1974 Dolomite Sprint

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

AA Drive magazine, Autumn 1973. The car is FRW802L.

"a vicar in drag"

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

Fuck me sideways!!

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

Yes.

[SiC]

I know that howmanyleft.co.uk needs to be taken with a pinch of salt, but it does at least give you some sort of minimum quantity of a particular vehicles left.

The Sprint does pretty well compared to other Dolomite models. Especially as less than 23k of the things were made.

[SiC]

Job tonight is fixing the push rod hole. Pulled the welder out and setup


Pretty colours


Looks messy but I went to town with adding material to make sure there was no empty pocket in the middle when I clean this all up


Ten minutes with the flap disc on the outside and grinding disc on the inside


Drill holes. A tad larger than I'd like but then my Lidl pillar drill was cheap and it's chuck wobbles around a bit.


Quick spray of Poundland paint. Awful stuff but hopefully good enough for this



While that was drying, I then made the mistake at poking the front of the drivers sill.


All this was done with fingers poking and pulling.



Hard to tell from these pictures but unfortunately I think whoever did these sills last, simply welded them over the top of the old. Certainly at this front section.

Blue bit is the outer. Just below that is another outer. Thin piece in the middle is the strengthener.


This got me a bit worried so I went poking further down. Thankfully the rest seems solid still at the moment.

I shone the torch through the new hole in the front and had a peak through this hole on the inner sill.


Looking up I think you can see the outer sill welded at the top.


Looking down at the bottom of the sill, it appears the inner membrane is still attached to the inner and outer sills.


So hopefully it's just that front bit that I need to fix and not do a whole sill replacement. Had enough of doing that on the 1100 sills! It's a small and simple enough repair that I'm hoping I can get away with fabricating something out of some sheet steel. I'm just hoping that there is enough clean and decent metal behind there to weld onto.

I need to inspect further down at some point. I'll get my cheapy snake cam down inside the sill and hopefully see better what state it is in. If it has had a replacement sill welded over the top, I'd like to chop the whole length of the sill off and redo it properly. However with a hopeful house move soon, that won't be happening this side of Christmas. It'll have to make do with cutting a bit out, a patch welded on and a bit of paint to cover up.

[SiC]

Another evening of small but steady progress.

Fitted the pushrod back in and connected it all up. Bleeding the system was pretty uneventful. I used a zip tie to hold the cylinder closed and reduce the amount of air needed to push out the bleed nipple.


Works pretty well and has full travel now. Clutch pedal squeaks a bit though!
[YouTube][/YouTube]

Decided to clean up the gear selector ball as full of filthy old grease.


Works a lot smoother now and gives a positive action. On the Sprint, is the gear stick supposed to self centre? Mine certainly doesn't.


While I was there, I gave the top of the gear knob a clean up with a toothbrush and methylated spirits.


A small thing but it's nice to grab something that doesn't look all filthy and dull.


I'm a bit concerned about how close the down pipe for the exhaust is to the body. Basically the width of a spanner clearance. I'm wondering if the plate at the bottom of the gearbox mount was left out to cause the box to drop a bit. Thus giving a bit extra clearance for the down pipe. However this could mean that the gearbox is sitting on the crossmember and won't be doing any favours with noise.


As I removed the remains of the heatshield, I've given that area a good wrap around with some exhaust wrap. Hopefully will stop the exhaust heating up the cabin and not give a risk of the carpet the other side getting burnt.


Started to put the transmission tunnel back on but it's being a pain to try lining up the bolt holes. Something I'll finish another day once I have daylight.

[captain_70s]

On the Sprint, is the gear stick supposed to self centre? Mine certainly doesn't.

It doesn't on either of my Dollys.

[Warren t claim]

On the Sprint, is the gear stick supposed to self centre? Mine certainly doesn't.

It doesn't on either of my Dollys.

All of mine crunched when trying to change quickly from o/d 3rd to o/d 4th as well. Maybe that was something to do with age or mileage because it wasn't mentioned in the road test posted above.

Did anyone else spot this Cortina in the Gerry Marshall video?

fcpu1.PNG (230.4 KiB) Viewed 4200 times

[John F]

Isn't that a P100?

[mercrocker]

Yes and no! It is a South African Cortina Pick up but these Mk3 based ones weren't called P100 - just Cortina Pickup (or Bakkie in the vernacular...)