GT40 Restoration

[Greg Rust]

Yea I guess I just like Ford motors and am slightly biased for which you will get the same power for about half the cost of building a decent Ford motor such is the plethora of go fast bits for the Chebby.

[darwinschops]

followed this over from the other one. so much win in this thread... of all the car, one of my favourite parts someone pointed out, the proximity of the motor to the seats. have to set up some good induction noise!

[Willy]

Thanks mate. A bit of an update on progress... The block is off getting bored and honed. In the mean time, we have removed all brake calipers so we can recondition them. We have also removed suspension, wiring, etc from the back end so that we can tidy it up. I'll post pics later. It's looking heaps better already. I've also started welding up a workbench out of some scrap metal I picked up. Rapidly running out of space.

[Willy]

Latest blog update to the blog.

Stripping out the rear

Saturday was a day of crappy rain so the shed will have to wait. Despite this, we still had a good day of work on the GT40.

First up, removed the brake calipers - front and rear. We'll need to rebuild these with new seals and hone them out if required. Dad noticed one rubber brake line was completely rusted out and one of the steel ones was broken. Plenty of work to do here.

Rear brakes (Alfa Romeo according to the previous owner)


Next, we started attacking the rear end.



Removed the rear suspension and moved all the wiring etc. Dad started cleaning it up with degreaser and it's already looking heaps better.



One Granada rear control arm


GT40 stuff is taking over the garage, so I've decided to knock up a workbench with an under-shelf to go in front of the garage window, where the toolboxes are below.



I was inspired by this Autospeed article, so decided to knock up the workbench myself out of scrap metal and an old kitchen bench top. It should do the job. So far, it's cost me $70 for scrap metal and $15 for the kitchen bench, so I'm pretty happy about that.



Unfortunately, I ran out of time to finish it off, but will hopefully knock it over on a week night.

[gerry]

Dont think they are Alfa brakes, Alfa brakes dont have external transfer pipes from memory. Get some better pictures of the callipers and we can see if someone recognises them.

[darwinschops]

one of my mates had a tradie idea. 90 degree brackets + any flat solid, drillable stuff (he had some of those standard shitty ply doors) so that he has shelves just above head height around his garage to get the shit off the floor. can be temp solution if you just need basic storage space and room around the car. seemed like a pretty obvious thing i hadn't considered and cleared so much space.

weirdly, the more you break it down and look at it, the more manageable it seems to get. it's such a simple basic design. and when you look at how good the thing scrubs up when properly finished...

[Willy]

Here are a couple more pics of the brakes. I'll try to post some better ones at a later date. I can't spot any numbers on them yet (although we haven't cleaned all the dirt of them yet).

Thanks for the feedback Darwinschops. It's certainly looking more manageable now that it's stripped.

No news on the block. I rang the machine shop today and they haven't started yet.

[gerry]

They do look like front Alfasud calipers from the top view, I still cant remember a external transfer pipe though. Probably wont matter for rebuild kits though.

[timtx5]

Yep look like this may be them?
http://seekpart24.com/qh/brake-caliper-qbs1001

[darwinschops]

cool. best part is, obviously so much of the shit will be off the shelf for cheap/availableish cars of the day. and in the era of internet parts, you guys'd know the rest. when i have more pics, going to have to chuck one of these up for moo. all these threads filling me with motivation. and humbleness...

[Gammaboy]

Alfetta rear calipers is my guess - largely similar to Sud, but different piston size.

[gerry]

handbrake lever on alfetta calipers is vertical instead of horizontal? Thats how I remember it anyway.

[Willy]

Definitely time for an update...
Sorry for the lack of updates lately. I have pretty busy with my new job and driving things like this...



Yep, a few months ago was my 30th and my mates are absolutely legends and bought me a gift card for a super car driving experience. I was lucky enough to drive a Ferrari Modema 360, Lamborghini Gallardo and Nissan 370Z through the Gold Coast hinterlands for 3 hours. It was absolutely awesome fun. To sum up my thoughts on each car:
* The Ferrari was unbelievably quick at 0-100 speeds, but the flappy-paddle gear changes were slow.
* The Lamborghini was great fun to drive, but geared unbelievably tall. I was doing 80-90km/h in first at 8000rpm I imagine this thing would be insane at 200km/h+
* The 370Z was the surprise package. The flappy-paddle gearbox shifted faster than the Ferrari and it was able to keep up with the Lamborghini to 100ish.







Anyway, enough talk of Supercars, what the hell is going on with the GT40?

Well, since the last blog we have finished off the shed. This has meant that we can clear some of the stuff out of the garage to make space for the GT40. The garage is still a mess though...





The workbench is still a work in progress. Unfortunately I am painfully slow at welding. Plus, I'd rather be working on the 40.



As for the GT40... It seems it is slowly but surely being disassembled. First up, we decided to inspect the fuel tanks. This turned out to be a wise move. We discovered lots of crud inside and one tank had a small hole caused by rubbing on the chassis. The level senders were completely rusted out. Here's one of them. Not pretty.



Once the tanks were out, we removed the rubber sheeting that's attached to the chassis behind the tank. This revealed the coolant lines and wiring. As expected, the coolant lines are quite badly corroded, so we'll be looking at replacing these.





Whilst following the coolant lines up to the radiator we decided to remove the front-end of the car. Once again, this was a simple proposition of unplugging the head lights and undoing 4 bolts. Without the front, she's certainly not a pretty.



It's not all bad news. We took a trip over to the engine machinist on the weekend. The block is pretty much done and we should be picking it up this weekend. He has sleeved the one dodgy cylinder and it looks really good. By sleeving it, we have been able to keep it at +30 thou and retain the pistons that came with it. As mentioned in one of the early blogs, this engine only had a few thousand kilometers on it, so the pistons are in excellent condition.

What's next? We'll keep stripping down the front end. We're not sure how far we'll go with stripping it down just yet. As long as we keep finding areas than need attention, then we'll keep stripping it. After that, we'll repaint the chassis and get stuck into the engine. I know Dad's looking forward to the rebuild.

It's certainly starting to look like a longer term project. Oh well, we're not in a hurry and spirits are still high. It's all part of the fun..

[stockymcstock]

It's all so easy to access, I would be pulling off shit until you can get at all of the main chassis bits. Any slightly rusty bits, him them with a wire wheel, rust convertor then cover the whole lot with black POR-15. Then at least you won't have to worry about rust and shit in the structural areas. easy to do while the engine is out - heaps of room in there!

Loving this - keep at it lads.

[Willy]

Cheers mate. It's looking like that's the direction we'll head. Apparently the main cockpit (called the spider) is quite a prick to get on and off and is flimsy when it's off, but while we have it stripped down this far it's very tempting to keep going. As long as we keep finding dodgy stuff, we'll keep stripping it down. Got a box of KBS-Coatings products to put on it whenever we've decided it's stripped far enough. Hehe