wheel had only two lugs on, that may have been the event that benched the car. I am fairly certain that was exactly 24 years ago.
...call it a hunch.
anyway, I need to straighten the lower a-arm to get the suspension back together, need to pick up my rims, and finally tie the chassis rails together today.
Wish me luck. -
@RamblinRover said in My first name ain't 'baby', it's Rustpit. Metropolitan if you're Nashty:
Anyway, due to the fact that the broken A-arm wheel had only two lugs on, that may have been the event that benched the car. I am fairly certain that was exactly 24 years ago.
You after you finally get it going:
E90 M3
G20 M340i - DD
G01 X3 - Wife mobile -
@RamblinRover said in My first name ain't 'baby', it's Rustpit. Metropolitan if you're Nashty:
ow to ask @Bloody-the-resident-LandRover-apologist an important question:
Edit: Sorry, I see Lucas wiring and I have smokey flashbacks.
I keep buying Land Rovers because I don't have a problem and I can quit anytime I want.
Jim Spanfeller is a herb.
https://www.jimspanfellerisaherb.com/ -
@Bloody-the-resident-LandRover-apologist
True story, I considered several ways of tagging you.
One was going to be an "enhance. enhance" joke zooming in on the bullet connectors and ending with TRIGGERED -
Trash Metropolitan
Nash Metr-Apalling-tanThe person reading this is a doo-doo head
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@EssExTee It's a beautiful Nash. Lovely plumage.
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@e90m3 By remarkable coincidence, I've been listening to a long lore retrospective of Episode I while working on it.
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@RamblinRover This post makes me feel better about my Fred Flintstone edition Merc.
Can we get a picture of the whole thing as it sits partially disassembled? I'm pretty curious. Probably just about everything will need to come apart before this thing gets back on the road.
Color enthusiast, Citroën fanatic, and captain of a 1985 Mercedes 300D
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@WhoIsTheLeader My current focus is on stapling it back together enough that it can be easily offloaded from the trailer - because as it sits right now, it is basically trying to fall apart in halves. It's a little like a ship in drydock with blocks underneath in eight places.
...but once I've stabilized it, the next thing is probably to pull the engine and transmission, put the wheels back on, un-drydock it, finish the essential frame fixes, and only then start taking other elements off. -
@RamblinRover Well did you find Yoda?
(Speedy Speed Boy woa oh woa oh)
(Speed Boy Speed Boy woa oh woa oh) -
@e90m3 That was totally Wizard Annie!
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@HFV_Junkyardin There was no cap, fr.
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@RamblinRover
I never thought a project would top @Taylor-Martin 's Fargo. But then again....This is Oppo -
@ClassicDatsunDebate Would I sound insane if I said I looked at this, saw that it was significantly less bad than my Rover was when I got it, and said "pfft"?
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@RamblinRover Nash MetRustpolitan
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@RamblinRover IIRC That should be from the era when Lucas Electrics were actually good. It wasn't until later in the 60s and 70s that they became low-quality crap as the British car industry demanded cheaper parts. That said, cloth wiring should be replaced regardless of how well it was made back in the day, but maybe the switches and gauges and whatnot can be saved and refurbished since they could even be higher quality than modern replacements.
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@awesomeaustinv The wiring is, IIRC, nylon cloth with vinyl inside, so it's not pure cloth as such. It's not great wire, but it's not absolutely terrible - what it's rough with is when corrosion sets in at the connectors and follows the strands back into the insulation...
The bullet connectors tend not to hold up great, because they're aluminum crimped onto copper wire and inserted into zinc-plated brass.
"GADZOOKS" shouts Luigi Galvani. Probably.Whole wiring harnesses are available, so I will likely buy one. Switches and gauges, we'll see.
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@awesomeaustinv yeah, there was nothing inherently bad about Lucas Industries as a supplier, Volvo and Saab both used lots of Lucas components back in the day, and neither one had a reputation for unusually poor reliability. It was BL, and the myriad companies that merged into BL (mostly BMH/BMC) and their relentless cost cutting pressure that ended up wrecking Lucas' image
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@RamblinRover this is top quality oppo.
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@RamblinRover Missed that you bought a Metropolitan... neat!
A large cohort from the Metropolitan Owners' Club of North American usually shows up to Das Awkscht Fescht in Macungie, PA.
Its always neat to see the swarm.
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@ClassicDatsunDebate place your bets, whos running first, Fargo or @RamblinRover's Nash...
My money is on the Nash...
