Well, we're making some progress!
Drove up to Infinity Exhausts on a very wet and windy Saturday morning, took the lads 1.5 hours to sort us out – seam split in the 'over the axle' pipe meant that needed replacing, too... £300 for a custom SS pipe and the back box – went for twin pipes as it didn't cost any more but looks cool, had to ask the fella for smaller pipes twice, though! The first ones he brought out to show me looked like gas mains! :-D
Next we drove back to Bodywork Limited in Bath, to get Sven's paint checked out. Andrew, the owner of this family business, which was founded in 1947, is a thoroughly no-nonsense fella. He looked at Sven's paint, said he'd seen a helluva lot worse, advised us to keep him waxed and "drive the hell out of it"! He then said, "Come here, I want to show you something," and took us inside to reveal that he's restoring a two-door MKIII Ford Cortina GLX that both Graham Hill and James Hunt drove at Brand's Hatch during a 'celebrity race' at the 1976 British Grand Prix! Andrew said that to sort out the paint blemishes would be an expensive job and, instead, said we should take Sven to Rainbow Paints in Weston, get them to digitally colour-match the body and wheels, then I can get two small tins/aerosols of paint and some primer, and touch up the rims and any body dings myself, and sort the rear reflector housings. He was a classic fella, although my missus thought he was a d**khead – there y'go!
I also spoke to Dai at Classic Swede, who said he'd emailed me, though I never received his message so there may be a problem with his email system. He asked me to take a look at the pressed steel rear suspension supports, as they're prone to rust from the inside out, which I did while we were at Infinity on Saturday. They looked and felt solid but I've sent Dai some pics to make sure. He's going to sort us out a complete poly/rubber bushings and fixings kit.
In other news, I've got a NOS right-hand dash pad coming from a fella named Anders near Stockholm, at less than half the price of a new one in the UK. Whereabouts are the screws fixing the bottom dashboard trim strip in place?
Just had a delivery from Brookhouse of a new headliner, replacement headlights & bezel seals, clutch slave cylinder repair kit, rubber trim for the rear reflector pods and a screw for the interior arm rest... I've also just ordered a roll of black butyl sealer to try and stop the leak from the new waste pipe I put into the bottom of the heater box – tried using Arbo smeared on my fingers but obviously it didn't work...
So the next steps are:
1) Get the suspension bushes replaced, the clutch slave rebuilt and the headights replaced at our garage.
2) Visit Rainbow and have some paint mixed so I can touch-up the rims and a coupla small dings on the body, and spray the rear reflector housings.
3) Try to re-seal the heater box waste pipe with the butyl tape.
4) Book in to Equinox Custom Interiors in Keynsham, to get the windlace they made us, the new headliner and the dash pad fitted.
Then, hopefully, Sven will be set for next spring! :-D