Hi I thought I'd put a thread up on my 3dr's progress as its been undergoing a restoration for almost 2 years now. I've owned the car since 2008 and whilst it's no concourse unmolestered example, its straight clean and built to be driven.I've raced it around Nurburg, done quarter mile events in it, it's spec is an A road racer using maxxed out modified T3 power, So when I eventually finish Restoring it, I look forward to giving Rsmat some competition around the Twisties!
Well the paint work started to look tired and faded, and I had a few rust rust bubbles, under the rear whale tail windscreen seal, and a 20p sized piece on the passenger door.
So I saved up for a respray, but before I got it painted I needed to re-underseal the
floor pan, and treat any rust and renew parts along the way.Hopefully you'll find
this a good read.Pictures to follow.
3 years ago
T3 4x4, t34 wheel rebuilt by Universal Turbo's.
Unfortunately I didn't take any pics before I started the floorpan, But it was just your average cossie with a good coating of underseal but looking dirty. Stripping back the underseal to the original paint really suprised me in how solid the old girl was/is for her age. The only rot was on the nearside sill, cutting it back it was about 50mm in length. So I welded in some galv steel and waxoyled the inner sills.
Just as I put a couple of spots on the galv steel the generator at my garage shit itself,it held me back a week.
My old sapph I sold to Tony who is in the pic.
With the beam off I stripped the beam back to bare metal and then etch primed
and hammerite on top. I couldn't afford powder coating both in money and time. I
fitted some polybush rear beam mounts but kept the original and superior inner trail arm bushes.
Fuel tank back on.
Fitted new suspension, Gaz adjustables with pi 25mm lowering springs, I will be changing the springs I'm not happy with how low the rear end is.
Diff is temporarily fitted until I have a rebuilt unit to swap over with.
Jaded and faded looking sorry for itself
So the deadline with using my dads driveway was almost up, (Too many projects over the years have pushed his patience, But he has love for the cossie so let me work on it).
The car was rolling minus the brakes, prop, etc etc, so it was ready for John from Jrc to spray it for me. Eventually in Dec 2011 I dropped my 3dr off to chris, I visited his workplace when I could, to strip the car down to save some money on labour.
Then I had to get my friend Rich to grp repair my rear arch kit as they were pooped from someone cutting them back to fit large wheels.
2012 think it was about July time when the car was ready to be picked up.
I took some pics about 3 weeks before it was ready and she was looking awesome.
John spent a lot of time on preparation and really did a great job.
