Out came the air chisel and other tools to remove the front end, since I have never done this, it was a great learning curve and experience.
Then as if by magic ......
The two rear support plates for the arches was lastly removed as they will be used on the green car, whose plates have been cut smaller to fit the standard black wheel arches by previous owner, not me.
Clearly this was only the half way stripping mark as the green car's nose now had to be removed (carefully as the scuttle and A-panels will be re-used and not replaced).....
The inner panel was split from the wing on both sides then on the a-panel and lastly some clever fixer spot welded the wing to the scuttle, which is wrong.
After some time and blood was spilt you end up with this.....
As you can clearly see the inner wing gusset was split open from the scuttle panel and that will be rectified tomorrow, before the new nose will be welded in place.
The green nose after removal.
A fourth bonnet has been sourced which is clearly the best one to date and it will be used, or at least so I hope.
Hi Vinay
Not too long ago I asked all the relevant questions and did a lot of homework and spoke to some serious players in our game. The short answer was to have moulds made of the arches preferably on the car still ball parked at R8000 to R20 000. I tried in vain to get some partners or sponsors to do this. Then with the info and help from Andrew who is based in Aus a set of arches would have been between R4500 to R5800 depending on shipping etc.
So I took the "easy" route and was lucky enough to have sourced two GTS donor cars, the first for the interior and what I hoped was complete arches only to find the front arches had the bottom part after the joints gone. Now the second donor car is the red car above which sacrificed it's nose and three arches although they will need some serious surgery they can be re-used.
Then as if by magic ......
The two rear support plates for the arches was lastly removed as they will be used on the green car, whose plates have been cut smaller to fit the standard black wheel arches by previous owner, not me.
Clearly this was only the half way stripping mark as the green car's nose now had to be removed (carefully as the scuttle and A-panels will be re-used and not replaced).....
The inner panel was split from the wing on both sides then on the a-panel and lastly some clever fixer spot welded the wing to the scuttle, which is wrong.
After some time and blood was spilt you end up with this.....
As you can clearly see the inner wing gusset was split open from the scuttle panel and that will be rectified tomorrow, before the new nose will be welded in place.
The green nose after removal.
A fourth bonnet has been sourced which is clearly the best one to date and it will be used, or at least so I hope.
Hi Vinay
Not too long ago I asked all the relevant questions and did a lot of homework and spoke to some serious players in our game. The short answer was to have moulds made of the arches preferably on the car still ball parked at R8000 to R20 000. I tried in vain to get some partners or sponsors to do this. Then with the info and help from Andrew who is based in Aus a set of arches would have been between R4500 to R5800 depending on shipping etc.
So I took the "easy" route and was lucky enough to have sourced two GTS donor cars, the first for the interior and what I hoped was complete arches only to find the front arches had the bottom part after the joints gone. Now the second donor car is the red car above which sacrificed it's nose and three arches although they will need some serious surgery they can be re-used.
Own some minis, break them, fix them, improve them, test them to the limit....
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