1965 Riley Elf Painted and on her Wheels

[100BUR]

Hi All,

Progress is slower than I would like

Couple of pics with the screens now fitted and chrome door trim

Next job is the dash/wiring

[100BUR]

Pics below

[100BUR]

pics again

[mk1]

I do love that colour!

[100BUR]

We have started to fit the dash & rev counter

Still a bit of wiring to finish off

[100BUR]

The Elf is now on the road MOT last week, and attended the Grange-over-Sands show last Sunday were we received second in class. Which I was over the moon with.

Couple of pics of the day below.

[rich@minispares.com]

that looks cracking

hope all the hard work was well worth while at the end

[mk1]

Yes, certainly worth all that time & effort. Well done!

[100BUR]

Rich Mark,

Yes definitely worth all the hard work..

There were times when things did not fit and a little job would take all day...

Still a couple of finishing of jobs that have come to light after getting the Elf on the road, but nothing major...

Stocking up on the Autoglym & chrome cleaner...

Cheers

Lindsay

[Beatie]

Must concur Lindsay
Cracking job and well worth it and well done .
Nice to see it finally released into the wild
Hope the taco still don't bounce ?
All the best

[DUF2 ‘65 Elf]

100 BUR, I too have a ‘65 Elf. I bought it in 2017, but it was not in as good as a condition as I had thought at first. I have just had a new floor installed and it has been repainted Old English White with a black roof.
Duffy also has a 1275 engine, an ‘89 Metro engine & box fitted, along with 8.4 vented discs and 4 pot callipers. These mods were done by a previous owner. Someone has spent a lot of time and money on the car in the past. It is on dry suspension and the upholstery has been retrimmed in burgundy leather.

Here is a pic as it came out of the paint shop

[morris-miner]

I agree with all the previous comments, what a lovely lovely build.
And I like the third brake light addition very much, very neat indeed.

[100BUR]

Hi DUF2

Great to see another Elf being put back to it's former glory.... Improved.

How are you getting on with the rebuild much more to do?

I am so glad that I fitted the 1275 engine now Puts a smile on my face every time I take the covers off/take it out for a drive

Cheers

[DUF2 ‘65 Elf]

The Elf is now on the road MOT last week, and attended the Grange-over-Sands show last Sunday were we received second in class. Which I was over the moon with.

Couple of pics of the day below.

Aargh! You haven’t painted the rail behind the radiator grille Black! You can easily overcome this with a wide roll of black tape.

[DUF2 ‘65 Elf]

Hi DUF2

Great to see another Elf being put back to it's former glory.... Improved.

How are you getting on with the rebuild much more to do?

I am so glad that I fitted the 1275 engine now Puts a smile on my face every time I take the covers off/take it out for a drive

Cheers

Loads still to do. When I got the car the paintwork was quite tidy, however underneath was not so good.
A new floor was needed and I foolishly thought this could be done without affecting the paint. This was not the case as the bottom of the A panels needed replacing as did the rear quarters. So it needed repainting. The pics above show it in its nice new Old English white paintwork. As it had to be painted, all the windows were removed, which meant I would need to fit a new headlining.
One thing that did pi55 me off a bit was the vinyl covering on the dash rails, this was untidy do I removed it only to find the rails were rusted through on the passenger side!!
I managed to find someone breaking a Mini, so got the dash rails, cut out the tot and let the new bits in. I now need to recover the dash rails, the A pillars and fit a new headlining, but wasn’t sure which order to do these in. I now know dash rails first, then headlining then A pillars. I also decided to replace the roof insulation as I’m not a lover of the felt, I removed the felt only to find a covering of rust! I have now removed this and will be installing the new sound deadening/ insulation. But I have a long way to go yet.
Whereabouts are you 100BUR?

[100BUR]

Hi DUF2

I had my Elf painted by a body shop just outside Whitehaven as I am in Cumbria, I did mention several times that I wanted the grill panel in Black as original,, unfortunately that got lost in translation... In the end as the time to do the body work had over ran that much I was just glad to take her home (Rita Riley)

The suggestion about the vinyl rap is one I never thought of, Thanks There is company locally I will have to pop in for a chat. It is one of my pet hates too

Fortunately my roof lining is Ok not perfect but now looks a lot better after a good clean. Something I will change in the future

I too had to recover the dash rail. I looked at a few suggestion on how to do it including advice on the Newton & Commercial web site, what worked best for me what to first cut a rough templates and then glue down with Evo Stick hold in places with clothes pegs and trim with a hobby scalpel, very sharp pair of small scissors.

I went to MiniSport last Thursday to have Rita Rolling road tuned, the guy that set her up, did a great job modified the carb needle to suit.
Made 82.3 BHP at the wheels on the power run and now pulls like a little train.

[100BUR]

Update on Rita Riley

While at MiniSport I also had the wheel alignment / tracking checked & adjusted as the front tyres were starting to scrub off on the outside edge.

The guy at MiniSport advised that I may need to move the arches slightly forward as the front wheels were just catching on the outside of the wheel arches on nearly full lock


Driving home from MiniSport I did feel the car was a lot less nervous, twitchy.

Early last Saturday morning I took at run to see the guy who did the body work for me, the drive is around 40 miles mainly along county/A roads that I know very well as I travel some of them on my commute to work. I felt a lot more confident in the Elf and felt it handled better than ever, I had the added bonus of the rev limiter was not sitting in the passenger seat

The advise from the guy that did the bodywork, is that the 6x12 ET 3 Revolutions I currently have on the car have to much offset on, we tried some 5x12 wheels and tyres he had with the same type and size tyre and they were fine did not catch on the arches.

After some careful measurement & checking last night, I have now ordered 5x12 ET16 Revolutions