Quite a bit of progress there. Your paint work looks fine on the photos.
Funny how the fibreglass bonnet is basically a replica of the original (which I guess was used to make the mold). Couldn't they have saved even more weight by using more basic bracing on the underside?
Thanks Neil
, to be honest; I think for cost vs. appearance it's
ok, i'm not one for show and shine and let's face it, it wouldn't get very far in a concourse competition! But the idea is purely to make it presentable again for a few years, it may need the odd touch up here and there, but i'd rather spend bits and pieces on other idea's than keeping it immaculate. It had a reasonable "restoration" getting on for probably 8 years ago, and with the paint issue a year after being done, and then the usual hot spots of rust showing through again, if I have to do a few area's every couple of years it will keep it tidy'ish (and me busy)
As your see further down this post, i've done a bit more, and has probably come to around £150-£200 all in, so in comparison to a full respray job probably 10 times that i'm happy enough with it
With the bonnet, I think it's negligible whether you could really make it much lighter with having enough strength to keep the outer skin from flexing anymore than it already does, but I was certainly surprised that they went to the effort of replicating an original to that degree
Marcus
Great work. I think you would be better with a chin spoiler via ebay than trying to mod the VX item unless you cut away the whole area that was behind the bumper.
Keep it coming.
Eric
I think your right Eric, I see Mark is now selling a front spoiler that looks pretty good, but not sure whether I will be bothering yet, starting to like the front end as it is and the amount of sleeping policemen and kerbing about now, i'd probably spend more time fixing it back on than anything else
So onto the latest updates...
Bodywork. The replacement fibreglass wings I bought sometime ago are for the earlier cars, so it was off with the front end and on with the replacement early series valance and wings, lot's of little bit's and pieces to cut out to get the wings to fit but at a glance wouldn't tell much of a difference. Just finishing lining everything up, and thought i'd fit a stick on plate lower down out of the way of the radiator...
The original sidelight/indicator units taken out of the IE front bumper did the job but weren't particularly attractive nor slim fitting, so i've moved the sidelights into the dipped beam unit's and fitted round LED unit's to the front which had it's own implications...
Because the LED unit's as I soon found out, have a lot less resistance than a standard bulb the relay would flicker quickly as if a bulb had been blown, consequence of this, i've had to fit a resistor in line which has done the job...
Down the other end, I also replaced the rear number light unit's i've been using for LED, which showed up some resistance issues i've bypassed, more on that later...
Back up front. Just because you never know, and I never know if i'll be using it on track again I thought i'd fit a tow strap that tuck's nicely out of the way behind the valance and mounted to the subframe. The obvious choice is normally to have a red, maybe black tow sticker, but I thought i'd go with a subtle grey against the silver for now...
Some examples of the worst area's than needed attention before they got too out of hand...
Onto thinking when would the brown holes end, I actually got a chance to start making it look pretty again (well try to)...
Was finding it hard to find a tailgate badge as the original had started to peel and fade, it's not concave like the original but the front badge of a delta/thema does just about fit and the pin locations are the same for fitting into the tailgate...
The bodywork side is pretty much done now, just the biggy of trying to get fibreglass doors to fit and work
then hopefully it will at least all be the same shade of silver! I've started working on them, as they are really for the coupe the window frame is of a different profile so I will be cutting and shutting the top corner to extend the frame by whatevers needed...
There's lots of little pieces to cut out and drill to make it even possible to mock it on the car, but my biggest issue is the mounting of the door to hinge, as you see there's no actual bracketry inside the door
...
Lot's of masking later the window surrounds and gutters got some fresh black paint...
With the mot fast approaching, baring in mind i'd done about 30 miles with it since the last one, I couldn't believe that the chip that's been in the window ever since i've had the car (10 years) all of a sudden decided to crack a cm. It's never caused an issue as the wipers park pretty much on top of it and is just out of the mot failure area but with it's venture to crack, I tried some home repair resin you can buy from most stores, and for the price actually did quite a good job...
MOT in mind, the rubber bung in the passenger side floor had slight corrosion to the side of it, so to be on the safe side decided to cut it all out and weld in a piece for argument sake of corrosion next to a hole
...
Sorting out the lighting and checking everything over, I came across an issue with resistance when the dipped beam were on affecting the power to the rear sidelights, to get around this i've fitted a relay and fresh wiring for the lights and WHAT
a difference it made! Side lights, dipped and main beam...
Having bought a replacement coolant sensor and doing a coolant change ready for winter, I finally got the gauge working and was nice to see what part of the green actually represented as a number...
I took it for a spin and once up to temperature on the move at speed it doesn't want to go above around 72 degree's, pulled over to let it warm up before putting the twin fans on, and there dropping the temp by around a degree every 10-20 seconds, so the capability to keep things cool seems to be there.
And finally, MOT passed
, one advisory of a track rod with some play which works out nicely as the tracking needed doing anyway! So was delighted with that, everything else got the thumbs up for another year, so hopefully i'll do a bit more mileage than last year
Early xmas present to myself, the next project along side the doors, little teaser for you...
