Operation Orange - 1980 Sprint restoration

[MalcGE]

Excellent, I do remember that photo when it appeared on the forum a few years ago, iIRC a certain something has been photoshopped out of the image .......LOL

[SprintMWU773V]

Been rather busy of late but spent a bit of time offering up my new re-manufactured bulkhead pad to check the fit. I'll need to trim slightly to allow for the exhaust heat shield but overall fit looks good. Unfortunately it's rather chilly here, sub 5 degrees which is well out of the glue window so it'll have to wait. Probably won't be until Christmas though as next week sees the start of the annual pre Christmas tour to the various family members all over the place.



I shall have to find some smaller jobs to work on over the next few weeks.

[sprint1976]

looks really good

[shep]

Really enjoying this thread keep up the good work!!

Shep

[SprintMWU773V]

With so much cold weather I have been unable to fit my bulkhead pad so progress has been limited. Been working on a few bits though such as building up the doors which has been good fun.

Anyway i thought I'd look at some little jobs under the bonnet. I had bought a repro emissions sticker recently but then I looked at my original one and as you can see it is a little different so I'll have to make a copy. Can you spot the difference?



I also fitted the VIN plate. During later production the design was changed to a new larger style plate which to be honest just doesn't fit very well but I fitted it as it was on the original shell. It's the original VIN plate which cleaned up well. It does have a bit of a scratch on but I thought it better to keep it original.



You'll note that I have no body number tag. The one that came with the shell got lost during the dipping process so i'll be reusing my original one. I plan to attach this as it was on the car i.e. not painted up and looking all nice. I like the idea of it being original for some reason.

Finally I have dropped off my bumpers for re-chroming. I'm re-using my rear corners but the centre section was wrong so I'm using a correct one which is NOS which costs me just £20 but the 70's chrome finish wasn't great so getting it redone. My front bumper was also wrong as i has no holes for the under riders. I'm using a good used one which is straight but the chrome is a little tired.

[richard4040]

looking amazing! cracking colour aswel!:D

[straylight]

good work all round. Excellent job on the bulkhead pad, nice and methodical job and very enjoyable, I agree.

Looks fantastic and I'm jealous of your zinc treated fixings, we should start an electrolysis "how to" and see if we can't do some of these ourselves. I think the problem would be in chemically pre-treating the metal. But Jeez they look good.

stu

[SprintMWU773V]

I'm very fortunate to have a platers 5 mins down the road. They very cheap too, just taken some bumper spacers and a few other parts and got them back on Friday for just £5 so bargain really. I'd encourage everyone to support their local specialist places as most of them them are up for some small cash jobs.

I am planning a piece on how plating is done so I will post it up when I get a chance.

[PaulB]

Hi Mark,

Progress looking good. I might have a late bonnet sticker tucked away. I had a few made ages ago when I needed one for mine. They were made by a guy I met at a show at Woodvale who made decals for model aircraft. I made a bitmap file and he used it to print the stickers.

I'll have a rummage for you and see what I can find.

Keep up the good work...

Cheers Paul.

[PollyB]

A little present from other half...


PM address to PaulB and he will send it to you. One of the batch has been on our Sprint for over 15 years and still looks good.

And for this you have to do a slightly worse job on uour vermillion Sprint - It's looking way too good!!!

[lazeruspete]

Hi Mark,

Progress looking good. I might have a late bonnet sticker tucked away. I had a few made ages ago when I needed one for mine. They were made by a guy I met at a show at Woodvale who made decals for model aircraft. I made a bitmap file and he used it to print the stickers.

I'll have a rummage for you and see what I can find.

Keep up the good work...

Cheers Paul.

Dad comes up trumps again!

[lazeruspete]

A little present from other half...


PM address to PaulB and he will send it to you. One of the batch has been on our Sprint for over 15 years and still looks good.

And for this you have to do a slightly worse job on uour vermillion Sprint - It's looking way too good!!!

personally im looking forward to seeing the difference between a brand new restoration and one completed over 15 years ago(but having been garaged all its life)

[SprintMWU773V]

I've still been quite busy with some other business projects recently but I have found time to look at a few little jobs.

After some debate I decided to give powder coating a go so I dropped off a load of stuff down to our local powder coating specialists to see how they got on. It was a mixed box of bits including some bumper brackets, suspension components and some headlamp rings.







I was pleased with the results a nice even, tough coating on the parts. All the parts were first blasted and primed followed by the powder coat, there's lots of colours to choose from but I went for good old black. Seems quite good value too with the box of parts costing £40 cash. I did toy with the idea of painting things instead but it's an expensive option.

The inner headlamp rings you see below are NOS but they'd suffered a little bit with some scuffs over the years. I decided that they'd look nicer all new and shiny so had them powder coated too. I had to strip them down to just the rings beforehand though which is quite easy.



The retaining rings were also looking a bit tired so I had them re-plated as I had a load of other stuff to get done, cost about £1 for all 4 inner and outer. The plating is called thick film trivalent coating, it's a more modern version of zinc passivation. It looks nice and shiny and my local place turns the jobs round very quickly.



So with the headlamp parts plated and powdered it's just a case of putting them back together and job done. These headlamps are now on the car c/w their new gaskets.



Hopefully the weather will warm up soon and I'll have finished work on my property projects and I can get back to the Dolomite!

[SprintMWU773V]

About 6 weeks ago I dropped off some chrome to be re-plated at Derby Plating. I picked it up late last week and finally got to unwrap it.



The front bumper was used from my stock and will replace my 'original' one as that one has the under rider holes missing. The rear corners come from my car and look very nice.



The centre section was NOS but I had it rechromed as it just wouldn't have looked good enough next to the corners. So a £20 part turned out to cost quite a lot!

Each piece was polished, stripped then nickel plated, copper plated and the finally chrome plated. The depth of finish is quite something, frankly a little OTT for a Dolomite but why not. I'll start fitting these bumpers when I get a chance as it will get them out of the way.

[soe8m]

That looks very good. On my yellow sprint i had the same. The depth is because of the nickle and copper. A good shop does two layers and polish the nickle and copper also and that is the depth seeing in your bumpers.

I'm not a big fan of the headlamp rims. Is it passivating or a chrome coating? Coating would be chrome spray and that is not durable. (whatever the text on the can say's)

Jeroen