Black & blue: Restoring hard to find original inlet duct hose

Sculpted on the side of the Dino are two magnificent ducts that channel air to the air filter on one side and the oil cooler on the other. Once the body ends it is the job of some corrugated tubes to direct the air from the duct to its destination. Over the years these tubes get replaced for incorrect items and are often missing as was the case for 01464.

We thought it would be an easy task to source out a replacement but were we ever wrong. The original tube had a distinctive light blue/grey colour to it and finding something with this finish proved to be impossible leaving us on the hunt for an original part. Extensive searching yielded nothing until last week where a visit to a local Dino nut unearthed a pair of tubes that had long been painted black. A tiny flake of paint was removed unearthing the original colour below and we knew we had found our part. A special thanks goes out to Jon for parting with these to help our restoration.

The last stage was restoring the tubes where Paul spent the better part of 6 hours cleaning, polishing, and restoring the tubes. You see on the Dino these tubes are well visible from both the outside and the inside. Add complicated ribbing and you have the recipe for a really tricky clean up. As always Paul delivered and the tubes are ready to be installed hardly showing any of their 40+ year age.