The car is all but sprayed. By that I mean the body has been rubbed down, and the holes left by various chrome parts being removed have been welded and filled.
The brackets for the lights have been manufactured and one has been riveted to the roof. Here you can see the car all preped for spraying. I'm supposed to get it back on Monday:
Click the image to enlarge......
I thought I should post a picture of the car in this state. Not a big update to the blog, but thought you all might like to see this part. After this it's logo time, but I'm really looking forward to seeing the car with the lights mounted on the roof. It's going to be a major step.
If anyone has any idea how to get a long 7 foot flexible CB areal, please let me know. They don't seem to make them at that length any more, there's only one that could qualify, but it's £280 and for something cosmetic I don't think it's worth shelling that amount of money out. I have an idea on how to fabricate one, but would like an authentic one. So if anyone has one kicking around from back in the 80s let me know.......
A few weeks late, but tonight the car is going in for a spray. This is the last time it will look like this:
The rear doors will be black, the roof will be white, and the whole car is getting a respray. The original plan was to patch up the paintwork to give a rougher look, truer to the original. The chrome strips are being removed and the lights will be mounted on the roof. The 7 foot areal and mount has also been aquired and will be on the car when it leaves the workshop. The number plates will be mounted too. All the work is due to take about 1 week. The longest week of my life I reckon.
According to the sign writer, the logos can be put on the car in a matter of hours, and so as soon as the car leaves the bodyshop the artwork will be in place shortly after.
This is the final leg of the design stage.
Anyone going on Gimpo's M25 spin is likely to see me there..........
The hurdle of acquiring an MOT has been overcome. After almost 2 months since the initial failure parts have been sourced, work has been done and we're now in a position to progress with the project.
Which is a good job, because tonight the car is booked in for the respray of the roof and rear doors. While it's there the mountings for the lights on the roof will be welded. And once that's all complete the logos will be applied.
Tomorrow I will head down to the DVLA office and attempt to register the car now that I have everything I need to do so. I've already ordered the registration plates which should arrive in a few days. By the end of next week it'll be on the road.
Due to some work commitments I am having to delay the trip to Spain for about 3 weeks, so we're looking to leave in the second week of April now.
Over the coming few weeks the car will transform quite rapidly and should start to look very similar to the original, pictures will be posted of course, so check back regularly as there will be quite a few.
Getting the MOT is a major step forward, it's great news. It's been very hard work to get a US spec car of this age up to MOT standard in the UK, getting hold of parts has been a real challenge and I've learnt a lot about the car in that time. The rest of the project from here should be a lot easier, and I'm looking forward to having a bit of fun with it.
During that time we've had snow and Christmas to delay proceedings, however, work has continued and all the welding is done. Indicators have been fitted at the rear and front, the shocks have been properly located too.
The front brakes have been cleaned out and adjusted, the rear shoes are in my garage waiting to be fitted at the same time as the handbrake cable is put on. The handbrake cable has been the sticking point in this whole thing, difficult to get hold of, and complicated to ensure you have all the right parts. I'll only know when it arrives whether we'll need more parts on top of the three cables that make it up. Current location of cable: Illinois.
One thing I'm really pleased about is the lights for the roof, I've managed to find and buy some. These have been, without a shadow of doubt, the most difficult item to find in the whole project, even more so than the car itself. Hours upon hours of posting in a range of different forums and searching various online shops had yielded something that was only vaguely similar. Then, as part of my daily eBay search I uncovered a pair of these little beauties:
They will be sprayed white and have the protective grill added when the car goes in for the cosmetic work. I'll need to get some mounting brackets made up to fix them to the roof. Importantly they are the right size and shape, although the picture gives an impression of a conical shape towards the rear they are the same diameter from front to back. In fairness they aren't exactly the same as the originals, but they are probably as close as it's possible to get, so I'm really pleased.
Hopefully the next update will be to report that the car is on the road, keep your fingers crossed. March approaches fast............
Yesterday was the big day. I put the car through it's MOT, I knew it would fail, but we wanted to know how much work was going to be needed.
There were a few surprises, and not necessarily bad ones either.
I thought the headlamps would fail, but they didn't, they didn't even need adjusting. So immediately I saved £200 on replacement units. Here's a list of the failures:
Exhaust not secured properly
No indicators
No windscreen washer
Brakes not efficient enough
Handbrake not connected
Fuel line not secured properly
No horn
Rear coil springs not correctly located
Hazard warning light switch faulty
Excessive corrosion to rear chassis offside and nearside
Basically, all pretty minor stuff except for the welding, which I anticipate will cost around £400. There is other welding work that isn't an MOT failure but I'll probably get dome at the same time. I honestly thought there would be far more serious problems, and as far as I'm concerned it's the next best thing to a pass. I'm over the moon about it.
Here's a quick picture taken of it on my drive. It's still really mind blowing to think that three months ago this car was in Michigan, and I was considering this whole project. Now it's here, has crossed an ocean and it looks more possible than ever that it really will make it to the Sierra Nevada Desert.
Updates on the MOT in the new year, but it's all pretty straight forward from here on in I hope.
Well, after a much longer wait than anticipated the car has arrived in the UK. It ended up taking about 5 weeks for it to cross, which was a real let down since we were originally told that it would take 2 weeks.
As many of you will know we've had some 'severe weather' conditions in the UK, this of course happened right at the time the car arrived on the cargo ship - and to add to the delayed crossing containers weren't able to be unloaded as there were no lorries able to make it to East Kent to put them onto. So the car remained entombed in it's container for a further week.
When it finally made it's way off the ship and into the storage warehouse I called the company who are keeping it for me to check weather it was OK to arrange for a vehicle transporter to collect it. They told me that the handbrake was stuck on and the two front tyres were flat. This meant I needed to drive 120 miles to sort out the problem before the delivery company would even consider picking it up. Normally this would have disappointed me, but actually I couldn't get down there fast enough, it was my excuse to see the car for the first time in the flesh.
Armed with tools and so forth I went down to see the car on Friday morning. After arriving at the docks and making our way to the warehouse in question we were told to wait at the entrance to be escorted to the vehicle. 5 minutes seemed like 5 hours as my brother and I waited patiently, the torture made worse due to the fact that I could see the tail end of the car poking out from behind a stack of crates. And then we finally saw it, it was an amazing feeling - I knew it was going to be big but it was even bigger than I imagined, it's 5.2 meters long, bumper to bumper. Here's a walk around video my brother managed to get.
I've purchased a number plate to go on the car when it finally gets registered, WGU 18E, as close to the original of WGU 18G as is possible to get which I'm pleased about. We also need: front and rear indicators, a passenger side mirror, replacement headlamps, windscreen washers and the handbrake reconnecting.
It would have been truer to say that the car had half flat tyres and the handbrake wasn't stuck, as I fired up the car and moved it back and forth a few feet with ease. I really had no problem with going down there though, as I said it was just the excuse I needed to go and take a look at the car. The engine sounds awesome, and led me to thinking that the car samples you can hear throughout the White Room and Chill Out may actually have been recorded by Jimmy from the original Ford Timelord.
Next step: car arrives at my house in a few days, and then it's off to get it MOT'd - nerve racking stuff as any UK car owner will confess, depending on how much (or little) there is to do will depend on how much I'm going to need to fork out on repairs to get it road legal.
Then it's all cosmetics, and once they're sorted out we're off to Spain.
All of a sudden the whole project seems to be more real. The car has arrived.
I learned on Tuesday that the car left New Jersey, bound for the UK and sailing into Thamesport.
I was also informed of the name of the vessel the car is on: Cosco Panama. A quick google yielded a couple of images, and even a youtube video of it's launch some years ago. Here's an image of it anyway (click to enlarge):
Approximate journey time is 14 to 18 days. This means that the car, at the time of writing, will be about 500 miles off the east coast of the USA, in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean.
That's all for now, the next update will come when we go to pick up the car from Thamesport, at which point I will be taking a lot more pictures, and probably some video of the new arrival. In the meantime please pray for good weather, it's not unheard of for containers to fall off the side of these cargo ships in rough seas!
