Although I’ve been working on all sorts of projects, the restoration of the dark blue SII 330GT 2+2 continued in the background. A big batch of white cadmium plating came back from the platers. I inventoried the parts and made sure I got all my parts back!

What a difference from a few months ago!

The brake caliper bodies still needed some more work before I could start assembling the brakes. Gone are the days that I could just send these calipers bodies out for rebuilding, and they would come back plated, sleeved, and assembled with new brake seals ready to be installed on the caliper frames. The quality, and consistency of the rebuilds just weren’t good enough for me and I found myself redoing some of the work, so now I send these parts out to each shop that does the work I like and do the rest myself. The first step was to clean and blast the parts myself, then I sent them out for cad plating. When they came back they looked like this, but the bores are still needed work.

Some of the calipers showed some bad corrosion, but this would all be machined out when I sent the pistons out to another shop for stainless steel sleeves.

Some shops use brass sleeves, but I like the durability of stainless, and should only require new seals in the future if there are any problems. Brass is a softer material, and although easy to machine, can corrode and pit and even deform.

This shop inserted the stainless sleeves, and put a nice chamfer so the new seal would install nicely.

Even the badly corroded piston has a nice smooth bore ready for seals. I will be installing the seals myself as the next step to rebuilding the brakes.

Assembly of the doors continued. I glued in the window guide felts before moving onto the window glass installation. I didn’t take a lot of pictures of this process, but trust me when I say it was a pain in the butt! Getting the windows installed, putting in the cable winding mechanisms, getting the routing right, making sure the electric window motor worked, and finally making sure everything worked together was a real struggle. I was so deep in grease, electrical wiring, and window winders that I didn’t get a chance to photograph it!

After I got the windows installed, I was met with another challenge, a seized vent window knob! When I disassembled the winder mechanism I found the set screw was stuck and chewed up, so I managed to remove the whole assembly without removing the knob, but now that it had to go back together correctly, the knob had to come off. The set screw had stripped, so I had to carefully drill out the little screw, but even after removing all the remnants of the screw, the knob was still seized securely to the shaft. After a few days of soaking in penetrating oil and some tapping, the knob eventually came off!

I started making up a batch of chrome plating I needed to get redone for the car. I already sent larger things out like the bumpers, but there were still a bunch of little parts that needed disassembly like this door handle.

There 330GT door handles are notorious for bending when they are over tightened, so before I took them apart, I needed to straighten them out.

I gingerly bent the ends back into shape without cracking the pot metal. There’s a slight wave to the part, but I don’t think it’ll be noticeable once back on the car.

The door handle needed to be disassembled of all the nuts, bolts, springs, and pivot rods before sending the parts out for plating. These pictures will also help me reassemble the door handle when everything goes back together.

The chrome on the dome light was also wearing thin on this car, and I tried polishing it to see if I could save it, but decided it would have to be re-chromed. With all the interior chrome being refreshed, it wouldn’t match the rest of the car, so apart it had to come.

The plastic lens was held in place with these clips, so I had to carefully heat the plastic enough so it would flex past the clips for removal.

The next challenge was to disassemble the locks to have them re-chromed. There’s a small pin that holds the lock cylinder in place so the internal mechanisms would release. One door lock was working with a key, but the other one was very sticky, so I decided to send the door locks along with the the trunk lock to my locksmith to disassemble them and to check their operation instead of having me fumble through them!