You might want to grab a cup of tea before reading this. I've a bit to cover before getting caught up to date as I've been working on this project since last August (albeit not at a great pace!)
First off a bit of background. Those of you that know me while know I've previously built a Tiger kitcar which I built and put through the SVA, then modified and raced for a season. There should be a thread around here somewhere...
I sold that one back in January or February 2015 as I had no garage at my new house and so made no sense having it. Instead I used the funds from the sale to build a garage with the view of getting another kitcar at some stage in the future.
Roll forward to June 2017 and a spotted a track only car for sale with a ZX9R fitted, same as was in my Tiger. It came with a trailer and all and was at such a good price I just couldn't go past it. So one Friday morning my dad and I set off to drive to Sheffield to pick it up. It really was an extremely clean well built car with a number of trick bits fitted but to cut a long story short, I used it for one sprint at Kirkistown then decided to strip and rebuild it which took a lot longer than planned and escalated a bit.
As I approached the end of the rebuild I had a real itch for a road-legal car again as I wasn't sure how much I'd realistically use the track car... so I started looking around and just kept the feelers out to see if there was anything suitable. I missed out on a car not long after starting to look but after another few weeks a car popped up in Liverpool that seemed like it might fit the bill of what I was looking. A road legal car, in budget and with a bike engine. Getting all three of those was going to come at a compromise though of course, specifically the in budget requirement as I still had the other car. That compromise in this case was that it didn't run! Even so, due to the price there was a lot of interest in the car but I got talking to the owner and struck a deal - I wasn't missing out on this one! I bought it blind and just arranged for Bartlett Transport to lift it which all went well. There is always a risk buying blind of course but I was confident it would have to be pretty bad to not work out worthwhile!
The day it arrived....
So a little bit about the car - it was first registered back in 2004 so it's been on the go for quite a while. It's most recent MOT expired in 2017 and it had been laid up since (or even before that!). That was pretty evident when I got it home as it was filthy and a bit tired looking! Somewhere along the line (2016/17) the engine blew up on a track day... From doing some research the engine had been in it since at least 2010 in it's current format so it had lasted pretty well given it was a Yamaha R1 engine with a turbo strapped on! The owner sourced a new engine (with 16k miles on) and had started the engine swap, however due to one thing or another the swap was never completed, the car was pushed into a corner and left there! So when it arrived to me the new engine was mounted in the engine bay but with a lot of things not connected up or still to be swapped over from the original engine - the orginal engine was sitting in the passenger seat!
I rolled the car into the garage after it was delivered and that's were it would sit until I had the track car finished and sold as I couldn't keep two of them!
Thankfully the track car sold pretty quickly and the focus turned to the GTS. As with many projects though I had a decision to make - just get it up and running and use it as is for a while, or strip it down and replace/redo anything that needed it and leave it the way I wanted it from the start. I decided I would do a little bit of stripping initially to see what I found and then go from there, I hadn't stripped it back very far until I decided to go the whole hog. The eagle eyed among you might have already picked up on a few things that influenced this decision.
One thing with buying a kit car of this age is that it's been through a few owners all with different ideas and with some odd decisions made along the way!
So things I wasn't happy with... Firstly the bodywork - when the car arrived the nose cone was only sitting on and had been through the wars some what with paint chipped off in various places, then the side panels had been cut at some stage and to hide the join a piece of black aluminium had been tiger sealed on. With the black section removed it revealed that not only was the join in an odd position exposing the footwell on both sides but the two sections were also different shades of orange - that just wasn't going to work. Nothing else for it but make new side panels myself. I feel like I should call out at this point that I'm not a mechanic/engineer/bodywork specialist so things are far from perfect but I enjoy the learning experience!
The other thing that I just couldn't have was the roll cage, more specifically the front hoop and the centre roof bar! Not only did I not like the shape of the front hoop but someone in their wisdom had drilled holes in it and fitted rivnuts so they could attach a perspex screen!
Again, nothing else for it but chop it out!
Once I'd that chopped out I set about making the new aluminum side panels and flared panels. To fold these I decided to also make my own sheet folder which worked out pretty well considering...
At this stage it was late August and I decided that my focus would be on completing the bodywork - I would be spraying in my garage and so I needed the outside temperature to be decent so that I could get the best results in such an environment. I started the ardious task of repairing panels where necessary, sanding and preping everything. This is by far my least favourite thing to do! Unfortunately as I reached the end of this task (early September) I injured my right wrist quite badly which has really hindered progress from this point forward. That resulted in me having surgery on it at the start of January this year and so I'm only now getting back on my feet. Anyhow, I pushed on as I wanted the painting completed while the weather was still good, it hindered me but the results were just about acceptable.
Temporary spray both...
Some paint laid down!
You may recognise it as the same colour as the track car and you'd be right! I'd enough paint left over from that one to do this one, so it's going to be another Porsche Voodoo Blue car! It's far from perfect but still an improvement from what it was before I think.
From here on in progress was extremely slow, my right arm was out of action for large periods and there is only so much you can do with one working arm! My dad did however come up on a number of occasions to lend me a hand and so I was able to make some progress on the roll cage. As the remaining part of the cage was in 38mm CDS I wanted to stick with that for the rest of the cage - unfortunately getting someone that could bend it locally proved difficult and so I ordered it in pre-bent from a company in England. This wasn't entirely successful though as will be seen in a photo shortly... I set about working out how to tie the existing side bar into the new front and also how I'd attached the front hoop to the car! I opted for running a 42mm CDS tube across the car and making two mounting plates out of 5mm steel. The plates had a 42mm hole cut in them and they were welded to the chassis, the tube was then welded to the steel plate. This was then the pickup point for the front hoop and side bars. A lot of measuring and working out was required to make all this work. It was my first time undertaking something like this but I took my time and got there in the end. It was only at the stage of tacking the front hoop on that I realised it wasn't made exactly as per the diagram I had provided and I just couldn't stand the look of it! (Looking back photos are limited from this time)
In the interm period I had found a guy outside Ballymena that could bend 38mm CDS having bought all the equipement for another project (Muppet Motorsport) and so I got in touch with David to see if he could make me a new hoop. I gave him the dimensions and also left the one I had up to him so he could get the feet width perfect as that was crucial to working with the bar already welded in place. He turned it around really quickly and it was perfect! I had to set about getting it cut to the exact height and then notching it etc again. I notched all the tubes myself with an angle grinder, not prefect but good enough to get a strong weld on them (I'm also not a welder but have done a good bit of practising!). I got it all welded up and a coat of paint on it over Christmas (I had some use of my arm back and wanted to get as much progressed over Christmas as possible with my surgery approaching in early January and not knowing how long I'd be out of action for).
That's all for now, I've more updates that'll come when I’ve time to put it altogether
First off a bit of background. Those of you that know me while know I've previously built a Tiger kitcar which I built and put through the SVA, then modified and raced for a season. There should be a thread around here somewhere...
I sold that one back in January or February 2015 as I had no garage at my new house and so made no sense having it. Instead I used the funds from the sale to build a garage with the view of getting another kitcar at some stage in the future.
Roll forward to June 2017 and a spotted a track only car for sale with a ZX9R fitted, same as was in my Tiger. It came with a trailer and all and was at such a good price I just couldn't go past it. So one Friday morning my dad and I set off to drive to Sheffield to pick it up. It really was an extremely clean well built car with a number of trick bits fitted but to cut a long story short, I used it for one sprint at Kirkistown then decided to strip and rebuild it which took a lot longer than planned and escalated a bit.
As I approached the end of the rebuild I had a real itch for a road-legal car again as I wasn't sure how much I'd realistically use the track car... so I started looking around and just kept the feelers out to see if there was anything suitable. I missed out on a car not long after starting to look but after another few weeks a car popped up in Liverpool that seemed like it might fit the bill of what I was looking. A road legal car, in budget and with a bike engine. Getting all three of those was going to come at a compromise though of course, specifically the in budget requirement as I still had the other car. That compromise in this case was that it didn't run! Even so, due to the price there was a lot of interest in the car but I got talking to the owner and struck a deal - I wasn't missing out on this one! I bought it blind and just arranged for Bartlett Transport to lift it which all went well. There is always a risk buying blind of course but I was confident it would have to be pretty bad to not work out worthwhile!
The day it arrived....
So a little bit about the car - it was first registered back in 2004 so it's been on the go for quite a while. It's most recent MOT expired in 2017 and it had been laid up since (or even before that!). That was pretty evident when I got it home as it was filthy and a bit tired looking! Somewhere along the line (2016/17) the engine blew up on a track day... From doing some research the engine had been in it since at least 2010 in it's current format so it had lasted pretty well given it was a Yamaha R1 engine with a turbo strapped on! The owner sourced a new engine (with 16k miles on) and had started the engine swap, however due to one thing or another the swap was never completed, the car was pushed into a corner and left there! So when it arrived to me the new engine was mounted in the engine bay but with a lot of things not connected up or still to be swapped over from the original engine - the orginal engine was sitting in the passenger seat!
I rolled the car into the garage after it was delivered and that's were it would sit until I had the track car finished and sold as I couldn't keep two of them!
Thankfully the track car sold pretty quickly and the focus turned to the GTS. As with many projects though I had a decision to make - just get it up and running and use it as is for a while, or strip it down and replace/redo anything that needed it and leave it the way I wanted it from the start. I decided I would do a little bit of stripping initially to see what I found and then go from there, I hadn't stripped it back very far until I decided to go the whole hog. The eagle eyed among you might have already picked up on a few things that influenced this decision.
One thing with buying a kit car of this age is that it's been through a few owners all with different ideas and with some odd decisions made along the way!
So things I wasn't happy with... Firstly the bodywork - when the car arrived the nose cone was only sitting on and had been through the wars some what with paint chipped off in various places, then the side panels had been cut at some stage and to hide the join a piece of black aluminium had been tiger sealed on. With the black section removed it revealed that not only was the join in an odd position exposing the footwell on both sides but the two sections were also different shades of orange - that just wasn't going to work. Nothing else for it but make new side panels myself. I feel like I should call out at this point that I'm not a mechanic/engineer/bodywork specialist so things are far from perfect but I enjoy the learning experience!
The other thing that I just couldn't have was the roll cage, more specifically the front hoop and the centre roof bar! Not only did I not like the shape of the front hoop but someone in their wisdom had drilled holes in it and fitted rivnuts so they could attach a perspex screen!
Again, nothing else for it but chop it out!
Once I'd that chopped out I set about making the new aluminum side panels and flared panels. To fold these I decided to also make my own sheet folder which worked out pretty well considering...
At this stage it was late August and I decided that my focus would be on completing the bodywork - I would be spraying in my garage and so I needed the outside temperature to be decent so that I could get the best results in such an environment. I started the ardious task of repairing panels where necessary, sanding and preping everything. This is by far my least favourite thing to do! Unfortunately as I reached the end of this task (early September) I injured my right wrist quite badly which has really hindered progress from this point forward. That resulted in me having surgery on it at the start of January this year and so I'm only now getting back on my feet. Anyhow, I pushed on as I wanted the painting completed while the weather was still good, it hindered me but the results were just about acceptable.
Temporary spray both...
Some paint laid down!
You may recognise it as the same colour as the track car and you'd be right! I'd enough paint left over from that one to do this one, so it's going to be another Porsche Voodoo Blue car! It's far from perfect but still an improvement from what it was before I think.
From here on in progress was extremely slow, my right arm was out of action for large periods and there is only so much you can do with one working arm! My dad did however come up on a number of occasions to lend me a hand and so I was able to make some progress on the roll cage. As the remaining part of the cage was in 38mm CDS I wanted to stick with that for the rest of the cage - unfortunately getting someone that could bend it locally proved difficult and so I ordered it in pre-bent from a company in England. This wasn't entirely successful though as will be seen in a photo shortly... I set about working out how to tie the existing side bar into the new front and also how I'd attached the front hoop to the car! I opted for running a 42mm CDS tube across the car and making two mounting plates out of 5mm steel. The plates had a 42mm hole cut in them and they were welded to the chassis, the tube was then welded to the steel plate. This was then the pickup point for the front hoop and side bars. A lot of measuring and working out was required to make all this work. It was my first time undertaking something like this but I took my time and got there in the end. It was only at the stage of tacking the front hoop on that I realised it wasn't made exactly as per the diagram I had provided and I just couldn't stand the look of it! (Looking back photos are limited from this time)
In the interm period I had found a guy outside Ballymena that could bend 38mm CDS having bought all the equipement for another project (Muppet Motorsport) and so I got in touch with David to see if he could make me a new hoop. I gave him the dimensions and also left the one I had up to him so he could get the feet width perfect as that was crucial to working with the bar already welded in place. He turned it around really quickly and it was perfect! I had to set about getting it cut to the exact height and then notching it etc again. I notched all the tubes myself with an angle grinder, not prefect but good enough to get a strong weld on them (I'm also not a welder but have done a good bit of practising!). I got it all welded up and a coat of paint on it over Christmas (I had some use of my arm back and wanted to get as much progressed over Christmas as possible with my surgery approaching in early January and not knowing how long I'd be out of action for).
That's all for now, I've more updates that'll come when I’ve time to put it altogether
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