Officially off the road now. I'd planned to take it along to a local New Years Day meet yesterday, but the weather was atrocious so I reluctantly gave it a miss. So time to start pulling bits off & reworking them.
It was my day off today, so this morning Mr Loon & I took a drive up to Colnbrook, near Heathrow airport, Londonshire. We went to Profusion exhaust centre, where I bought four 2" bore, 18" long stainless steel Cherry Bomb silencers. 55 quid each. Also bought a pair of rolled end tail pipes, 18 quid each. Ouch, that's all my Christmas spending money gone. Lovely & shiney though.
The plan is to remake the mild steel system on the Pop in stainless, (it's already got stainless headers), & replace the 1 1/2" bore middle section to make it 2" all the way through.
We had to make up these cross-over tail pipes to get the exhaust note down below the 101db limit for the SVA registration test. With just the 2 silencers under the cab floor we were reading 106db on the meter. After we fitted these, it came down to 98.5db. Personally I like their muted, vintage sounding
wump, wump, wump note, though, predictably, the gentlemen of the workshop think it sounds rortier & more hotroddy without them.
I also started taking off parts that I want to get plated. A few dashboard bits will be chromed & a handful of exterior fittings, like the tailgate hinges & locking handle, bonnet badge etc, will be nickel plated. I've got a big list of bits to get powder-coated in gloss black too. The last lot of plating I had done, (the exhausts on my bike project), took 10 weeks & I've only got 12 weeks till I need the Pop back on the road. So I need to get them taken off, cleaned up & off to the platers as soon as possible.
Oh, & Nathan, (Galaxie500), has made me an LED conversion for the interior light I plan to fit in the cab, for a very reasonable price & in just one day. If you need anything similar, he may be the very chap to speak to.
