New brakes!

Good news. An upgrade kit has arrived for the front brakes. Tim and I spent a fair bit of time a few months back trying to get BA Falcon PBR callipers to fit. We tried a few discs and mocked up a calliper mountain. We had something that looked like it would work with modified VT Commodore discs. It was super-tight in the 15" wheels. Just when we were about to order parts and start to design calliper mounting plates, we stumbled across this kit on ebay at a good price. It's for a Ford Cortina. For the amount of messing around we'd have to do to DIY this, we jumped on this auction.

The seller (free plug for upc.online) was excellent and agreed to drill the hubs and discs in 5 x 112mm PCD (to suit current wheels) and 5 x 114.3mm PCD to open up more wheel options in the future. The kit arrived this week and looks like fantastic quality. I just did a quick test-fit this afternoon and it fits perfectly (except the wheel studs are different thread).

Damn happy with the result.

They make the wheels look even more crap.

Other than this, work has been fairly slow over the past few months, but we have managed to finish a few jobs. First up, the throttle cable is done. We decided to run it under the engine as this keeps it away from the exhaust and gives a nice radius bend.

Secondly, the clutch slave cylinder has been fitted and works. Tim bled it himself using the yellow strap in the picture above. Haha

Thirdly, I've knocked up a bracing for the alternator mounting bracket. There was far too much flex in it before, so I've braced it back to a bolt on the head. It still needs tidying up and painting.

During one of my stints in the garage, I couldn't help but introduce Bianca to the GT40. Gotta start em young...

Epic Fix-Up Day

Yesterday we had a long, but rewarding day in the garage. Now that the front of the car has been painted, our attention has turned to finishing off a lot of loose ends in the front of the car.

First up, off with the front body work. It's been a long time since we've had this off, so it warranted some photos.

Next up, we bolted the front frame in properly (we'd unbolted it for painting and were using odd spare bolts). Recently I bought a bolt set. This is the best $120 I've ever spent. Unfortunately there are no bolt shops in the area that are open on the weekend. So since we started building this car our normal method of procuring bolts has involved driving to Supercheap/ Autobarn/ Repco and getting ripped-off big time for 2 bolts in a Champion plastic-pack that are normally the wrong size. Now we have a full selection of bolts there will be no more wasting time and money getting bolts. Why didn't I do this 2 years ago?

The next job involved securing the coolant lines. We never finished securing them after we ran the coolant lines (too keen to start the engine). We wanted to get the coolant line rubber away from anything it could rub on. Tim spent some time looking at this a few weeks back and came up with this awesome idea of making a hanger off the round K-frame bracing tube. A quick bit of welding and drilling and I was done. Very happy with the result.

Tim recently bought a Rivnut (nutsert) kit and was keen to test that out so he mounted the brake reservoirs. 

Another job was to make up some spacers between the top of the K-frame and the chassis. For some reason, the manufacturer leaves a 20mm gap here. I think it is so you can adjust the chassis alignment. The previous spacers were very flimsy. Tim welded two bits of 10mm plate steel together. Job done. Pics coming.

So all-in-all, our long session in the garage was rewarding. Hopefully we continue to have sessions like this.

Bending, Welding, Painting

With the muffler out of the road, it's time to return to the steering column and the painting of the front frame and steering area. The steering column needed another mount added. I got part-way through this job months ago and then realised it would foul the windscreen wiper arm. After fixing that I got distracted by the muggler. It's good to finally get the steering column sorted.

  

Tim came around on Monday and painted it all. It looks much better.

In the meantime, Tim has been continuing on with the brake lines. This is an endless task, but looks great.

The other day I was driving home and spotted a GT40 in the front of Motorsport Accessories, a local shop. I had to go in and check it out. It turns out that it's a well-used race car with a string of trophies to its name. It's running a Ford Cleveland stroked to 363ci (I think) with solid lifters and fed by a Holley carb. It's very nice to see a GT40 that gets used on the track and is still street driven.

Some time ago Richard Knight from gt40s.com asked me to take some photos of the gearshift linkages since he is building a similar kit. Here you go Richard, sorry for the delay..

 

Brake Lines and Exhaust

Tim and I spent half a day working on the GT40 on Saturday. It's always good to get in the garage and make some progress, even if it just for half a day. Currently we're working on brake lines and the muffler mounting. Tedious jobs, but progressing none the less.

Brake Lines

Tim has been ticking away at this job for quite a while now. It's all coming together and will look awesome once the lines are all braced. This has been a very frustrating job for Tim, but I think he's though the bulk of it. On Saturday he was able to put fluid in the reservoir for the front callipers to check for leaks. As expected, there were a few, but he was able to fix them and see movement in the callipers :)

No doubt you've noticed the orange cable. This is the battery cable. We've decided that we'd like the battery at the front of car for weight distribution and tidiness. The cable is double-insulated welding cable that my mate Jason Broadhurst picked up for us. He's terminated it at the starter motor and started routing it through the chassis. However, we're not really sure where we want to run it: down the side or down the centre? For now, I think we'll leave it loose until we start panelling and can see what's going to work best.

Muffler Mount

The rear muffler mount is done. It just needs painting. Last week I bent a steel flat-bar strap for the muffler to sit on. This week I spent time setting the muffler's position and then welding eyes to the flat-bar so that it bolts to the gearbox. Setting the position of the muffler took quite some time, because I wanted to get it right since the muffler is so visible from behind the car. I'm pretty happy with how it's turned out. We were originally planning to have 2 mounts, but it's very rock solid now. The pipes support the front of it very well. We're not sure if it's worth the effort to make another mount. Particularly since there aren't any easy bolts to attach a bracket to at the front of the gearbox.

The Garage

I thought I'd take a few more pics of the garage for the guys at The Garage Journal.

This little trolley has been absolute gold. My wife picked it up from her old work. They were going to throw it out. Now it holds a lot of scrap offcuts and is perfect doing odd jobs on, welding on or for putting tools on.

The shelves had another clean-up. Still a work in progress.

I installed a new shelf above the bench to hold random stuff. It worked out well.