Christmas 07 came early.

Yes I did treat myself.
Thanks to Robert offering his engine and gearbox for sale, I bit his arm off pending post accident damage.
Rob was ruining it as a 350ci, with his insane blower. Yep, nutter.
The engine was sent to Ken Coleman at EDA (Engine Data Analysis) for a check over.
After chatting to Ken, (he is a really nice chap and will bend over backwards to help). I decided to go ahead and have it stroked out and rebuilt to 383ci as I wanted a bit more standard power.
I decided to go with EFI rather than carb, as in my eyes fuel injection is the way forward and it was already there in Rob's garage for us to install and part of the deal.

Once it was rebuilt, Ken invited me up for its dyno run with Rob as he was there to set up the EFI for us when I arrived. Ken had it all running on carb.
First time with the EFI setup was a non starter as the fuel pump was dead. we found a replacement and then we found a couple of injectors were stuck/blocked so they had to be replaced as well as needing a new ignition amplifier module.
Poor Ken (a carb aholic) was cursing our EFI choice as he wasn't 100% familiar with it, but 100% dedicated to getting it running as sweet as it was with his carb setup.
He stuck with us though but we had to conceded defeat for today as it was a Saturday and too late in the day to get anything fixed or ordered.
I left for my long drive home, a little disappointed but happy to have had some experience fault finding alongside Rob and Ken. Huge eye opener! :)

I spoke to ken a few days later and all was running with a couple of new injectors.
3 Weeks later I managed to arrange to go up on a day off, hired a van as work didn't have one spare this time.

Hearing the beast run for the first time was a great feeling, then when he engaged the dyno machine, the deep rumble turned into a chest shaking roar as it mustered up all its soul to kick out roughly 440 ft/lb of torque and similar BHP in a car that will weigh about a Tonne! eek! :)
This was truly a great day. One I will remember until I run her again in the car on the road and Track.

I have a few more mods I want to add once its on the road to get some more power. But I will have to find out if its enough to make me shit myself first! Probably yes! :D lol

Heater Fitting

Well this was fun..... The trick is to grind off the left fixing lip and reposition the fixing holes with rivnuts.
Then using a cardboard template, transfer the holes into the bulkhead, check, recheck and then drill.

More sanding and polishing

Spent May and a bit of July and August slowly doing the tedious things.
First time round I went a bit too aggressive with the wet n dry on the doors so even after polishing, they still showed some scratches. I'm sure it wouldn't show in the sunlight, but I wasn't happy with my work.
I also saw some little bits that niggled me on various bits of the body that I just had to deal with.
Comes out nice eventually.EDIT: Just to add, you may find some drips and Runs of Gel coat on some places of the body. I found after trying to sand them, although stuck and dried on, they have not bonded to the skin. A firm but BLUNT edge will knock them off. I used a leg of a blade fuse flat side to remove the odd one and a larger bit of 5mm Blunted plate to remove clusters of them but find something that wont catch and scratch. You can use a finger nail on thinner runs. I figured this out after sanding 3 down to find that near the end they came off leaving a shiny dot in the middle of a sanded patch.

Door edge return

This had to be one of the most time consuming bits for me.
The inside edge is rough and I didn't realise it had to be ground back and filled with black gel coat filler. This took a while to figure out, then fill, file back, refill, file back, re..... you get the picture. The problem I had was getting the radius to follow the top edge. I eventually cut out a shape out of a plastic Evostick spreader and as I filled the gel coal I used it to form a continuous round edge.
I didn't get any pics as I was too focused on getting the bloody thing correct.

One tip for anyone, don't tackle this first like I did, do some smaller things with gel coat to get used to it. Mixing a large amount of gel I found near impossible not to get air bubbles trapped, which lead to pin holes as you sand and polish! :(

EDIT: (2012) A good tip someone on the club just mentioned was to get the correct combination of hardener - gel before attempting any repairs! e.g 1 teaspoon of gel, tested with 3, 4, 5 or 6 drops to find the correct mixture, allowing to set over night each time.

Trimming the boot & door edges

The edges are rough cut from GD so needed to be tidied up.
I used 2 bits of wood, top edge to run along the boot sill and a screw to score the line to be cut.
Similar was done to the door areas but with the bottom edge of the wood on the sill.

Front vent holes

The 3 oval holes at the front for oil cooler and brake vents were cut out with a Dremel. Cutting this way makes the cut edge facing in towards the body and well hidden.
Keep hold of the cut outs!
If you want to add a mesh behind the holes at a later date, you can use them to bend the mesh around. ;)

Made Frame.

Alot was done slowly over the months. Flash (Mould Join) lines have to be sanded down and blended in with 800 wet n dry grit through to 2000 grit.



I built a frame on wheels to rest the body on and be at a comfortable working height.




5ft wide by 8ft long seemed to be enough with the trestles screwed to it.
Works fine.