Right ladies and gents project thread time, My names Jay and the car in question is an early spec MK2 Xr2. I bought the car in January 2009 on a whim basically. I had one 10-12 years ago and she was so rotten I had to scrap her, not having any way of restoring her, so to make up for my sins I bought this one.

The story behind this car was one day in Jan 09 I had a thought, I would really like a mk2 xr2 again, it must be red and early spec, so to ebay I went, and the only one was about 30 mile away and ending in about 5 min... so I bid and won, then the moment of realisation, no research, not seen and no idea what the going rate was, turns out she was a bit of a bargain(bearing in mind the missus had no idea) Picked the car up the day after in secret and tucked her in the garage.

When I got the car it had a fresh MOT and Tax and had been laid up for a long time. The side skirts were gloss black and for some reason the wrong back tyres.

 

Now I’ve been beavering away for a while now and I must give absolute credit to my missus as when this car turned up she knew exactly what the next umpteen years meant. No spare cash car parts everywhere, all my clothes ruined, manky hands permanently and finding random parts in the dishwasher, oh and a lot of road trips up and down the country.


Initial plans for the car were to track car it starting with a ERST engine as I always wanted a turbo one, anyway after doing the conversion and running it for a while I changed my plans and decided to go standard, original and clean. Boy there funTurbocharged, being such a light car the boost feels very aggressive

 

First up rear running gear

 

 

Pictures will be better soon on, old phone pics

 

Looks good dude!

 

 

Next up was to heat proof lacquer the rear brake parts, to stop rust and easy cleaning



Made some gaskets to go between Drum back plates and axle, 0.5mm industrial rubber

 

 

 

Cheers pal

 

Attention to detail like that is always worth seeing!

 

Top work. Keep the updates coming.

 

Top work pal, keep pics coming!

Only 5 mins down the road from me!

Nice GTE btw

 

Love the finish you've got on the running gear

Mmm... Standardgasm

Keep up the great work

 

Very, very nice. When you keep up this kind of work, this will be better than it left the factory!

 

Very cool.Nice car.Keep up the good work.

 

Thanks for the comments guys, appreciated. the Nova's not mine, my cousins LET and he lives right by you. Found a couple of anti roll bar pics...

Next up anti roll bar, the one in the picture below is the one I bought to do off the car to make life a little easier, before and after...

 

What process do you use to get the stuff so smooth before painting, and what paint have you been using? Looks so good

 

The rear roll bar was sand blasted first, the axle was done by hand..Never again . Generally I spend a lot of time on the prep of the metal work with small files and emery paper as the axle for example was covered in factory weld splatters and factory marks, so I spent time filing the weld splatters and shaping all the welds etc, all faces and flat edges of brackets etc were filed and re shaped as they were rough from factory. Several coats of U-pol etch primer followed by maybe 4-6 coates of Mipa high build primer (really good stuff very tough and easy flat back and cheap) and then flat it back so the imperfections of themetal are just showing through underneath, then one more good coat of high build, a light flat off then 3-5 medium coats of satin black, used Halfrauds satin black for the running gear simply because I can get it easily so it all matches in the end, and can be touched up easy in the future

 

Next up rear brake compensator thingies

 

Dont think ive seen the nova around tbh

 

Nice work mate keep it up

 

Not been on the road for 12-18 months tucked up in the garage, using his bike at the moment, also had a red GTE and another white GTE, so you might have seen him in one of them, Wrexham has always had a big nova following, see loads of nice ones about here, also seen a Satin red Cav Turbo and two saph Cossies in the last few weeks

 

Cheers pal, hope to.

 

Very nice, excellent work on the running gear too!

 

Next up Panhard rod and rear trailing arms, found a new Panhard but wasn't happy with the Finnish so filed all edges and gotrid of the weld splatter, shaped welds and painted it up. The Trailing arms were new and stripped back to re-paint. Whilst I had them stripped I filled in all the voids to stiffen them up, and then shaved excess with stanley blade. Also had a new Panhard rod Sticker made up.

 

Finally got a top tint Screen.

 

Awesome attention to detail mate, and thanks for the info on the paint you have been using

 

Good work so far. Not too far from me either

 

Cheers Pal, where are you?

 

Fan and housing sorted, housing was blasted, repaired (rust) painted in an epoxy high gloss high temp paint, chuffed how it came out, fan painted with VHT aluminium Paint

 

Cool Retro Alarm, im going to wire up to modern system I think.

 

Holywell.

Good work on the fan

 

Cheers pal, no your not far from me, lol just replied to you in another thread, Fail on my part, how you getting on with your car?

 

Yeah just seen that reply!

Been quite slow. Hoping to crack on with it and get it painted in the next few weeks before the cold weather sets in!!

 

Yeh happy days, need to get it done before it goes cold, also it isn't fun working on them when its cold, Im going to do the wheels over the winter in the spare room, and hit the car again in the spring.

 

Thats a good idea!!!

I have no spare rooms do do that as they're all taken up by my kids......

 

Once again well impressed with the level of finish you are getting on all the parts you are restoring. It's like NOS when you have finished, in fact better

 

Cheers pal, trying my best to do it right

why didn't I just build a track car like originally planned