Steve – you have not offended me at all! Rather I think you have added a very worthwhile observation to this thread. Your comments about cars, some cars, being just a bit too delicate and high maintenance for the British (Might this or could this read the “International”?) buying public is I suspect, a very valid observation.
Sadly we are all share a very “disposable” attitude, where care and attention – and maintenance of what ever we do or own, including sadly our relationships with others, is often neglected and then abandoned. And we pay the price accordingly. So I encourage this sort of comment for in setting out to describe the restoration of this car I was hoping to be able to help others who might be contemplating doing the same thing or who are struggling to put right some part or process with their own cars which has been neglected over the years. It is the very essence of this forum.
I own a Dolomite Sprint - I restored one because I was always impressed by the concept of the car although in carrying out the restoration I can understand now why the British car industry – as it was, British names, British designs, British built has not survived. And that is a huge pity, for Britain was at the forefront of the international car industry for many years. That position has been sacrificed and I doubt will ever be regained. The Sunbeam Lotus – as seen above in this thread – also restored by me, represents to me a sort of dying gasp of the British car industry. Hastily conceived, poorly put together using designs and construction techniques that were long outdated by the time that car was sold to the British public.
But back to this thread. What have I learnt carrying out this restoration? Well those who designed and built the Dolomite Sprint often did so without really understanding that the car would have to be maintained and maintained properly, if it was to survive and give the sort of service we expect of it. However what the designers neglected to do is plan properly how the car would be maintained for as I have discovered it would be well nigh impossible to follow some of the steps nominated in the official workshop manual.
An example might be the removal of the Dolomite Sprint cylinder head while the engine is in the car. Others have written elsewhere about the difficulty of removing the exhaust downpipe where it is attached to the exhaust manifold.
- 20121122-3653Ptw Sprint engine assembly copy.jpg (129.76 KiB) Viewed 4788 times
I have retained the three studs which are screwed into the manifold itself and on which are three brass nuts which hold the downpipe to the manifold.
In restoring this car over a very long period of time it was inevitable that some parts were mislaid and one of those was the exhaust heat shield which attaches to the bulkhead. (I keep hoping the original will turn up somewhere)! So I fabricated one myself out of a suitable aluminium section which forms a backing onto which is fitted a piece of thin polished stainless steel strip.
- 20121112-3638Ptw Sprint engine bay.jpg (107.69 KiB) Viewed 4788 times
It is slightly larger than the original for I can always make it smaller if it needs to be. But rather than pop riveting it to the bulkhead I chose to bolt it into place. I did this so that I could adjust its spacing off the bulkhead if that became necessary. It meant though that I had to cut nice little round holes in the sound padding which sits behind the passenger footwell carpet to reach the nuts.
Its all non original I know, but then significant parts of this car are “non original” anyway (the back end of the car at least) so originality was not something that concerned me greatly.
However the first time I tried to remove the cylinder head in the car I discovered that (as everybody else has done before me) the unbolting and moving the exhaust downpipe back off those three studs is all but impossible. But then I found that by unbolting the head shield off the bulkhead and removing that, that there was ample clearance to move the exhaust downpipe back clear of the manifold.
Had those designing and building these cars realised this then perhaps they too would have bolted rather than riveted that heat shield in place and made reference to it in some revision to the workshop manual.
That does not appear to have happened and rather it seems the attitude was that “its not really our problem – let somebody else worry about it”.
All this links in, I think, with your comments and observations Steve, and which I think is another of those little factors which when all collated together was the reason for the British car industry’s demise.
Let me conclude though and add to your observations for there are some cars (not British!!) which I have owned where it was impossible for instance to change some of the spark plugs without first removing the inlet manifold (a Japanese Nissan). Access to the oil filters is another of my pet gripes, (I am thinking of VW Polo’s and BX Citroens) – surely an item which is expected to be changed regularly, where it requires hands of a five year old and where there is very little space to remove the filter without involving the antics of a contortionist.
So perhaps it is not necessarily a mark of poor British car design but rather a sad reflection on our disposable society.
Meantime my Sprint continues to run and the fuel economy has improved marginally.
Now the fine tweaking can commence to make it run even better.
Robert
. The rust in the fuel tank certainly sounds plausible. We have a few spare tanks but I'm guessing that postage out to NZ wouldn't make it viable? 
and still three weeks to go until the shortest day.