Back on Wheels!

Well, we just had an excellent weekend of car work and finally reached a milestone. For the first time in nearly 2 years, the GT40 is back on its wheels again!

We ordered these nice Gaz shocks from the UK. Tim ordered them months ago. I guess Cortina parts are not in high demand...

Interestingly, our KCC kit manual recommends Cortina front shocks in the front and rear. I guess due to the extra weight over the rear wheels, it makes sense. The lower mounts had to be cut-off and the lower tube drilled out to mount these.

Here's how the front looks. The shocks needed a small amount of modification of the top mount to get them in. I guess this is a difference with the South African Cortina K-Frame.

Back on the wheels, she's definitely sitting high in the front at the moment. There is next to no weight in the front, so I guess that's expected. At the moment the suspension feels quite soft in the rear and hard in the front. We'll sort that out later if it's an issue.

Tim also painted the radiator support frame, so the front should be going back together soon. It sure is nice to be making progress in the forward direction.

Fun with a Pipe Bender

Well the Easter weekend has gone and passed and I can happily say we had a great time working on the car. We managed to get 2 days of work on it.

First up, I purchased a cheap pipe bender, some 1.5" stainless pipe and a bending brake for the panels (coming soon).

After practicing on some scrap metal, we discovered the press benders are not as easy as they look. It is quite easy to crush a piece of pipe. Anyway, after a bit of Googling and experimentation, this is what we found:

• Fill the pipe with wet sand. Jam something in there so you can keep the sand under pressure.
• Grease up the shoe and rollers.
• Go nice and slow and keep an eye on it.

After a few hours (yep, we work slow), we had two pipes done with minimal crushing in the bends. We're pretty happy with the result.

I'm glad to say that I'm recovering quickly from the hernia operation, so while Tim was bending pipes, I was busy finishing the welding of the radiator support. 

On the second day, Tim got out the Satan Spawn (aka Paint Stripper) and cleaned up some of the interior panels. It's not a nice job at all and somehow Tim always gets the messy jobs... The panels came up pretty good. See the pic below. We haven't decided yet if we're going to carpet the interior or leave it as exposed metal :)

Finally I gave the garage a much-needed clean. I couldn't help but take a few pics of the GT40 when it's not surrounded by mess. Loving it!

Well, that's it for now. Next up, we need to finish off the rest of the pipework and start the panelling. The pipework around the thermostat is going to be very tricky. We've added a new bar across the back of the cabin and it's going to make things a bit tight in that area.