Tuesday 22 May 2018

Project.L 2018: Restoration kick off

Due to several new jobs and two relocations as well as personal reasons, Project L has been on hold for a while and even worse, had to endure winter duty again from 2013 to 2016.
Unfortunately this neglect is starting to show. I got the car off the street in autumn 2017 when i got a new (winter) daily.
The Lantis is back on the street now since I used it for a trip celebrating the anniversary with my wife (she kinda insisted not to use the "boring car").
Although the radiator had cracked over the winter and was leaking a bit of coolant we still had a nice weekend trip.
After that I decided to start bringing the car back to the nice state i have kept it in for so many years.
When i pulled the radiator I also took the opportunity to remove the Webasto heater unit the car had fitted back in '95 since i never want to use it during winter again.


Yep, that's broken:

There it hides...also notice the sad state of affairs with built up dirt and rust. This will be addressed....


Heater unit with most of the wiring harness. Quite a bit of weight to be removed from in front of the front axle, that can't be a bad thing :)


There's so much space now in the engine bay :)

Back in 2016 I had purchased a set of  Samco Sport hoses that i wanted to fit now...only to discover that the fitment is so bad that this just won't happen (the lower hose collides with the AC compressor) - contacted the supplier but i don't know how they will react after such a long time.

Since it will take forever to get a new set of Samcos, I also took the opportunity to order a new water pipe from water pump to heater since the one installed at the BP (note: not the original engine - there it was fine) is pretty rotten. In the mean time, i started cleaning out the dirt.

Progress will be slow, but hopefully steady

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