Peter loveday
Club Member
Hi all,
I posted some pics up a while ago of the project I’m just about to start on. I thought I’d share my latest thoughts on the project direction and my intentions for the build.
The shell is a strange mix of perfect and terrible- great front end, no serious body damage but rotted out floors and boot. I’ll be keeping the body standard except for a little cleaning up of a few details ( side markers and repeaters removed.
Interior will be kept mostly stock with some modern gauges and perhaps some subtle period style buckets, also considering a rear cage.
I’m thinking of leaving it lhd as I want to keep the shell as original as possible but I’d like to hear some thoughts on that.
Engine will be a high reving l28 running itb’s etc, with some detail orientated customisation. I’m going to try and mate it up to a rx8 6 speed and a suitable rear diff mounted in a custom cradle.
Suspension will be lowered 2” with a lot of custom fabrication. Tubular front cross member with optimised geomery to correct roll centres, remove bump steer and add some rigidity to the front. I’ll be creating a custom bolt in rear end, retaining the chapman struts but again correcting the roll centre, optimising geometry and generally re engineering things a bit to improve stiffness and alignment. The ultimate goal here is to keep the shell unmolested.
In general I’m after a few points of view, am I going too far on a potentially valuable low vin number car or am I being too precious and I should just go all out?
It’s a long term project and progress is likely to be slow until I get a new house/garage etc so I have plenty of time to stockpile some parts and work on the modification designs.
I posted some pics up a while ago of the project I’m just about to start on. I thought I’d share my latest thoughts on the project direction and my intentions for the build.
The shell is a strange mix of perfect and terrible- great front end, no serious body damage but rotted out floors and boot. I’ll be keeping the body standard except for a little cleaning up of a few details ( side markers and repeaters removed.
Interior will be kept mostly stock with some modern gauges and perhaps some subtle period style buckets, also considering a rear cage.
I’m thinking of leaving it lhd as I want to keep the shell as original as possible but I’d like to hear some thoughts on that.
Engine will be a high reving l28 running itb’s etc, with some detail orientated customisation. I’m going to try and mate it up to a rx8 6 speed and a suitable rear diff mounted in a custom cradle.
Suspension will be lowered 2” with a lot of custom fabrication. Tubular front cross member with optimised geomery to correct roll centres, remove bump steer and add some rigidity to the front. I’ll be creating a custom bolt in rear end, retaining the chapman struts but again correcting the roll centre, optimising geometry and generally re engineering things a bit to improve stiffness and alignment. The ultimate goal here is to keep the shell unmolested.
In general I’m after a few points of view, am I going too far on a potentially valuable low vin number car or am I being too precious and I should just go all out?
It’s a long term project and progress is likely to be slow until I get a new house/garage etc so I have plenty of time to stockpile some parts and work on the modification designs.