Time for another project

[The Green Reek]

I picked this up earlier this year from a un-named presidential source.
This is a google album. I couldn't login to the old photo share site.
Sorry I can't embed these into the post.
This will give you a good idea of the starting place for this one.
I'll post some more pics soon.
It's had glass work done on body and lower body. Just finishing roof.
Painting will be when its warmer.
Haven't even looked at mechanics yet. That's the easy part.
Note the use of angle grinder crack removal. Not to mention the silicon and packing tape holding it together.
Album:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/u8hBkAgPEUqpDXX48
The next batch of pics will show you what 6 litres of poly resin, 5 litres of epoxy resin and 4 litres of epoxy fairing can do.

Peter

[The Green Reek]

OK This is the Car arriving and starting the project.
The Escort motor is coming out and a Subaru 1.8 twin carb going in.
Note the excessive number of straps on the car. Nothing was bolted down.
The boat winch makes doing the job alone possible.
I had a set of dolly wheels from a Mustang project that worked great on the body so I could move it around.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/dMGSnmHgZzNPMBw19

Peter

PS. The Escort motor and gearbox with adapter as well as the hydrolic system are up for sale.
PM Me is interested.

[The Green Reek]

Lower and small bits.
The lower sections of the car were my starting point.
Lots of damage. Mostly deliberate.
It appears the person who took the car apart years ago didn't own spanners.
Every screw and bolt hole was torn off. In some cases there were 5" sections of glass missing.
There was a 3' tear down the under car front piece. Right through a compound curve.
The poor old elephant ears may have been the worst and needed the most time to get back to solid.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/NU39QXzBi7xaaFpV6

Peter

[The Green Reek]

Tub Repair
I mentioned my dollies from a Mustang project.
Well they were built long on one side to allow me to lift the mustang onto its side.
That worked great on the Eureka as well and allowed me to access and repair all the damage on the underside of the main body.
Starting with the tub and front. First job was to fill most of the 87 holes that had been drilled into the front tub area.
Don't know yet where I want holes but I'm sure I don't want 87.
Placing a matting repair from the underside allowed me to fill the holes with matting and micro glass beads with poly resin.
Of course every hole has to be enlarged and ground with a 1-2cm taper all around to allow the matting to take.
This was also a chance to try out my Epoxy fairing mix on the front cracking.
Epoxy is much harder, much more expensive and much slower drying than poly so I saved the epoxy for bits you can see on the finished project.
Using a dremel I ground the gel coat back to mat in a 1/4" V following the cracks.
The results impressed me enough to use this technique on more sections of the car.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/a4ZRU1mvGBgcYyrU7

Peter

[The Green Reek]

Petrol Cap
The original petrol cap looked to bet an ill fitting Holden something.
This is a Honda CBR cap fitted to whats left of a Honda tank.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/pHDNGYsNrT6Kd3Zd7

[The Green Reek]

Left Rear Quarter
I've done this one in detail as it is typical of all 4 quarters of the car.
It has had a serious hit.
Bad gel cracking and some minor damage to the underlying chop.
All of the gel coat had to be removed from the cracked areas.
Note: I stopped just short of the hard edge so I could retain the original shape.
Re-enforcing mat to the underside.
New mat to the carved out areas to build the height up again.
The cracks that ran through the edge were ground out and fairing added.
The shape of the car didn't suffer at all.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/t9rMg8MAFERtpNGF7

Peter

[The Green Reek]

Rest of the Body
These pictures pretty well tell the story.
All quarters had suffered a fair amount of damage.
Left front was unique as the majority of the damage was done by the previous repairer.
It probably had some cracking but he attacked it with an angle grinder and cut right through the guard for about half its length.
A lot of underside repair on this to build up guard strength.
I think the repair was about 7 layers thick in the end.
Sharpy marks are low repair spots between fairing coats.
I usually did at least 3 fairing coats with a sand off between before I was happy with the finish.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/xBLHfxvni72PYGJt6

Peter

[Gregory]

You got yourself a pretty full on project, Peter.. The rear quarter repair job looks pretty good, well done.

[shonko]

Looking good Peter, will this one be at Port Macquarie 

I thought I saw a dust cloud north of me recently, must have been you sanding away in the shed. 

Shonko

PS, I am sure a lot of people are missing out on this build. You might want to put it on the Facebook page. 

[The Green Reek]

Hi Shonko
Not Port Macquarie but Gipsland for sure.
Just the Green this year.
This one isn't a keeper though, just a project.
You're not wrong about the dust. So much gel coat. Everything is red.
I have been playing with colour.
It will be a candy. Probably deep red metallic. Hope to put some samples up soon.
Roof is pretty much done. I'll use it for a colour test.
I'm not on any fancy facesnap or twitbook. You'll have to let them know for me.
Thanks
Peter

[The Green Reek]

Roof and Ears
The Ears/scoops took a lot of work which I didn't document well - sorry.
As they were just ripped off the car with a lever they were broken and cracked quite badly.
I had to give up on rescuing the front lower cross arm as they were basically non existent on both.
I'll make up for that with new mesh before they go back on.
I had thought initially that the roof required little work.
I was wrong.
It is an incredible pain to remove years old silicon that had been liberally slathered all over the place to hold windows in place.
No silicon can remain if you want paint to hold.
Both aluminum (US spell check) quarter window arms had been broken off so their mount point were no existent and had to be rebuilt.
Not to mention another couple of dozen holes to get rid of.
This is where I started to look at my colour.
I had experimented with various dyes and perls.
I finally settled on a blood red dye on a lightning silver base (Baslac).
The copper looking top is due to using a base binding layer from Baslac.  
Same dye and same number of layers - Just too thin.
I ended up tossing that in favour of a clear coat colour base with dye added. Usually 5 - 6 thin layers deep.
With under coats and 2K top coats, its about 12 coats deep to get the colour I wanted.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/ctGYBBxPZgvp4srX6

PS. I've include a picture of the roof center section. This was supposed to be gel coat. NOT.
You must remove blacks from under metalic paints. They will eventually boil and bubble in the ozzy sun. It may take years but it will happen.
I'm still making up my mind as whether to make it black like the original or red to match the new top. Thoughts?
PPS. Black is a lot cheaper and true to the original car.

Peter

[INSTRO]

I am taking notes and going through forum info , forgot to to have a look . Richard the Second.

[The Green Reek]

On the way back from the AGM. Awesome weekend thanks Graham and co. This reek now has linak lifters but i might have to sleep in it for a while.

[shonko]

It was great to catch up Pete. Looking forward to seeing you next time. Hopefully for the Picnic at Hanging Rock in February 2020 

The colour you are achieving on your project is amazing. Congrats.

Shonko

PS - I have stolen all your images on this forum and I will post them on Facebook. So keep them coming. Cheers........more scotch did I hear you say?? :O

[shonko]

FYI, this is the post on FB with your photos

Hi All, Pete "Greenreek" has given me permission to share his project pics here.......he doesn't FB. I have asked him to keep the photos coming, and I will periodically post them here for all to follow. I think it gives some great information for the DIY warrior working in his own shed.... garden.... veranda...and knowing Pete probably the dining table. All of which is a-ok when you are living in the 'dog house'!! BUT, don't worry access to the dog house is easy when the roof lifts up and down on your new actuators!!