A fork in the road...

Yesterday we were able to get stuck into the car again. We were at a bit of a loss yesterday as to which aspect to attack first so we took the option of tidying up the garage. It was certainly needed. Now we can easily move around the car. Ah, much better...

After finishing the tidying, we took some time to reflect on where we want to go with this car and what should be the plan of attack. Our original plan was to get this thing on the road ASAP, but that goal is slowly slipping away as we discover more and more things we need to do. As you can see from the photos, in its current state it is not far until it is complete stipped. It really is the front suspension, wiring and cabin section that are left. We deliberated for some time as to whether we continue down the path of stripping it down entirely (and add considerable time to the project) or do we tidy it up from where it is now and ignore the cabin section. What do you guys think?

The interior is not too bad, but we don't know what lurks beneath the carpet. What we do know is that the coolant lines, wiring and chassis down the sides need some attention. I think we are now of the opinion that we will continue to strip this thing down. We have come so far, we'd may as well do the whole car properly and then we have no worries about the car in the future.

OK, so with that thought in mind we decided to start ripping out the front suspension. It's quite a funny design. Bascially, all they have done is ripped the front cross member and suspension off a Cortina and bolted it to the box-section chassis. Not much to it really. It looks heavy, but being a dual control-arm setup, hopefully it has reasonable handling. It's amazing how much little front collision protection there is. Haha

We were  able to undo all of the bolts apart from one (yes there's always one). It was jammed in between the cross-member and the panelling behind the pedals. Impossible to get at without removing the pedal box and panelling. This caused us much grief. I was lying upside down under the dash for several hours. Not fun.

We eventually removed the pedal box. There were a few painful screws and bolts on this one. By this time, we'd yelled a few profanities and Dad had to head home. I decided to plod on and attack the panelling. My wife, Kristen came out to the garage and couldn't find me until she saw this...

Nope, that's not photoshopped. Hilarious...

There was one bastard of a screw in there that was near impossible to get out and just about threaded. Damn flat-headed screws. Worst idea ever! In hind-sight, I should have just drilled it out, but I was determined to get it out and ended wasting 45 minutes (and my sanity) to get it out with vice grips.

In other news, we visiting the engine shop yesterday with the intention of picking up the block. Unfortunately the engine builder had forgotten we were coming in and hasn't progressed yet. No hurry. We have lots of work to do.

Unfortunately, I'm away for the next 2 weekends, so not much is gonna happen for a while :(

Definitely time for an update...

Sorry for the lack of updates lately. I have pretty busy with my new job and driving things like this...

Yep, a few months ago was my 30th and my mates are absolutely legends and bought me a gift card for a super car driving experience. I was lucky enough to drive a Ferrari Modema 360, Lamborghini Gallardo and Nissan 370Z through the Gold Coast hinterlands for 3 hours. It was absolutely awesome fun. To sum up my thoughts on each car:

• The Ferrari was unbelievably quick at 0-100 speeds, but the flappy-paddle gear changes were slow.
• The Lamborghini was great fun to drive, but geared unbelievably tall. I was doing 80-90km/h in first at 8000rpm :) I imagine this thing would be insane at 200km/h+
• The 370Z was the surprise package. The flappy-paddle gearbox shifted faster than the Ferrari and it was able to keep up with the Lamborghini to 100ish.

Anyway, enough talk of Supercars, what the hell is going on with the GT40?

Well, since the last blog we have finished off the shed. This has meant that we can clear some of the stuff out of the garage to make space for the GT40. The garage is still a mess though...

The workbench is still a work in progress. Unfortunately I am painfully slow at welding. Plus, I'd rather be working on the 40.

As for the GT40... It seems it is slowly but surely being disassembled. First up, we decided to inspect the fuel tanks. This turned out to be a wise move. We discovered lots of crud inside and one tank had a small hole caused by rubbing on the chassis. The level senders were completely rusted out. Here's one of them. Not pretty.

Once the tanks were out, we removed the rubber sheeting that's attached to the chassis behind the tank. This revealed the coolant lines and wiring. As expected, the coolant lines are quite badly corroded, so we'll be looking at replacing these.

Whilst following the coolant lines up to the radiator we decided to remove the front-end of the car. Once again, this was a simple proposition of unplugging the head lights and undoing 4 bolts. Without the front, she's certainly not a pretty. 

It's not all bad news. We took a trip over to the engine machinist on the weekend. The block is pretty much done and we should be picking it up this weekend. He has sleeved the one dodgy cylinder and it looks really good. By sleeving it, we have been able to keep it at +30 thou and retain the pistons that came with it. As mentioned in one of the early blogs, this engine only had a few thousand kilometers on it, so the pistons are in excellent condition.

What's next? We'll keep stripping down the front end. We're not sure how far we'll go with stripping it down just yet. As long as we keep finding areas than need attention, then we'll keep stripping it. After that, we'll repaint the chassis and get stuck into the engine. I know Dad's looking forward to the rebuild.

It's certainly starting to look like a longer term project. Oh well, we're not in a hurry and spirits are still high. It's all part of the fun..