My apologies to the neighbours

My sincere apologies to the neighbours, Saturday was a very loud day. It was the day of cleaning up the chassis. It just so happened that Tim finally returned from a few months out bush to lend a hand, too. About time...

So all up, we had Dad and Tim on angle grinder and "Rapid Stipper"on drill. Plus me welding and angle grinding on the workbench and yet somehow, Jim managed to continue work on the model despite all the noise.

Jim at work on the K-frame model

Chaos in the garage

This is how the chassis is looking after a few hours of work. It looks 100% better, but there is still more work to be done. Tim reckons that everytime he turned around he found something else to attack. We've managed to destroy one of those knotted wire wheels on the angle grinder and have pretty much disintegrated the drill-driven "Rapid Stripper" disc.

Get this, Tim finally returns from out bush and we catch him sucking back on a stubby. Just can't get the staff these days :)

In the mean time, I finally managed to finish welding the workbench. This has seriously taken me months, since I have been busy with work and enjoying GT40 stuff instead of workbench stuff in my spare time (plus I suck at welding). I'm actually really happy with how it turned out. It's been a good lesson in metal fabrication.

A coat of fresh paint makes any crappy old steel look professional.

On Sunday I got stuck into the bench tops. I soon put saw dust through the whole house. Unfortunately Jim's makeshift desk has now been turned into the bottom shelf of my bench.

And here it is in it's final resting place. I had to get my mate Jarrod around to help me move it. My wife Kristen couldn't lift it. I guess that's what you want in a good workbench...

The engine block is back!
Now in other news, you're not gonna believe this, but the engine block is back! We dropped around at the engine shop on Saturday and got the normal response (it's not ready). To make up for it, the guy dropped the block around to our house that afternoon. Horray! It's nice to have it back. The downside is, that it's one more thing that's waiting for us to work on.

Believe it or not, the cylinder on the right is the one that was sleeved. It looks excellent now.

"No Bella, I have no idea what happened to all the Cling Wrap" :)

The model is progressing
Jim has done an awesome job with the model. First up on Saturday, he finished measuring and modelling the chassis, next up he modelled the rear semi-trailing arms. Following that, he hit the intricate K-frame. It took a fair bit of remeasuring to get that modelled correctly. The main problem being that the model gave too much negative camber. It wasn't til we took to the K-frame with some straight pieces of timber that we discovered that there actually is a fair bit of camber there.

On further thought, I remembered reading in the KCC GT40 manual that when you change the hubs to Ford Granada 5-stud type, you must move the mounting hole of the lower control arm outwards by 12mm to compensate. We trialled this with the model and it made it worse. Moving it inwards, however, gives close to 0 degrees. Maybe they got this wrong or maybe we have made a mistake. Either way, we'll leave it to a wheel alignment shop to get baseline measurements before we mess with it.

Jim at work

Here are some pics of the model and how it looks now.

Jim has now started looking at steering angles and bump steer (which don't look great) so far. A few guys on the various forums have been trying to convince us to convert the rear to GT40-style suspension. In fact, one guy has even sent me plans of an exact GT40. What a legend! How far we go with the chassis is a tough call to make. The chassis is currently in the prime state to do these sorts of mods, but it's gonna add considerable time and cost to the project. There really is a lot we can do at this stage in the form of rear suspension, front suspension, bracing and roll bars. We're a bit worried that the extra time and money will cause us to lose motivation. What are your thoughts?