Light at the end of the tunnel

Had a bit of time off work using up holiday days. Spent half the time on the car and the other half moving house, fun times! Either way, works well meaning I'm not in any huge rush to clear the garage out as I've got garage space at my new place to start building when my kit arrives in January.

Here is a load of pictures taken from these days.

 

  

  

Anyway, all that is waiting now is an engine crane to remove the engine and gearbox and then get down underneath for the remaining donor parts and jobs a good'un! Plus that pesky dashboard and passenger seat when I get round to them again....

Slowly but surely...

Not much was done today. In between getting stitches out and travelling to Birmingham, I managed to get a couple hours on the car.

With the car now up on axle stands I could start crawling around underneath it just that bit easier.

As you can see the bumper is off, we'll come back to that shortly.

First thing was to take the wheels off and wheel arch covers. The arches were a pain with some stupid plastic screws, every time they just disintergrated to the point I ended up using a drill and getting them out that way!

But once off I could reach the front wings and bumper to get these off.

Starting to look rather sad now. But anyway, the bumper finally came off finding bolts hiding under wheel arches and underneath. Note for future: Remember the plastic clips & screws that sit in the middle! These pesky connections baffled me for 30 mins until I looked down behind the bumper and saw 3 black clips with screws in. These quickly got bashed out with a length of wood and a hammer (yes, the time for calm and collected was well gone) but this proved to be the best way as they popped straight out in one piece. Anyway, bumper off!

 Rear wheel arches/suspension/hubs/brake discs etc etc. These are more for personal reference as the rear wheels will probably go back on after a in depth discussion about engine removal techniques. All will be revealed once I decide how to do it and which is easiest.

 Again for personal reference of the front wheel arches etc. Looking a bit worse for wear but nothing a bit of cleanning can't fix when the time comes.

Once the car was jacked up, I realised that taking the front wheels off would be an issue with no one to put their foot on the brake pedal to keep the wheels from spinning....However, this is no issue for the master of disaster! A quick search through the garage sourced a metal pole which extended and retracted telescopically (that's my new word if it isn't already), anyway, I wedged this in between the brake pedal (clutch originally - ooops) and the body shell as seen below, and hey presto! Brakes applied and wheels off!

Genius.

A quick play about.

Well I had taken Friday 30th November off work to get things ready for the Girlfriend's birthday weekend away. But due to the body clock being broken, I didn't have much of a lie in and instead got up a few hours earlier than planned and decided to use it to work on the car.
In the morning I managed to remove the rear bulkhead, it took a bit of trouble but came off....in two pieces. turns out it wasn't in as good a condition as it looked. Not to worry, it's out the way now.

The dashboard is slowly coming off with the steering wheel and speedo instrument cluster out. The crash pads were rather tricky being stuck on with some Japanese silicon super glue, but nothing a flathead screw driver couldn't remove!

The headlights are out along with their surround as well as the front number plate and side light clusters. Just waiting on some axle stands and trolley jacks to get underneath the car the get some more body work off the car.  

This is where the steering wheel and instrument cluster used to be. Came out much easier with the crash pads off! Now a bit more space to see underneath the into the steering column.


Next step is to figure out how to get the rest of the dashboard off without severing electics and other valuable items!