Mechanical works - Mahindra Classic

The base red (orange?) color has been painted on the jeep's outer body, only two more coats of red will be applied on the base color after mechanical and electrical work. To move the jeep from Body workshop to Mechanic's garage some of the basic mechanical work has been completed. as another milestone in the restoration work that is today the jeep has seen its re-entry into the mechanical workshop.
As a parallel work, last week I bought two color Italian leather fabric for the lining work. The liner is making a special seat cover for the jeep. Here in the below picture see the liner making the red and black themed seat for the Mahindra Classic.

In the paint crew's hand

The image is exactly what I meant by rubbing work. The painter used water with emery paper to rub and get the surface as he needed.
The whole painter crew was fully involved in each and every corner of the Jeep with rubbing work.
Here is how the jeep looked after complete rubbing on the NC putty. Actually speaking I was seeing brown, ivory and grey shades here and there after the rubbing. Painter was stating this is how the uneven surface getting leveled for the next course of action.
After making the jeep to this state, the crew applied Deco-pu surfacer mixed with Deco-pu hardener and Thiner. This process had dealt with the air gun painting machine.
Here is how the final state of surfacer applied jeep's look in the below picture.

After completion of this process is what the actual coloring of the jeep. However there is a patch and fix work for the minute surface issues on this stage. That makes the jeep to get ready for the first coat of painting. The surfacer will harden the primer, metal paste and putty applied surface for the painting process.

Metal paste work - CL340 DP

The picture here shows the past week's metal paste work. Actually the painter has rubbed all the metal paste neatly to get a good shaped rough surface.
If you remember my last post about the tailgate work by the tinker, I recall it here with this picture for your review.
This was the condition I saw the jeep when I've visited during the last weekend.
During the weekend, one day the climate was not suitable for the painting or related work, the town(Tiruvannamalai) where the work is going had rain fall and it was a cloudy day. So we were force to loose a day for the nature's demand.Later we applied NC putty and again the rubbing work to make the surface neat and shine. See it in the below picture.
After the whole body applied with NC putty the Jeep looked as it shown in the picture below

Electrical equipments - CL340 DP

As I didn't visit the garage last week, I was so much involved in finding a tyre and disc deal for the Mahindra Classic jeep but still didn't come to a conclusion. There were good deals from China and Indonesian made all terrain capable tyres.

The whole week was so much occupied finding the remaining stuffs for the jeep and I managed to find the steering lock with ignition key set and few other electrical items.
In the above picture you can see the following items:

• set of Roots Horn
• 9 in one melody relay for the horn
• FM Antena
• Parking break auto light switch
• Cigar lighter
• Ignition key with Steering lock
• Diesel logo for the tank mouth (non electrical)
  

End of Body repair - Mahindra Classic

The rear tail gate & windshield have been completely tinkered to get it's original state. I was searching for a spare tailgate and I couldn't source, initially in a dilemma to do the tinker work but after the professional touch on the tailgate I'm so confident that the tailgate is as like as the stock one.

In addition to the above two parts, the front grill and radiator holders are also completely done and they are up to their original state. As I could source the OE muffler (The equipment used to reduce the noise emitted from exhaust pipe), the JEEP is going to be a silent macho machine, isn't that interesting. The picture here shows my son holding the newly purchased muffler.

As I couldn't visit the garage last week there was a gap in the blog about status update. Though I couldn't post the pictures, the metal pasting work has been completed and the surface of the jeep looks neat. The new body bolts and the rubberized body bed also been installed properly.

It’s great day - Mahindra Classic

Yet another milestone in my restoration process, the mechanical and rare parts were collected successfully. Look at the below picture which will show a partial list of latest spare parts.

I’ve managed to source the OE fuel tank, soft-top, soft doors & its aluminum frame, rear seat, break-booster, clutch cable, front bumper mahindra plate, motorized windshield washer kit and miscellaneous gasket rubbers.

It was my long pending list of must have stuffs for my classic jeep. A friend of mine suggested few good resources where I could source all of these items in Mumbai & Chennai (Wait for an index of all the resources in the forth coming blog, as I’m still procuring items for the jeep).

[Above picture shows the soft-top and fittings.] Almost cosmetic collections of cosmetic spares are over and now I’m in the verge of correcting the mechanical issues. The coming week will be painting week and jeep will go for massive paint process.

Painting and the mechanical work will progress simultaneously and the smaller items needed to be fixed before the final touch-up.

Windshield washer kit, it was not so tough to source this as the latest Mahindra Bolero also uses the same old model used in Mahindra Classic. Kudos to Mahindra for continuing such spares in modern utility vechicles.

Mahindra CL340 DP chase and underbody work

At last the body tub has been removed out from the chase, there were couple of folks were engaged on the duty.

This activity pushed the jeep to next level as the major tinkering work has been completed. The only part left with the tinker is to straighten the uneven surface with file-hammer and applying metal paste on the tinkered areas.
While the tinker working on the body tub's bottom part, the painter also started cleaning the chase for anti-corrosive treatment. We found lots of accumulated mud on the engine and gear box area due to the greasy nature. Hence cleaned the whole chase and engine with petrol and soap water.
The below picture shows the Mahindra Classic's chase mounted with engine and gearbox. The rest of the activities on the jeep will be building the components from this stage.