Why is the ratio of 5:2 considered a good idea? We spend far too much of our time working....
Whinging aside, looks like we need to take the Pinto block and gearbox up to MNR to make sure it all fits together nicely. Shame that it's still in quite a few pieces, but that's sod's law for you... :)
Not much is going to happen this weekend, we're having the house valued next week, so there are some diy jobs that need doing before they come, mainly hanging 4 doors upstairs.... I think Claire's dad is going to come over on Sunday and give us a hand with that.
Friday, 30 March 2007
Monday, 26 March 2007
The weekend's work
Swmbo and I made it out to the garage on Sunday for some graft on the donor bits. We cleaned up the engine block (a combination of the wire wheel attached to a drill and kurust stuff), then painted it in VHT silver. It now looks pretty shiny (more so than I was expecting), but I reckon we'll need some more for the gearbox housing.....
Also stripped the valves & valve gear out of the head, remembering to keep them all in numbered freezer bags. The valves were pretty well coated in coke, lumps of which had already started falling off, so they were given a bit of a clean up with some emery cloth. The rest of the stuff had the oil washed off with paraffin.
The rear brake calipers that Claire's dad gave us are pretty well rusted tight - a soaking in plusgas should hopefully get the pistons moving (although the tool to twist them properly would also help), and I need to find somewhere to get a service kit for them from......
Some progress so far pics to follow when I've dragged them off the camera.....
Also stripped the valves & valve gear out of the head, remembering to keep them all in numbered freezer bags. The valves were pretty well coated in coke, lumps of which had already started falling off, so they were given a bit of a clean up with some emery cloth. The rest of the stuff had the oil washed off with paraffin.
The rear brake calipers that Claire's dad gave us are pretty well rusted tight - a soaking in plusgas should hopefully get the pistons moving (although the tool to twist them properly would also help), and I need to find somewhere to get a service kit for them from......
Some progress so far pics to follow when I've dragged them off the camera.....
Sunday, 25 March 2007
First post - 6 weeks to go........
A Long, long time ago, in a galaxy far far away (well, Oxford in about y2k)..........
Claire (my girlfriend - aka swmbo) and I started getting into the idea of building a kit car after the departure of our Mini 1275 GT to the great scrapyard in the sky. We were further egged on by Claire's dad Ron, who was interested in building a GT40 replica (until he saw the costs!) and visiting loads of shows, so we tagged along as well.
After we finished Uni, we decided we were going to go ahead and build one. Over the years we had looked at Tiger, Dax, F27, MK, Luego and Mac #1, but without the money to go ahead and buy one.... 3 years ago however, we took the first plunge and bought ourselves a 2.0 litre sierra sapphire, E reg, from Ebay for 99 quid. We drove about 200 miles each way to collect it, then the next day started taking bits off it.
A house purchase got in the way slightly, and we ended up moving the Sierra, half of it in boxes, to our new home (and nice big garage), where it got in the way for about 18 months....
Fast-forward slightly to today, and all the useful bits (at least I hope all the useful bits) are in the garage, the body shell has been cut into small pieces and recycled, and the kit car is on order!
After recommendations from other users at locostbuilders, we looked at the MNR VortX kit, and went up to North Yorks to meet Marc and Chris Nordon (and Bob and Lulu the dogs), and were taken out by Marc's friend and customer Iain in his rover V8 powered beastie. The car is going to be a VortX RT with inboard suspension, in Ruby Red, with black wheelarch inserts. It's going to be powered by the 2 litre Pinto out of the sierra, but Marc's going to build the chassis to accept a bike engine, for a future upgrade once we've learned how to drive it....
It's been about 7 years coming, and now there's six weeks to go until it arrives, there's too much to do!! Over the coming weeks we'll be cleaning and servicing donor bits and getting the garage ready to take Ruby...
Claire (my girlfriend - aka swmbo) and I started getting into the idea of building a kit car after the departure of our Mini 1275 GT to the great scrapyard in the sky. We were further egged on by Claire's dad Ron, who was interested in building a GT40 replica (until he saw the costs!) and visiting loads of shows, so we tagged along as well.
After we finished Uni, we decided we were going to go ahead and build one. Over the years we had looked at Tiger, Dax, F27, MK, Luego and Mac #1, but without the money to go ahead and buy one.... 3 years ago however, we took the first plunge and bought ourselves a 2.0 litre sierra sapphire, E reg, from Ebay for 99 quid. We drove about 200 miles each way to collect it, then the next day started taking bits off it.
A house purchase got in the way slightly, and we ended up moving the Sierra, half of it in boxes, to our new home (and nice big garage), where it got in the way for about 18 months....
Fast-forward slightly to today, and all the useful bits (at least I hope all the useful bits) are in the garage, the body shell has been cut into small pieces and recycled, and the kit car is on order!
After recommendations from other users at locostbuilders, we looked at the MNR VortX kit, and went up to North Yorks to meet Marc and Chris Nordon (and Bob and Lulu the dogs), and were taken out by Marc's friend and customer Iain in his rover V8 powered beastie. The car is going to be a VortX RT with inboard suspension, in Ruby Red, with black wheelarch inserts. It's going to be powered by the 2 litre Pinto out of the sierra, but Marc's going to build the chassis to accept a bike engine, for a future upgrade once we've learned how to drive it....
It's been about 7 years coming, and now there's six weeks to go until it arrives, there's too much to do!! Over the coming weeks we'll be cleaning and servicing donor bits and getting the garage ready to take Ruby...
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