Blog

WHAT we’re doing, and HOW we’re doing it!

April 14, 2025

Rust happens in mysterious places, usually down “low” where water naturally flows, but it can also occur higher up if there’s a way for the moisture to become trapped. It doesn’t really matter to us, we’ll just make the patch panel(s) to fit the area(s) which need to be replaced. In this instance, we suppose that some mud or old undercoating created a pocket which held a rain/snow/salt mix up against the steel fender lip for a very long number of years, slowly eating away at what had once been fine British steel! Once we had removed all of the old rusty metal, and trimmed back to full thickness where we’d have something substantial to weld to, a new patch was fabricated which matched the opening precisely. We always fit the patch all around with no overlaps, then hold it in place with an assortment of special clamps and super strong magnets before the first arc is struck to begin the TIG welding process. Once the new patch has been completely welded into place, weld beads are dressed down with an assortment of grinders until we’re left with an invisible repair. Perfect fitting patches and butt welded edges are the only way to perform a lasting repair, because the old way of patching over a hole with overlapping patches only creates new pockets to hold moisture and start the rusting process all over again.

April 7, 2025

Head studs are one of those things which can sometimes be easily removed, and then there are other times (60/40) when they’ll kick your butt! Many folks will leave them in place when “rebuilding” an engine, but they quickly get in the way when you’re handling the bare block (eg. to clean it) or to run a cylinder hone down through glazed cylinders. If the block goes to the machine shop for boring or decking, the machine shop will add an extra charge to remove any studs still remaining. Most home mechanics and even a few “professionals” will lock two nuts together at the top, and if they’re lucky they can back the stud out of the hole. But with studs this large, and the tendency for long studs to flex a bit due to the distance between the two nuts at top and the frozen threads down-in the block, this is another 60/40 proposition. We always replace old (and probably stretched) studs with new high-strength ARP studs, so they always have to come out. With that in mind, it wasn’t difficult to justify the purchase of a proper stud remover to remove head studs, as well as the smaller studs used in our Triumphs. By gripping down close to the threads you need to loosen and remove, all of the torque from a long breaker bar is transmitted to the area which needs the force. Just by having this little gem in the toolbox, our success rate for head stud removal is up around 99.9%.