Okay, lots to update!!!
Been doing loads of work to the car over the last 8 weeks, getting parts in, trying to tidy things up and get it ready for a respray.
Got all the parts to convert it over to rear discs, and have mondeo fronts ready to bolt up to the focus 300mm discs.
Drove to great Yarmouth to buy a 2ltr Zetec from 'Massivewangers' which was a bitch of a drive from swansea, but well worth it, big up to Jon who is a really nice chap, friendly and helpful. Though it didnt help that my car wasnt staring on the key at the time, the fault being wrongly diagnosed as a cracked ring gear around the flywheel. So after the 10hr round trip the engine was in my boot for a week until I went back to Exeter ready to fit it with my good friend Ben's help.
So, engine out:
Me in the 'bay':
New engine in:
Bit of a bitch when fitting due to having trouble getting the engine back on it mounts, but after a hard slog at it it finally sat in the bay and was all connected back up ready for its inaugural start up, but no cigar, back to the drawing board, but being able to bump start it, it barked into life for the first time. Smoking away as the residual fluids burnt off it was ready for its drive back to swansea. Two issues to sort were lack of travel on the clutch and somewhere along the lines I must have connected the gear linkage up slightly out of line.
Cack in swansea I sorted the 2 issues no problems and was having a great time hooning about whist saving to have the bodywork sorted out, as you can all see from the pics in my first post, there was alot of rust on the arches and abit on the boot, as well as the usual scuffs and dings associated with a car of its age.
With the car booked in for paint and two weeks to try and get other bits ready I decided to take the interior out allowing me to give it a good spruce up whilst I would have good access. This also allowing me to remove the 10p piece from the mechanism on the passenger seat which had stopped it moving forward on the latch.
The carpet was then meticulously vacuumed, in small concentric circles until it was OCD clean:
I moved onto cleaning the material and treating the leather on the rest of the interior.
before moving onto the back of the rear seats, as can be seen, they were abit worse for wear after years of abuse:
But a little sand down and a quick coat of Hammerite satin black and look at the difference:
Next a quick and cheap way of doing something with the dash to cover the scratches and bring it upto date a little was to wrap the surround and the gear surround with carbon effect, bought for about a £7 off of ebay I atempted it with the use of my mates heat gun:
Back in place:
then on to Some LEDs to bring the lighting upto date:
The sidelights (originals to LED):
and finally the rear numberplate light:
With the spray job looming, I turned my attention to the inside of the car,namely the small spots of rust begining to appear on the inside of the car, a brush and sand back then a coat of hammerite to protect it:
As you can see only had time to sort out the passenger footwell before it went in for the spray job, but once back and time permitting, I will be doing the whole floor.
THE SPRAY JOB
So I left my car with the sprayer and looked forward to a couple of weeks walking back and forth everywhere.
I had a call after a couple of weeks from the sprayer explaining that he was having difficulty obtaining the parts as I wanted new sills and rear arches on both sides.
The next week and a trip up there to have a look at how things were progressing showed the progress:
As can be seen, alot of work going on.
Then D-day, the morning I went to pick it up:
And some picks in a better location:
Wiper arm has been removed as well, but have no pictures currently.
Fair bit left to do to it like any project car I guess, but extremely happy with the finish, just need to sort out the plastincs and get them looking new, new numberplates, respray the front wipers, refurb the alloys, piano black the front grilles....... oh the list goes on, lol.