Author Topic: A G40 engined MK1 to be? counts right?  (Read 12546 times)

Offline z3i

  • Members
  • *****
  • Posts: 1484
A G40 engined MK1 to be? counts right?
« on: January 31, 2016, 03:43:29 pm »
Well.. I missed the forum, and found an excuse to come back on :D I sold my G40 a while ago as you know, had an affair with a rather sexy Japanese car, felt guilty and bought another VW. I really miss my G, I love the power delivery and the fact it was only a little 1.3 plus it sounded immense! and good on fuel! So after buying a few engines for my mk1 and not being happy with them then selling them on, I think ive settled for a G40 lump. Ive looked at every possible engine, they are all a bit boring or silly expensive. A g60 lump would be nice, but people want up to £1500 for a setup!! The Golf weighs as much as a G40 so will be just as fun :D I m going to put a wanted add up. but if anyone knows of one for sale let me know, even if its in bits. I dont mind, rebuilt a couple now :)

Heres my build thread so far (copied from retro rides where I originally posted it)




Well, I've been meaning to start a build thread for quite a while now and as I've reached a milestone in the progress of my car what better time to start!

As I sit here typing this on a borrowed laptop, I can't help but grin from ear to ear. I feel a huge sense of achievement; in the last 3 months I've worked as many possible weekends, evenings, overnights and holidays on what could possibly have been the most rotten MK1 golf on this island. A car that should have been sent to car heaven, with far more work required to get it even close to road legal than it's own value, but I've always loved working long hours on my cars. There's something about working all those weekends late into the evening, asking favour upon favour from friends to give up their free time at home in the warm to get their hands dirty, work all weekend with 3 hours sleep and give you a hand doing the impossible. Like stripping all the panels off a Polo and respraying the entire car in a weekend (when you told your manager your "just doing a few blow ins") it makes you really attached to your car. Its such an amazing feeling when you finally get to drive it, it makes it feel like so much more, you appreciate it and each drive of it is more like an event than just a drive.

I feel I should say now that this will probably be the last build thread I will do for a while and I'd like to tell people a bit about myself and my love of cars in detail rather than just a string of pictures (thats not to say you can't just scroll through the photos and piece it together, as thats just as fun) but I recommend you grab a cup of tea and prepare for a bedtime story.

A bit about my love for cars
I think the best place to start is at the beginning and with how much I love cars. Everyone into cars say's this but "I've always loved cars since I was kid",I really have. All of my toys growing up were just cars. My favourite was a Castrol replica 90's Toyota Celica. I've always loved watching rallying and touring cars from when I was little. I think my fascination came from my parents; my dad has always been motorbike obsessed and my step dad used to pit crew for a drag racing team, so I'd spend weekends with him watching drag racing at santa pod from a young age.

In year 10 of school I did work experience at my local garage and loved it, so much so that I got my first job there at the age of 14! I used to work Saturday mornings and as much as I could in my holidays. Not long after this I got my first taste of owning a vehicle. At 15 I got my first 50cc bike, a very early Aprilia RS50. It was an absolute wreck, the guy who owned it had used it to rag around a field but still, I was 15 and just got my first bike! Not long after this I left school and knew exactly what I wanted to do. Study mechanics at college of course! After a few years at college, 3 motorbikes and a car later I landed an apprenticeship at BMW as a mecahnic. I felt incredibly lucky. I met some great like minded friends there that have helped motivate and inspire me on my projects. Once I'd finished my mechanics apprenticeship I was then offered another apprenticeship within BMW studying paint spraying! It meant £3.50 an hour for another two years and emptying bins but I didn't care, I'd have two qualifications under my belt!

During my time at BMW I made some great friends who were more into their retro rides, which spurred me onto purchase my first old and "almost classic car". It was an obvious purchase though of course, everyone must own one in their lifetime - A MK2 Golf. I absolutely loved it! It was a 3 door in capri green, a 1.6 driver. It was the slowest car I'd ever driven but it was so much fun, got so much attention and was immaculate. The car was low mileage and hadn't been driven for two years, so naturally I drove it two hours home the longest way around the M25 and even being it's first run after those two years it didn't miss a beat.









After a while I got a bit bored of the lack of power. So I grabbed Dan, my apprenticeship mate from BMW and went to look at 5 different MK2 Gti's in one day. The last one we came across was in a farmyard and as we walked up the drive we passed a MK2f Polo G40. I'd never seen one before but it was capri green, the same colour as my Golf. As we got closer to his house we noticed his yard was strewn with many Polos, Golfs and anything old. He had a very rare MK2 Polo non face-lift G40 from Germany, which I'm sure only 500 in the world were made(?) I had a look at the Golf and it turned out not to be worth it but the little Polo had caught my attention, I loved the shape. I didn't know anything about a G40 then, so I signed up to the G40 forum and enquired about the car. As it was only down the road I went and had a quick passenger ride and a proper look over the car. It was dark and raining when I arrived but the owner took me out anyway. It was tiny inside compared to my Golf, rattly and generally smelt pretty bad but as we pulled out and the guy got onto the main road, he put his foot down and very abruptly I was thrown into the back of my seat. I was not expecting this! Everything outside started to become a blurr and before I knew it we were screaming down a country road at night in the rain in a poor handling car at 110mph in 4th! The smile was so big on my face  and it stayed like that for a few days. As soon as we got back to his place I told him I'd have it and agreed to pay full asking price. I didn't have any money so I asked my nan and £2500 later I was driving away with possibly the most fun I've ever had in a car.

By now I'd had 10 cars/bikes at the age of 20. However the Polo was not all what it seemed. It turned out to be a bit of a bodge. It had been fiddled around with at some point. For example it had a fully forged bottom end (not to my knowledge when I bought the car)and a remap for g60 injectors but with g40 injectors fitted. During my two years of ownership of the G40 I made some fantastic friends of the forum, learnt a heck of a lot about modifying cars and really got my first taste of modifying and just how addictive it is. As well as driving the most incredible roads in the world on an amazing road trip, by the time I'd finished with the Polo I'd resprayed it and sympathetically restored it.























After a few 2000 mile road trips in the Polo and using it every day to get to work, it had clearly proven it was ... you could say, unreliable. So after coming back from a Wales road trip I decided to start looking again. A good friend of mine who I spent most my free time with at college whilst doing my apprenticeship had a DC2 Integra. I loved the car, it was so much fun and most definitely the best car I've been a passenger in. Coincidently just up the road from my girlfriends house was a very 'rough around the edges' dc2 Integra. It had been there for years with a 'for sale' sign in it's window so I went and had a look. There on the window was a price in small print... £2000.. I couldn't believe how cheap it was. It turned out to be a JDM 1996 type R! The reason it was so cheap turned out to be because the guys mum was sick of it being on the driveway, so she decided the sale price herself and put it in the window! Haha. Again, I didn't have the money and I like to make things difficult, so I sourced a standard g40 engine in bits from a new friend I'd made on the G40 forum (by far the best forum ive been on, everyone is friendly and helpful, I've made many, many great friends on there) I converted the G40 back to standard and sold all my modified bits to afford the very under-priced Integra. A few handshakes later and there I was driving around in possibly the filthiest Dc2 in the UK. Ihe guy had used it as a daily for his kids and dogs for a while and then left it standing for years. During my ownership I resprayed the car at a workshop I was sharing with a friend and rebuilt the cylinder head as the cambelt snapped. I also broke my Nurburgring virginity and got caught speeding in Switzerland which led to myself and some road trip buddies being banned from the country as well as getting a 1200 Euro speeding fine!! ...But more on road trips later.











By this time I'd also landed my dream job. Restoring classic cars. I was so lucky, they wanted me to do mechanical and paint, I couldnt believe it! I got the job around the time of my birthday and I havent stopped smiling since. I love it there. My first job was to fully restore a series one etype which took me 7 months. My manager is more like a friend and the guys there are just as crazy as I am about cars. The owner of the land is so down to earth and owns 40+ classic cars himself!! Lotus Cortina, E9 batmobile and  Etypes amoung them . Since working at Pittlane I've learnt an incredible amount. It's the most rewarding job in the world. You get to know the customers whos cars your working on and you get to see just how enthusiastic they are about their cars which is great!











The workshop was a prefab, but we dug the foundations ourselves (with the help of other crazy friends) we kitted inside out with insulation, lighting, an extraction for painting as well as all the tools you could ever need to restore a car. It was fantastic! Unfortunately, due to me living so far away and wanting to do my own cars more so than making money, it didn't work out. The workshop lives on currently storing his stunning mk1 golf and lovely immaculate BMW z3.

Many thanks for reading so far, I hope you've enjoyed reading it as much as I have writing it.

Taylor





Offline z3i

  • Members
  • *****
  • Posts: 1484
Re: A G40 engined MK1 to be? counts right?
« Reply #1 on: January 31, 2016, 03:45:24 pm »
My first taste of driving abroad

I thought I'd post up a link to my first experience of driving abroad. It was posted by a friend a while ago on a few forums as he did a fantastic write up but I feel I would like to post it on here too as it's a big part of my love of cars and got me addicted to road trips.

http://retrorides.proboards.com/thread/184905/creating-own-luck-european-roadtripping

I have posted my favourite photos up from the road trip on here as there are some that aren't in the write up




















 









 































































Offline z3i

  • Members
  • *****
  • Posts: 1484
Re: A G40 engined MK1 to be? counts right?
« Reply #2 on: January 31, 2016, 03:46:05 pm »
Continued..

Ok, so that pretty much brings me up to the Golf. I'm now 24 and managed to own 15 cars/bikes some of them I'm glad to see the back of, some of them I miss and would love to own again.

Now, apparently at 24 your meant to push aside all your hobbies and interests in the hope to save a silly amount of money and buy a very over priced house (meh). I had taken out a small loan and needed to pay it off to save properly. This meant selling the much loved DC2. It was a monstrously hard decision to make, it was such a good looking car, the car I first went round the ring in and the car I got banned from Switzerland in. Despite all this, I still couldn't get the dam thing to understeer! The handling was impeccable. But it had to go, which left a rather big hole. This was the first time since I'd starting buying cars/bikes that I was without a project. It didn't last long before I was spending every spare second of my life on the internet looking at cars to buy. My dream car is a Datsun 240z and I wanted one bad, so bad infact I was contemplating spending my entire mortgage savings on one and putting myself back at square one!. At around the same time my friend had sold his MX5 which by now was like part of his family. I found it hard enough selling the Integra, to him selling the MX5 must have been like selling a limb. So with both us in the market for new retro cars we began looking at absolutely everything. For my own good I think I had managed to convince myself that my other half would kill me in my sleep if I had spent all my money on a Datsun, no matter how pretty it was.

As time went on I got more and more desperate, by now I just wanted anything! Cafe racer, motocross bike, lawn mower, jet propelled pig with saddle everything had crossed my mind. I infact came so very close to buying a rotten Lancia Fulvia. To rub it in even more, my manager had just bought a genuine rust free UK RHD 240z. I sat inside it and cried. I tried so hard to convince everyone that spending £12k on a classic car was a good idea, but it wasn't to be. I suppose that's the thing with dream cars, that's all they are, dreams. Not long after my friend I had shared the workshop with the gorgeous yellow Mk1 Golf sent me a link to a "rust free" project for sale on the MK1 owners forum. I'd always loved the little MK1's, ever since I met Dan, the other apprentice at BMW. It was his dream car and I just loved the shape.

So not much later that week I had somehow bought the car, convinced my Dad and my other half to remove a nice chunk from my mortgage savings and purchase the "rust free" Golf with no engine. It was a good 5 hours away and I don't have a licence to tow. So I asked my manager if I could borrow the pickup, the trailer and a Kiwi to pick my car up. The following weekend we set of in the early hours of the morning, 5:30 to be exact. I didn't need help waking up as I hadn't actually slept from the excitement. On the way there the seller of the car text me to say he had found a little bit of rust on the sunroof drainage holes that he had not noticed before. I thought this was strange, but I was £200 down from the thirsty diesel truck and paying my Kiwi friend to miss the first half of the Rugby. When we arrived the seller took me around the road to a lock up where the car was being stored. The Golf was advertised as "all welding done" and "Underside sealed". He wheeled the car out and it was slammed to the floor. I tried my best to get a good look underneath but couldn't from it being so low. I had a quick look around the car and although it was a little rough around the edges I couldn't see any nasty rot, just a lot of surface rust (or what I thought was surface rust). Before I'd even agreed to buy the car it was being loaded onto the trailer, my friend keen to make it home on a slim chance to catch all the Rugby. I shook hands, handed over my cash, did a 457 point turn in the pickup to get out and was on my way. The drive up wasn't so bad but the drive back was a race to catch the rugby. The Golf had no windows and every time I looked behind me a bit more of the headlining had fired it's way off down the motorway. By the time we we had arrived home I'd added headlining to the already big list of things to do. So the car was unloaded onto my parents driveway and a £30 Halfrauds car cover special thrown over it. My Mum wasn't quite sure just what I had bought. Apparently you normally buy cars with engines and mot's, but I believe free time and skin on your knuckles is far too overrated.

MK1 Golf
The first 2 seconds I had available I began stripping the car. The roof was a mess, I removed the sunroof panel to find quite an impressive amount of rot. I had no choice but to cut the sunroof panel out and go on from there. Loud noises and a lot of swearing later it was out with minimal damage to my roof.













Not off to a good start. I then begun stripping the car to a bare shell. It became more and more apparent that I'd bought a very nasty rotten Golf, but I was £1500 down and still full of enthusiasm. It wasn't long before I was cutting metal out with the hope to borrow a welder, fabricate the panels I needed at work and weld them on before winter set in. I just didn't realise how monstrously rotten this car was. As I hacked away I was still yet to find solid metal. before I knew it, the corner of my car was missing and there was no easy way out of what I'd started. I wanted a project, and damn did I have one. I found the most abysmal welding and repair panels I had ever seen. New outer arches had been mastic glued to rotten inners! New metal had been welded to rot and possibly the most bent chassis rails possible without the metal splitting. It was so nasty I lost a serious amount of enthusiasm.



























I knew there was no way I was ever going to be able to repair this kind of damage on my driveway with winter closing in. After a lengthy chat with my manager and some damn fine timing, the Golf was being taken into work. I'd struck a deal with my manager. The deal was; he would pay our metal work guy to sort all the rot on my car and for every hour he spent on it, I would owe my manager an hour out of my own time to work on his own personal fleet of cars. It was a good deal, yes I was gutted that I wouldn't be doing all the metal work, but unless I wanted the car on my parents driveway for the next ten years I had no other choice. I still stuck in and tried to get a bit of the metal work done, but I was mostly occupied with taking every tiny bit of the car back to bare metal. I love doing all the work to my car myself but on this one occasion I couldn't as I was about to spend 100's of hours prepping it for paint. As the car came into work it got a nice spot on the 4 post ramp. At this point I really didn't think the car could be any more rotten...what a fool I was. I stripped all the suspension, fuel tank and any gubbins underside to find the horror had continued into the underneath. Just about any place for a Golf to rot, was rotten.















The list felt endless. The rot had crept into every possible place it could. With absolutely everything stripped of the car and having uncovered all possible rust I got on the phone to Crazy Quiffs and made a huge order for parts. I was lucky and managed to get a very good condition second hand scuttle as well as the entire A post section, front floor pans, rear axle mounts, rear chassis legs, front panel, inner wings, inner and outer arches, fuel filler panel, lower rear panel, outer sills and an entire sheet of metal to fabricate panels I couldn't source. Unfortunately after all this, I still had one massive problem. There was a gaping rotten hole in my roof. But I decided I'd come up with a plan for that in the many months of fitting all the other panels.
And so.. work started..

Thanks again for reading
Taylor

Offline z3i

  • Members
  • *****
  • Posts: 1484
Re: A G40 engined MK1 to be? counts right?
« Reply #3 on: January 31, 2016, 03:46:49 pm »
'Sigh' massive frustration! Just spent three hours updating this for my internet browser to crash and loose it all!

Ok - I wont be writing anywhere near as much as I've lost a serious amount of enthusiasm from that. I'll let the pictures do the talking, I'm sorry if this is a bit rushed but I'm so damn annoyed!

With the car on the ramp at work in the warm(ish) workshop and access to all the tools I need, I had some serious motivation. Over Christmas my work closes down for two weeks, so my plan was to get the car painted whilst everyone was away. Last year I painted my managers MK1 Golf over the Christmas break. His had that common problem with the roof, you know, the one where the dealership some 30 odd years ago thought it was a good idea to cut a gaping hole in your roof and plop in a sieve. So I had two months to get the car as close to paint as I could, which isn't very long with the amount of work needed. Plus over those two weeks I would need to do all the filler work, sealing up, priming etc.

I started off trying to do as much metal work as possible as Adam (the guy doing my metal work) was working on paying customers cars around mine, but as it went on he ended up working more and more on mine. There were alot of panels that needed to be fabricated and Adam has a knack for forming complex and intricate shapes from sheet metal. Very good at compound curves. He would work on my car during the day and I would work on it nearly every evening as soon as work finished until around 10pm. I tried to get in as many weekends as possible too but before I knew it December was creeping up on me. Each evening I would spend all my time taking a section of the car back to bare metal and resin epoxy priming - a fantastic metal substrate sealer which provides probably the best corrosion protection.

First up was the nasty A post section. It was quite a daunting task. Lots of measurments were taken from the other side as the easiest option was to graft an entire A post from a cabrio into it's place. I did originally fabricate loads of little repair panels, but abandoned that idea.











When I first bought the car I intended it to be restored to factory spec, but the more I worked on it the more I wanted to make it my own. Plus I thought silver was a bit of a boring colour. I decided to get best access to everything I needed to cut out the rain tray. Then I decided that it was rubbish and I didn't like it anyway. I also decided to weld up the millions of holes in the engine bay and worry about how to get important things like fuel and electronical jiggery pokery to my engine at another time. One thing I did want was a hydraulic clutch. I was sick of constantly breaking pedal boxes and clutch cables in my G40. I'm not a fan of smoothed engine bays. I wanted my car to be practical so I could drive it as much as possible. I decided on a semi smoothed bay for two reasons, one its easier to maintain and secondly, theres alot more room for whatever engine I plan to put in there.



Managed to get a very good condition scuttle with A posts attached, much better profile than those repo ones



The ends needed a bit of work though



I started in the bay, taking it back to bare metal each evening and spraying. It was going pretty well considering how nasty it was.











Some very intricate panels I couldnt get a hold of were fabricated and fettled in. Adam is really incredible at making complex shapes from sheet metal. I'm glad he did the fabrication as the shapes are identical to factory





I ordered new inner wings as mine had been repaired badly, as well as a front panel because it was very cheap and fantastic quality. Mine wasnt rotten but was very poor condition



Panels above the turrets were fabricated from sheet metal.











Continuing to take everything back to bare metal and prime (note the black areas are just because I ran out of grey epoxy primer)







Fantastic fabricated repair panel for where the heater matirx had rotted the bulk head.













It took long enough just to get the bay back to bare metal and in epoxy, but it was rather pleasing

Sorry if it wasn't much of a read, I may update it at some point. Just feeling a bit meh after 3 hours of solid writing and descriptions of what I was doing in each picture vanished
but thanks for reading

Offline z3i

  • Members
  • *****
  • Posts: 1484
Re: A G40 engined MK1 to be? counts right?
« Reply #4 on: January 31, 2016, 03:47:26 pm »
I decided that the battery tray was a bit of rot point too. So drilled it out to relocate to the boot, as well as the expansion tank, I want to fit a top fill rad for more room, and use the washer bottle in the boot for the fron screen.

Work started on the Ns with the floor pans. my chassis rail were so beaten up. The spot welds were drilled out and it was removed, repaired and then re welded to the new floor pan. once the pan was welded in I primed it. was very pleasing to see a straight chassis rail again.



New inner sills were fabricated too. i didnt want just a flat inner sill like most repair panels so i ensured Adam would make them as factory and they looked perfect, was really happy with them













The old arches were tiger sealed to rotten and inners. I wanted to weld on the curved bit of the arch to avoid heat distortion, but due to such a bodging mess i had to weld on the quarter panel. but it came out really well with minimal distortion











Now The sills and floor pan were done, the Ns inside A post looked so pleasing!

Before




After


Finished off the bay in epoxy, flatted it down and started the filler. I only wanted a thin skim of filler as i didnt want it getting hot and cracking. It came out really well, but i wasnt fussed about it being perfectly smooth. Its an engine bay at the end of the day. After the filler i sprayed 3 good coats of Lechlar high build











Took the NSF wheel arch back to bare metal with a knotted wheel on a grinder. was tough work. its very loud and the grinder want to keep fighting you so you have to man handle it into the sealer. then went over the top with a strip and clean wheel on a drill. gets any rust of amazingly and takes it back to clean metal. you would really be amazed at the amount of rust under the sealer. would have probably taken years to come through, but the sealer becomes porous eventually. I'm sure there are many mk1s out there with rust under the original sealer. I'm glad i took all mine back to bare metal to get at every bit







Offline z3i

  • Members
  • *****
  • Posts: 1484
Re: A G40 engined MK1 to be? counts right?
« Reply #5 on: January 31, 2016, 03:48:00 pm »
The rear axle mounts were so insanly rotten too that I decided to replace them, along with the rear chassis legs







The NS was pretty bad but nothing compared to the OS. The rear axle mount was just completely obliterated! suprised the rear beam hadnt fallen into the floor

New inners were made up too







The inner sill at the rear was non existant











The rear seat belt mount/ filler area was completely corroded too, so loads of little bits were fabricated and stiched together



Possibly the most abysmal repairs ive ever seen! what was the bloke thinking! though my car was very rotten, atleast i know its all mint now and i bought mine fairly cheap. must be loads of pricey ones out there with dodgy repairs





Rears of the floors had also been poorly repaired. So it all came out and repaired properly



Once the floor and sills were finished i stripped the pans back to bare metal and epoxied









Fuel breather repaired with a repair nice plate, fuel filler and chassis leg









Offline z3i

  • Members
  • *****
  • Posts: 1484
Re: A G40 engined MK1 to be? counts right?
« Reply #6 on: January 31, 2016, 03:48:35 pm »
With both sides done i ordered a new back panel because mine had been repaired really badly. I wanted to get a small rear lights rear panel. but £200 for a rusty old one. was just too pricey. and the standard wheel well repair. If this hasnt rusted on yours then it hasnt left the factory yet





Deleted the towning hook. didnt see much use for it unless you crash head first into a ditch. In which case i would be too busy crying to care about how they towed it out. Probably from the rear axle



Either side of the qaurter window was rotten



Now onto the scary bit, Up until now i wasnt really sure what i wanted to do to the roof. After my manager having a new one fitted to his and seeing how distorted it can be i was put off. A carbon roof would have been perfect, but at £800, no chance. so the cheapest option was to glue in a plate. but i didnt want a bodge job, i wanted it done properly so it was as good as having a new roof fitted. So after alot of research and discusion. I got hold of some very expensive £160 mercedes chassis leg glue. If i crashed the car at 160mph, atleast id know my sunroof would hold up. The sunroof hole was cut out bigger, all the way to the lines in the roof to make the sheet panel easier to fit. A piece of metal was formed to the same curvature as the roof and the edges joggled as so it would sit flush. the 2k chassis leg glue was to be spread into the gap around the panel as it dries hard as metal. The instructions for using the glue are insane! have to clean it 327323 times and then spray some crazy red stuff on. I feel gluing a sunroof panel in with this stuff was insulting it. another support brace was made so the panel would follow the curve and not want to relax back to flat. all in all it went very well and couldnt be more pleased















The rot hole and aerial hole were welded up which went very well too. i was reall uneasy during this, worried it would distort the roof, to my suprise it came out really well. and the whole job amazingly required less filler than my managers new roof! I was really happy with the result





With all the metal work done i started to bare metal everything and epoxy prime it all. stripping the underside back to bare metal was incredibly tough! trying to man handle that violant angle grinder above your head is hard work! many a times did the knotted wheel catch a bit of metal and fire the angle grinder towards my face! my arms would be killing me! and the rear section of the floor took 12 hours!

But so worth it!

















~









After 12 hours of battling my car. was shattered, so much metal and rust in my hair it felt like straw! took 4 washes to get the water to not run pure black!


Offline z3i

  • Members
  • *****
  • Posts: 1484
Re: A G40 engined MK1 to be? counts right?
« Reply #7 on: January 31, 2016, 03:49:09 pm »
With all the metal work done and all the sealer removal i was on a roll! It was the Wednesday before Christmas and I had been at work all day with a few hours in the afternoon for my christmas do at my managers pub. In his back garden, Yes hes that awesome he has a retro working pub in his back garden. Anyway, that Wednesday day i decided to work all day, all night and all day Thursday. I wanted to get the underside finished and the bay painted. It was a monumental amount of work to try and carry out so i didnt really stop the entire time. But i managed to get it all done! so went home for christmas with a huge smile

I used some really good poly sealer, as good as factory. i wasnt so worried about how it looked. more the fact that i wanted to make sure it was on there thick and had been brushed thoroughly into all the seams/welded areas

















Also made sure to run loads around the inner of the arches. didnt want them rusting out again



Using a terason splat sealer gun i sprayed loads of thick sealer on to give it the same finish as factory. this stuff is perfect because it creates a rubberised finish that stone chips bounce off









I didnt hold back on sealer. want the car to be used as much as possible



I'm not a fan of normal stone chip, being a single pack product i just cant see it being in any durable at all. So i ordered some 2k stone chip from Upol that hasnt been out long, its tintable and perfect for the underside of your car. also dries rock hard, but is incredibly still flexible. so will be brilliant as it will flex as the rubberized coating does. i did a few tests with this first before i deemed it ok to use on my car





Proof i worked all night haha









Once i had finished the underside i flatted the primer in the bay and sealed it up until it was an acceptable time to ring my dad and ask for push into the oven







Offline z3i

  • Members
  • *****
  • Posts: 1484
Re: A G40 engined MK1 to be? counts right?
« Reply #8 on: January 31, 2016, 03:49:41 pm »
Annnddd!!... the most important bit! The colour choice!...... I went for cream. It's such a lovely colour, I don't really like WHITE cars, but it's such a perfect cream for the car. It matches the car, matches its age and still stands out. I love it! I thought about Riviera blue but it's a bit too 'in your face'. Cream is also low maintenance, as I plan to use the car all the time I didnt want to be washing it every five seconds. Thats not to say I'm not going to keep it immaculate!













Also not related, but after that i made a really cool lamp for my other halves old man





After working a solid 29 hours with minimal brakes I felt dead, but it was christmas eve and I needed to drive 70 miles to my other halfs!! I'm really amazed I didnt fall asleep and crash! ...probably need to stop these working all night marathons.

I had a few days off over christmas to recover by eating as much as I could and then back too it.

Stripped back any dodgy bits of paint on the car back to bare metal and epoxy primed.









Now, I'm not very good at filler work so this next part was one hell of a learning curve for me. I was infact going to give up at this point and not get the car done. If it wasnt for a text from Morgie saying he would give me a hand on new years day(!!) I would have given up. In fact I really can't give a big enough shout out to Morgie, Benson and my girlfriend for some serious help and masses of motivation.

Filler work was the only thing I struggled at, but I'd say I'm  pretty adept now. It certainly came out really well - not perfect but I was happy enough with it, mainly the roof which had far surpassed my expectations!













I couldn't be happier with the roof, it still needed a fair amount of filler but nowhere near as much as you would think, and no deeper than a fairly big sized dent in a modern bodyshop. I was damn impressed I managed to get all the filler work done in two days (!) as there was at least 4 days worth of work there.

Primed the car with some super thick slick sand.





With the help of morgie on new years day we got the entire car flatted and cleaned out, which was one hell of a dusty job. The following day Benson came up to give me a hand too (owns a lovely dolly sprint) Both those (normally useless) homos gave me a hand and saved me a huge amount of time. I was planning to spray it that evening so it gave us the whole day to mask it up and seal any bits on the outside to.



















I sealed anywhere I thought water could potentially get in or pool. I also did the tops of the gutters and the bottoms of the apeture seals on all the windows as well as the door opening. So when the rubber seals are on top if any water makes it past the seals it wont be able to get inbetween the metal panels.

Offline z3i

  • Members
  • *****
  • Posts: 1484
Re: A G40 engined MK1 to be? counts right?
« Reply #9 on: January 31, 2016, 03:50:13 pm »
It was getting on for 4pm on the saturday after Christmas, both my mates, my girlfriend and her dad had turned up to watch me paint! It was quite unnerving to say the least!

It required 4 coats of base as it didnt cover so well, I would of used a white undercoat but we only had grey wet on wet primer.



But it all went well! Minimal crap in paint and only a little dry here and there (I didnt know the thinning ratio of the Lechlar lacquer so took an estimated guess but it still came out like honey) I think I did well considering I was nervous with everyone watching





Was ecstatic with how well the roof came out!

~



















With all of us on a massive high, we headed back to Bensons for good pizza, beers and to qoute every line from the first Fast and the Furious film... Which my girlfriend was quite amused by, and might have even enjoyed the film as well as getting some inspiration for her smart car...

Offline z3i

  • Members
  • *****
  • Posts: 1484
Re: A G40 engined MK1 to be? counts right?
« Reply #10 on: January 31, 2016, 03:50:40 pm »
During the following week back at work I carried on with the car, stone chipping the lower sills and in the bumper mount holes. As well as maybe going a bit insane with the waxoyle.

With the underside of the car not actually being visible I wasnt too fussed about what it really looked like. I plan to drive the car every day during the summer and take it on as many road trips as I can all over the world. Planning hopefully to drive the arctic circle with it in maybe 2017. So I wanted the underside and engine bay to be really well protected. I lashed the underside in waxoyle as well as any box sections and seams. I cant rate the Bilt and Hamber stuff enough! It's incredible and it eventually dries so it won't stay tacky causing everything stick to it (It's still wet in the pictures) With the underside of my car being white, I can see when the waxoyle has deteriorated and washed off so I can re-apply some.













All in all I've managed to get 9 litres of waxoyle onto the car, into every crevice and box section possible.













I wasnt sure on the bay, but it does wash off with solvent degreaser, so if I'm not happy with it I can just wash it off.

Offline z3i

  • Members
  • *****
  • Posts: 1484
Re: A G40 engined MK1 to be? counts right?
« Reply #11 on: January 31, 2016, 03:51:06 pm »
And pretty much up to date!

This weekend i finished the inside, went over any scabs of rust with a strip and clean wheel, then sanded it all down, 2k etch primed any bare metal, sealed up. stone chipped the floor for some extra protection, wet on wet primed and painted with some 2k cream







































I spent today waxoyling the inside of the car, unfortunatly forgot pictures. But with any luck the car shell is all ready to go home, ready for a refit
i will be removing all the suspension first and getting it painted/re bushed

sorry for not much to read, i will probably update bits at a time. like i said i did get it all written out but all got deleted
Also apologise for my terrible rushed grammer, that will also be getting sorted

many thanks, i hope you enjoyed
Taylor

Offline Jester

  • Members
  • *****
  • Posts: 483
  • I have to return some videotapes.
Re: A G40 engined MK1 to be? counts right?
« Reply #12 on: January 31, 2016, 04:34:43 pm »
Glad you're back Taylor!.. you've had quite a selection of cars.

The amount of work you've already put into the mk1 is insane, can't wait to see the progress on it.

Offline z3i

  • Members
  • *****
  • Posts: 1484
Re: A G40 engined MK1 to be? counts right?
« Reply #13 on: January 31, 2016, 05:09:52 pm »
Glad you're back Taylor!.. you've had quite a selection of cars.

The amount of work you've already put into the mk1 is insane, can't wait to see the progress on it.

Thank you mate! Glad to be back! missed the G40 forum :D

haha, yeah same! cant wait to see progress on it either! :P

Offline tommy897

  • Members
  • *****
  • Posts: 6
Re: A G40 engined MK1 to be? counts right?
« Reply #14 on: January 31, 2016, 06:24:23 pm »
Incredible work! amazing finish on the paint!! Fair play to you