My Estate - GSi conversion

[stealthstylz]

Stripdown begins



Matt

[Murph]

Why's it being stripped?

[stealthstylz]

Fitting the 12v engine/box/diff out of the track car I bought off craig and doing a lot of cosmetic work.

Matt

[stealthstylz]

Yesterdays Progress. Engine and box out, took about 1 hour of actual work, plus an hour to walk to halfords and back to get some female torx sockets to take the prop off lol. Also spent another hour making an engine trolley.



Also got the dash and loom out. Also planning on junking the ABS so todays job is to cut it out of the loom.



Matt

[stealthstylz]

Todays Progress

Absolutely BollockS be gone!!!!





Which left me with this.



After spending ages faffing around getting the servo unbolted, then removing the steering column and steering box I then had an empty engine bay .

Made a start welding all the holes up on the drivers side. Also stitch welded the turret and started cleaning the other seams for the same thing.



Plan is to fill all the holes, then i'm going to box the gap between the turret and bulkhead in and fit a small header tank in there. I'm also going to box the top of the chassis rail in which will leave a gap to hide the wiring through (where the stanley knife is).



Drivers side is slightly more crusty. I'd advise Carlton/Senator owners to remove the battery tray (drill the spot welds) and check underneath. Mine wasn't painted from the factory and is pretty thin with rust though not actually holed. Looked perfect with the tray in place too.

More welding tomorrow, and i've got to drop the front subframe off.

Matt
 

[Johnraka]

That's a nice clean footwell you got there buddy... Like the idea of boxing in the wiring in the engine bay too.

Why are you ditching the ABS? Won't it fail the MOT when it's finished?

Got to say I am looking forward to seeing this finished, should look awesome with all the work you are putting into it...

[stealthstylz]

Yeah the floor seems perfect, which is strange as its soaking wet through.

As long as the entire ABS system is removed it's not an MOT fail. If i'd have just pulled the fuse out or similar then it would fail.

Matt

[Pedro]

Have you just simply chopped the ABS system out willy-nilly, or removed it  keeping all the relevant bits intact?

I'd like to retro-fit ABS to mine.

[stealthstylz]

I chopped all the wires of the plug that goes into the ABS unit so I could pull them through the bulkhead grommet so its probably unuseable. It didn't work properly anyway.

Matt

[Alex_FC]

Yeah the floor seems perfect, which is strange as its soaking wet through.

As long as the entire ABS system is removed it's not an MOT fail. If i'd have just pulled the fuse out or similar then it would fail.

Matt

I had a leaky ABS Servo pump on my RX7 which failed its MOT, 2 weeks later it was back at the same MOT test center and Passed with no ABS at all.

I had done the following

1) Removed the ABS servo Pump and all the mounts
2) Removed all the Extra Brake Lines, to do with the ABS
3) Fitted a Master Cylinder from a NON ABS RX7
4) Removed the ABS ECU
5) Made up all new much shorter Brake lines, and made fixture mounts with the neat rubber clips. (Brake lines routed differently without the ABS).

Note: a) When I took out the ABS pump the ABS light came on, then went out once the ABS ECU was removed.

The guy at the MOT center was happy with the work, and said he was trying to catch me out but couldn't.


The mod really neaten ups the engine Bay, and ABS from the late 80's early 90's arn't that great. Any hard track driving can become dangerous with ABS thats not intended for that use.

[stealthstylz]

Quick update on this but not many pics. Still on the rust hunt, every piece I sort seems to reveal another 3 spots that need doing at the minute but i'm getting there. Been spending a lot of time cleaning and painting the suspension components (all new apart from the subframe). Going for a crazy multi coloured scheme for underneath as the car is staying black for now. I've also been chipping all the sound deadening off inside, slow and labour intensive job that i'm doing as and when I feel like it.

Also got the custom coilovers finished.



Which let me do this





At this point I still have about 2" of compression on the shocks, but the inner arch is getting in the way (which is rusty lol wasn't even suprised at that point)

The ride height of the car will be raised slightly from there so that the arch lip is level with the edge of the wheel rim. Combined with a lower profile tyre and better steering geometry (i've rebolted the wheels with the face on the outside, which leaves me with ET37 (ET63 wheel + 25mm adapter) instead of ET16 (ET41 wheel + adaptor) this restores the KPI so the wheel isn't going forwards and backwards in the arch as it was), plus some hardcore arch rolling, I should be able to steer lol.

Matt

[Pedro]

Used to remove alot of sound deadening when shell prepping cars - warm it with a heat gun and use a wallpaper scraper.
It's alot easier.
Good idea to wear a dust mask too..........

[Land-Barge]

When it looks that good who needs steering lol

Bet the ground clearance is shocking though, mines no where near that low but the exhaust and even the front floor/chassis rail takes a beating on the speedhumps, shame cos they do look good low, and air ride is sooooo expensive now

[stealthstylz]

I've modified the gearbox tunnel so that the exhaust runs above the crossmembers. I've got half an air ride kit which will be fitted in the future.

I've used a heat gun before and it worked really well. Can't find the bloody thing now though and I cba to walk to b n q lol.

Matt