the motivation to get going with a little job that's been tucked in my garage for a while.
Here's a general shot of it and if you peep through your fingers with
your eyes closed it doesn't look too bad.
I'm not yet totally convinced that it is restorable. It certainly isn't a financial proposition but that’s not
why we do it is it ?
With the right help, advice and encouragement from DDKers I’ll
either sell it on (too painful) or restore it but very very slowly.
The dream is to get it to something like this –
certainly cosmetically but not necessarily mechanically.
911 running gear and wheels would be nice and so would more
poke than a flat 4. I WANT 6 pots but 911 lumps are such silly
money that it’s out of the question. I’d quite like the challenge
of trying something non Porsche or VW i.e. watercooled but
that’ll take even more time. I’ve got some Type 4 engines kicking
about so if nothing interesting has turned up by the time the resto
is finished I’ll probably put the biggest and best of those in as a
‘medium term’ measure. But it would be nice to do everything all
at the same time. I’m also veering towards converting to RHD
but that’s not 100% certain yet.
However, for the next couple of years it’s back to reality. I’m
making a rotisserie and organising my garage to store all the
bits as they come off. I’ll be stripping the paint with Nitromors
and elbow grease. My intention is to do as much work as possible
myself and only farm out the welding/panelbashing and final paint.
I’ve always had the impression that the car is completely rotten
but some recent digging around with a big screwdriver now make
me think it’s not too bad after all. Yes it has problems on the
right hand side such as this
and this
and this
The left hand side is similar but over much smaller areas.
The bonnet is rotten all round the front edge and almost
certainly beyond repair
On the plus side the hell hole is a lot better than it should be
mainly because the battery had gone to live in the boot – probably
quite early on.
What did scare me was the floor but as you can see it’s far from being
Flintstone spec thanks mainly to a good larruping of something black
and sticky on the inside and tons of underseal on the outside.
What I thought was cascading rust was delaminating underseal – not
necessarily a good thing I know but the only place I could make
a hole in the floor was under the seat mounts.
With some trepidation I did this –
Owzat ! Roof off and both doors open and it’s tummy doesn’t touch the ground.
I even put one foot on the sill and bounced it gently – the suspension
moved rather than the bodyshell creaking and afterwards the doors
shut perfectly as they had before.
Here are the shut lines
Not too bad are they ?
Funny looking bulge in the LH sill cover – taking those off is the next job
and then get some friendly rust experts round to give an opinion.
I intend to find out some history if I can – the clock is in kph so it’s a
Continental car and so far I know that it’s spent time in Southend
(might explain the corrosion), Leicester and Solihull. The clock shows
a slightly wonky 38000 ks.
Meaningless I know at this age but look at the seats –
apart from some cat fluff they are near perfect, no rips, tears or scuffs anywhere.
The throttle pedal rubber is also un marked and there’s no split in the dash
( It’s possible that they’re not original) but it may be relatively low mileage even
if it isn’t 38000 km. Why that matters to me, I don’t know.
It’s certainly done less than 20 miles in the last 19 years –
and they were on the back of a lorry.
It’s a 72 car which was imported in 74 and at the moment
I think the engine is an 1800 T4. I’ll find the number and
hopefully someone here will confirm.
Am I right in thinking Swansea will give you a list of previous owners ?
It has had some repairs in the past – this patch on the
sill below the indent is all I’ve found so far.
What I would like to know is what chimp did this ?
I can see WHY, but that close to a seatbelt mount ?
And as for this –
What for –
That’s been done with a bolster chisel – quite apart from his choice of weapon,
is there anything in there to be got at ?
Perhaps it’s full of drugs – remember French Connection ?
That’s about it for now – hope I've not bored anyone - more pics after Christmas.
Nice gold stripes eh ?
