Cooling System and Brakes

I just realised it's been ages since the last blog update, so it's well and truly time... Unfortunately, the past month or so has been slow for progress with Tim heading on an ultimate man's trip of the world (Monaco GP, Nurburgring and Montreal GP), Dad heading to India for work and then a baby shower thrown in the middle (5 weeks until our baby is due).

Anyway, work has progressed slowly. First up, this load of toys arrived from the US. Cleckos are in preparation for the panelling work.

We decided to change the thermostat housing to a filler since this is the highest point of the cooling system. One slight problem. The outlet is pointing straight at the new horizontal bar we added behind the seats.

Fortunately, my mate Jim offered to drop it into Scott at Cleveland Exhaust to get the outlet direction changed (apologies for the dark photo). Scott did a great job and thanks to Jim for sorting it out for me.

Next job, I started tackling the coolant piping. This is my first attempt at TIG welding stainless. The TIG welder I have is an old WIA DC unit I bought off a guy at work. It doesn't have the ramping, post gas-flow and current control pedal of the modern units. I soon discovered that current control while welding would be a useful feature.

After opening up the welder, I discovered that it could be easily and safely altered for remote operation from a pedal or hand control. I had a bit of a chat with Jim about my ideas for modifying the welder and before I knew it, he was on my door step with a prototype Arduino circuit and hand controller made from a throttle position sensor. After a few hours in the garage, we had it up and running with basic current control from the hand controller. For the next phase of the upgrade we will add automatic gas stop/start using an old boost control solenoid and probably a foot pedal. Since it's controlled by an Arduino, it's easy to add current ramp up / ramp down, gas post-flow time and current shut-off. I'd really like to add HF starting and AC functionality, but these aren't so easy. These are photos of the prototype. Don't worry, we'll upgrade the cables and tidy the installation when it's all up and running. I'll post more on this once it's finished.

On Saturday Tim came around and I really wanted to get on with some welding. So for now, I put the system back together with the basic hand control only. It worked fine. Being able to vary the current made the welding much easier.

 This shows my first bit of pipe. The bottom weld was done before the new current control system. The top weld was done afterwards. I'll admit, the welds are far from perfect, but they'll do the job.

New pipe in place.

While I messed around with the welder, Tim fitted the reconditioned rear brake calipers. These are actually the calipers that came with the car. They are originally the front brakes off an Alfasud (who the hell puts a handbrake on the front?). Tim tells me these are also used on the rear of a Ferrari 308 GTS, so they can't be that bad.

I dropped them into BrakesPlus Capalaba to be reconditioned. The owner of the store also owns a GT40 and was very helpful. Unfortunately, one of the calipers was missing a part of the handbrake mechanism. Luckily I tracked down a new caliper in the UK and had it delivered to our Grandmother's place. While Tim was visiting, he chucked it in his bag (taking him to 0.5kg below his luggage limit) and then lugged it through the US and Canada. Haha. Thanks Tim.

It's a pretty tight fit. The cable will need to be replaced.

As you may have noticed, the garage is getting pretty cramped. What do you with an old desk corner? Well, it makes a perfect shelf to store tall items like gold clubs and kite surfing gear. It's given me a good 1.5m of wall space.

Anyway, that's it from me. Hopefully we can keep making decent progress. 

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.

Front body back on!

Well this update comes from my couch where I've been parked for the last 3 days straight. I just had a hernia operation, which means I can't do much for a while. Fortunately it's Melbourne Grand Prix weekend. Unfortunately this operation means that GT40 work is out of the picture.

So, it's been 3 months since an update, what the hell has been going on? Well, personally, lots has been going on. My wife now has a baby on the way, I've spent about 2 out of the past 3 months on a drilling rig in Thailand, Tim has finished studying Medicine and is now working full-time and Dad's been busy in and out of India and working on the house. Unfortunately, this means that not much has happened on the car.

Anyway, enough excuses, with this much time off the car, we are all itching to get back into it. For the last 2 weekends Tim and I have finally managed to squeeze some GT40 time in. We've decided to focus on getting the radiator in and mounted and to run the coolant lines. In order to mount the radiator correctly we needed to reinstall the front bodywork. This was seriously an exciting and motivating moment. It really makes the car look like a GT40 again and damn it looks good :)

This photo really doesn't do it justice (plus it shows that we badly need to reorganise the garage). We decided to throw the doors back on since we don't have anywhere better to store them. In order to get the body work to fully close we had to remove some of the fibreglass as it was fouling on some of the new chassis bracing we've added.

Next up, we put the radiator on. We're seriously happy with how well this radiator fits within the body. The only problem is that it's a little too tight. If it's not in precisely the right spot, the front won't fully hinge open. After spending some time trialling different positions, we ended up with the framework tacked in place. We've decided to make the front-end fully bolt in. That means we can easily remove the entire front end back to the K-frame if major suspension work is required.

Radiator in place. We will bolt through the top brackets with some rubber mounts in place.

When tidying up, we put the nostril panel back in. Only one words sums this up.... bugger!

It hits our new steel work. Fortunately it will be easy to shift the horizontal bars outwards an inch or so.

Anyway, so that's about it for now. Unfortunately I'll be doing 'supervisor only' work on this for the next 4-6 weeks, since I can't do heavy work. I'm sure Dad and Tim will continue. We've just ordered new shock absorbers from the UK, so soon she will be back on 4 wheels. Horray!

Time for a change of author

So it's been a while since the last blog update, mostly because Simon has been on an oil rig somewhere off the coast of Thailand for the last few months. I thought that perhaps I should switch things up once in a while and make an entry. Without further introduction, I bring you: 'Tim's first GT40 blog'. I could use this as an opportunity to sledge Simon (Like he often does to me in previous entries) but instead I am going to get on with the progress. I haven't done a great deal due graduation and associated celebrations but this is where we are up to.

In the last entry the engine was in. Glad to report not a lot has changed and its still there. I added some ancillaries and finished putting it back together. Inlet manifold, water pump, alternator, fuel pump and starter should all be permanent fixtures now.

After getting a bit fed up with that end of the car it was back to the front to start thinking about things down that end. I have been silently been putting together an interim brake upgrade which will be minimal hassle,  adequate for rego and pretty cheap. My plans are thus far consist of a 2 spot BA falcon caliper with 295mm x 28mm discs. Pictured is a BA disc but that probably wont be final due to the centre bore being a little large and not locating on the hub properly. Fortunately I have found a good solution from a c180 merc which has a smaller centrebore that we can machine to suit. The granada / cortina front end is a little tricky in that the disc sits behind the hub instead of over the top like most modern things.

Nothing but the finest cable ties when measuring this up.

Looks like its going to fill out the original 15's pretty well. Hopefully about 3mm between the caliper and rim!

Adapter for the caliper should hopefully be a straight forward affair.

Whilst mucking around down the front I felt it was time to mock up the new radiator. Simon picked this up shortly before he left. Looking forward to doing some modifications to the front frame work (cow catcher as we call it) to give a bit more support. I think we are going to need to put the front body work on soon just to mock it all up properly. Hopefully this radiator should be a bit more adequate that the VW golf one residing there before!

I figured after all this playing around it was time to get some real work done so back to the rear of the car.
Rear suspension arms are back on but are a little limited by the need for some new shocks before it can all be finished off. I pulled out a rear wheel to see how it all looked.

The keen observers will also notice the gearbox has made a re-appearance in this shot. I felt it was time to get the engine off the trolley jack and the only way to do that was put the gearbox back in.

Well that's it for my first (/last?) blog update. Hopefully we can crack on and get a bit more done in the New Year!

Merry Xmas and Happy New Year all!

Engine In!

This post comes to you from the departure lounch of the Brisbane Airport. I spent most of October on an offshore drilling rig in Thailand, had about 10 hectic days at home and then it's time to head back. We have made some progress, so I thought I'd give you all a quick update before I disappear into the internet black hole for a few weeks.

This is what I came home to. Oh yeah! Dad and Tim dropped the engine in. It took them all of an hour and a half apparently. They picked up an engine crane from the rental shop, drove home, assembled in, dropped in the engine, disassembled the crane and returned to the rental shop in an hour and a half. The guy at the shop asked if they had changed their mind. Haha. "Nope, it's done mate"

 

The flywheel machining was done on my driveway thanks to Mobile Flywheel Grinding. He reckons the flywheel was in pretty good nick, but he said he'd never seen a flywheel setup like ours before. Hehe.

The front suspension arms are finally back from Fulcrum Suspension Stafford. I left them there for the 4 weeks I was in Thailand. Here's the front suspension partly assembled.

I seem to have spent a large amount of time cleaning the gearbox. Anyone who tells you that dilute Hydrochloric acid is a good alloy cleaner, ignore them... I tried dilute acid and whilst it looks like it's doing a great job, it just seems to leach a dark grey liquid out of the metal that leaves grey stains all over it. I ended up going for a metal polish (Bowden's Own) and using elbow grease. I'm pretty happy with how it's come up.

Anyway, that's my boarding call. Gotta go.