Post by daydreamer on Aug 16, 2010 23:25:30 GMT
This story starts in November 2009 when I went to visit MEV and look at the Sonic 7 demonstrator. In the end I ordered a kit in May 2010 and then set about finding a donor. I had been thinking of a Sylvia Riot but just preferred the slightly fuller bodywork of the Sonic. (Don’t ask me about the J15)
(Sometime, early June). Picked up the donor this weekend from my sisters place in Wiltshire. The donor was bought at auction using only an online bidding system. I'd heard some stories of disappointment , vehicles not being as described but in my case the vehicle, aside from the expected accident damage was very tidy. In the auctioneers parlance it "Runs and Drives".
I know there are several schools of thought about this, one being that it is better to buy a donor that is roadworthy and use it for a month or so to be sure that the engine and gearbox are all fine. After all who wants to put all that effort into fitting it only to find that it needs some work. I was going down this route until I found how many potential donors are written off by insurance companies just because they are beyond economic repair. A lot, perhaps most, of the accident damaged candidates had frontal damage that was far too heavy for my liking but there are enough with rear, side or very light front damage. There are also quite a lot with fire damage that are still described as "Runs and Drives". Fire damage sounds horrific and some of the pictures bear that out but it seems that Ford have done a good job of fitting fire retardant fabrics and foams because most attempts by thieves to destroy a Focus just result in a heavily singed driver’s seat and soiled roof lining. Obviously some thieves were better than others at torching their rides. I saw some achingly attractive donor candidates that had been parked next to a fire and had been "melted" on one side. I missed on these as they were going for about £500 above my budget each time. I figured that if the donor was going to cost more than £2.5k then I might as well just buy all new engine , gearbox and other bits.
I was expecting to spend £1k on a donor, on the basis that it was private sale and a runner. That meant I was looking at early models, pre 1999 or very high mileage examples. If I wanted a low mileage example on an 2001, 02 or 03 plate then I would be looking at a lot more than £1k for a tidy low mileage runner.
By going for an accident damaged donor, I was able to get the parts I needed without paying for "utility" that I didn't.
So after looking for nearly a month and watching at least a dozen potential donors go under the hammer I settled on the car I finally bought. An August 2001 1.8 Focus (Zetec) with very light frontal damage.
What did it cost?
£350 auction hammer price.
PLUS
£40.00 Registration fee for auction house ( to be able to bid for 1 year )
£30.00 auction house fee ( for what I don't know but it gets charged to the buyer each time the hammer falls )
£110.00 Delivery to my sisters place ( I had it delivered there as it was closer to the auction house and they would not deliver to my place in London) I didn't want to take a days holiday and the auction was not open on a Saturday.
£97.00 Hire of car transporter for a day
£50.00 Fuel in car transporter
So to buy it and get it into my garage at home it cost a total of £677.00
All of that was expected, but I had a few surprises when I got home.
• Having to request a new registration certificate (V5 form) There's no charge for this as it was a Cat-C at the auction and the insurance company had destroyed the V5. I should have anticipated this but no bother, I've filled in and sent off the forms. ( V62 and SORN )
• Only one key supplied, It is the main key with all the remote locking and boot opener but I will need to some spares made and they are not cheap. This is an expensive item to fix. I've been quoted £80.00 for a man to come out and make a second key, I heard that some do it for £50, so I'm still shopping around.
• Stereo is a Radio and Mini Disc Player ( very useful , if I had a minidisk collection) No bother, I don't need it anyway, but I don't think it will fetch anything on ebay.
• Wheels fitted with locking wheel nuts but no key for removing same. This is an absolute pain but I have found a universal locking wheel nut removal kit and ordered that at a cost of £26.00 delivered.
• Someone has removed the wiper blades front and rear. I don't need them but it's a bit cheeky anyway.
So that’s another £106.00 pounds.
Cost of donor car now, £783.00. Hmmm, not as good as I thought it might be but I still have a sweet running 1.8 with only 56k miles on it.
It seems the reality is that you need to add about £450 to the hammer price to understand what it is going to cost to get onto the drive and get the wheels off.
Wednesday 9th
Engine hoist delivered today.
Universal wheel nut remover delivered today.
The hoist was expected and that's why I was working from home but the arrival of the wheel nut remover on the same day was a bonus. I had only ordered it the day before.
Getting the wheel nuts off was not as straight forward as I had expected and despite the use of an impact driver I could not get the tool to "bite" on the locking wheel nut. After much hammering and the occasional comment to no-one in particular I realised that the removal tool was too deep and grounding on the wheel surface before the nut was far enough into the tapered void in the tool. Some modification was required to make the tool less deep and allow it to get a better bite. Out with the angle grinder, in with a metal cutting disk and off with about 7mm from the end of the "too deep socket". Hardened, chromium steel makes a very pretty shower when cut with an angle grinder, for once I was glad that I took the time to get my goggles and mask.
The modified remover could now get a good bite, if pressed in hard enough. This is not an effortless process, especially on the wheel that I had been hammering away at for 20 minutes with the impact driver. I have never been very confident about which way to twist the impact driver to set it up properly. I probably got it wrong as the three remaining locks all came off with much less effort. Removing the nuts from the tool required that the nut was gripped in a vice and the tool twisted off.
Blimey, this is just getting the wheel nuts off, I've a whole car to build before there's a "humour failure". Anyway, there is a perverse satisfaction in having to modify the tool to get it to work.
11th June 2010 - 1st visit to Scotland.
Not exactly my first visit as I have been there many times but the first visit on account of this project. The mission on this visit is to help my brother prepare his garage so that it can receive the kit in a month or so. The kit will be built up to a rolling chassis and the engine fitted in Scotland. The plan is that it will be finished off in my garage near London in phase two.
15th June 2010 - Browsing on ebay has turned up a new 1.8 zetec engine for £450. After not enough thinking time a decision is made and I agree to buy it. Now I am going to shoot for a new registration and the price of the new engine can be offset against the cost of tidying up the old engine. I recon we would have spent the best part of £300 servicing the old engine with new clutch, rocker cover gasket , timing belt and so on. The new engine comes with all the inlet manifold/injectors and gubbins. See, I might even convince you dear reader if I carry on. The only hassle is that it will be a 6 hour round trip to pick it up. I've scheduled the pickup for Saturday 26th June and I have to get there before noon as they only work a half day on Saturday. Another 7:00am start on a weekend. Apparently they have 300 hundred new examples of this engine all direct from Ford , six to a pallet/tray.
18 June 2010.
Just received a letter from MEV that the kit will be ready for collection from the 28th June. I was hoping it would be a week or two later as I still have to start on the donor vehicle. I hope that Stuart can accommodate a Saturday pickup. I was thinking to take a week off in July but it seems that everyone else has booked their holidays at work and someone needs to hold the fort, that someone being me. So a change of plan, Stuart willing, I will collect on a Saturday and drive it to Arbroath on the Saturday, hopefully with all the donor parts which I will harvest in the next couple of weekends. I will then drive back on the Sunday. It saves on the van rental as it will be a weekend rate with unlimited mileage. ( It'll be a 1,300 mile round trip ) Depending on when I pick the kit up I will have one or two clear weekends to strip the donor.
20th June 2010 - made a visit to the Newark show. Another 6 hour round trip at the weekend.
I've arranged with Stuart at MEV to collect my kit on the 23rd of July. That gives me time to strip the donor and for my brother to get his garage ready.
I think I will start on the donor in the evenings this week. First job , removal of airbags and emptying of fuel tank. I wonder if I can sell the unused airbags on ebay, perhaps the Royal mail will have something to say about that.
26th June
Picked up the new engine today, 8 hour round trip to Great Yarmouth. 4 people, including myself to load it in the back of my car. Just me to remove it when I got home. Fortunately I have an engine hoist but it was still a bit of a balancing act.
5th July
So far I have removed the dash, all removable panels from the front of the car and the rear bumper. It's still runs and drives. I have listed the car on eBay and I have had some enquiries for most of the body parts and arranged to show prospective buyers the bits, however I have had two no-shows and I am now harbouring a negative impression for the eBay selling process. How much effort is it to call and say that you've changed your mind and are not going to turn up. It wastes my time and I don't need the money that much, for me it's more about avoiding waste. Anyway what doesn't sell I'll just send to the dump in a week or so.
The only job that makes me nervous now is empting and removing the petrol tank. I've dealt with the airbags, at least they are removed. Another job that might prove a hassle is empting and disposing of the air-con gas.
I've had two new keys made , £100.00 for the pair. I want to get the odometer reset to 0 miles and I am hunting around for someone to do that. From reading on the internet it seems that the mileage is recorded in an eeprom chip on the back of the instrument binnacle.
I see that other members on the forum have a job remembering what all the connectors are for so I'm labelling every connector as I remove it. There are lots of connectors. I plan to do the same with the hoses as I remove those. Pictures are going to help a lot as well, so I plan to photograph as much as I can as I'm going along.
The replacement V5 has arrived for the donor. DVLA denied that it was CATC or any type of CAT for that matter so I had to pay a £25.00 V5 replacement fee. hmmm.
7th July
LWB Transit van booked for collecting kit and travelling to Scotland.
Engine and transmission is definitely coming out this weekend.
9th July
Air con gas removed by specialist auto air-con engineer. I'm £40.00 poorer but the environment is still intact.
11th July.
At last I built up my determination and the engine/transmission is out and sitting on a purpose built skate. I left the driveshaft's in the diff so the engine is still full with engine oil and the transmission still has all the gearbox fluid. These fluids will be replaced in due course. The whole process took two full days. I know that is lot longer than some would do it in but after following the Haynes manual for about 30 minutes I realised that I was removing the engine in a way that made the Haynes process difficult to follow. The manual was useful for explaining how to remove the driveshaft's, gear selector cables and other connectors.
Several sets of bolts really held me up.
The heat shield on the exhaust manifold has four small bolts, the top two came off easily but the lower two would not budge so I cut the heat shield off using an occilating cutter with a metal cutting bit attached. I now have two surplus bolts stuck in the catalytic converter. I'll have to deal with them later.
The top suspension strut retaining nut is an 18mm fitment and my socket set does not have an 18mm socket. A visit to Halfords was fruitless as they were sold out of 18mm sockets and had no deep set ring spanners. I have since ordered a comprehensive deep set ring spanner set for £27.00. The other bolts that tripped me up were the exhaust pipe joint bolts which were very stiff. I eventually made another trip to Halfords and bought a 16" T-Bar (type thing) to drive the socket and that did the trick, with a little use of the great persuader. On the suspension, the lower ball joint retention bolts needed a lot of hammering to get them out. A slide hammer would have been really useful for pulling the retaining bolts rather than pushing them out. For future use I've ordered a sliding hammer set. With the top strut bolt still tight I had to pull the strut quite a lot to get the drive shaft out.
The only item I had to cut/break in taking the engine out was the vacuum pipe going to the brake servo from the inlet manifold. It was the last connector I tried to get off and it just would not budge. I did not need it, so out came the snips and when I cut into that pipe I could hear pressure being released/relieved. If there was a significant vacuum in the pipe then it was not surprising I couldn't pull it off. On reflection I probably should have tried the brakes a few times to release the pressure. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
21st July.
Pick up rental van in the morning before going to work. Take it back because side door does not lock and get another one.
Start loading the van in the evening. Even with the engines on skates it takes hours to get all the heavy stuff loaded and strapped down. I’m wondering where the kit is going to fit in. This is the second Van from the rental company and the entire nearside front light cluster is not working. I notice this because I want to move the van forward a meter in the garden and it is dark. It’s 10:00pm and Investigations under the bonnet reveal a half finished job, someone has removed the light cluster access panels, they are lying in the engine bay and all the bulbs are blown, dip, main beam, parking light. Of course this is after dinner and glass of two of wine means that I’m not driving anywhere to pick up replacement bulbs, I’ll have to walk to the local garage. The van rental company does have a 24hour line but refuse to send out a repair van for blown bulbs. Man at van company recons the main headlight is a H4 fitment but the local garage is without. Anyway he’s wrong as it is a H7 fitment and as the bulb looks familiar so I “borrow” the bulbs from my VW passat which are an exact match. Now I’m all ready for departure the following evening.
22nd July
Make a final load of all tools and nickable stuff, depart for Mansfield Travelodge. Picking the kit up tomorrow at 9:00am and then driving on to Arbroath.
23rd July
Pick up kit from MEV in Mansfield, 2 hours to load. Stuart very kindly pressed out my hubs from the donor stub axels. While I was there, I had a glimpse of the new Exocet being adjusted by Stuart in preparation for the AMM - at Curborough.
15th August
Progress seems rapid, at least a lot faster than my expectation. In the last couple of weeks the gearbox has been stripped. A Quaife LSD is going to be fitted and the gearbox casing and bell housing is off to be shot blasted before painting or lacquering. Lots of other bits are being prepared for shot blasting at the same time, driveshafts, all the aluminium mounting brackets from the old engine, exhaust brackets.
16th August
My first post to the MEV forum. I must confess that the main reason for the post is that we have some questions about the handbrake location.
Pictures for your amusement.
picasaweb.google.co.uk/116243598854623843130/Sonic702?authkey=Gv1sRgCLTn6ovfwbW8Mw#
(Sometime, early June). Picked up the donor this weekend from my sisters place in Wiltshire. The donor was bought at auction using only an online bidding system. I'd heard some stories of disappointment , vehicles not being as described but in my case the vehicle, aside from the expected accident damage was very tidy. In the auctioneers parlance it "Runs and Drives".
I know there are several schools of thought about this, one being that it is better to buy a donor that is roadworthy and use it for a month or so to be sure that the engine and gearbox are all fine. After all who wants to put all that effort into fitting it only to find that it needs some work. I was going down this route until I found how many potential donors are written off by insurance companies just because they are beyond economic repair. A lot, perhaps most, of the accident damaged candidates had frontal damage that was far too heavy for my liking but there are enough with rear, side or very light front damage. There are also quite a lot with fire damage that are still described as "Runs and Drives". Fire damage sounds horrific and some of the pictures bear that out but it seems that Ford have done a good job of fitting fire retardant fabrics and foams because most attempts by thieves to destroy a Focus just result in a heavily singed driver’s seat and soiled roof lining. Obviously some thieves were better than others at torching their rides. I saw some achingly attractive donor candidates that had been parked next to a fire and had been "melted" on one side. I missed on these as they were going for about £500 above my budget each time. I figured that if the donor was going to cost more than £2.5k then I might as well just buy all new engine , gearbox and other bits.
I was expecting to spend £1k on a donor, on the basis that it was private sale and a runner. That meant I was looking at early models, pre 1999 or very high mileage examples. If I wanted a low mileage example on an 2001, 02 or 03 plate then I would be looking at a lot more than £1k for a tidy low mileage runner.
By going for an accident damaged donor, I was able to get the parts I needed without paying for "utility" that I didn't.
So after looking for nearly a month and watching at least a dozen potential donors go under the hammer I settled on the car I finally bought. An August 2001 1.8 Focus (Zetec) with very light frontal damage.
What did it cost?
£350 auction hammer price.
PLUS
£40.00 Registration fee for auction house ( to be able to bid for 1 year )
£30.00 auction house fee ( for what I don't know but it gets charged to the buyer each time the hammer falls )
£110.00 Delivery to my sisters place ( I had it delivered there as it was closer to the auction house and they would not deliver to my place in London) I didn't want to take a days holiday and the auction was not open on a Saturday.
£97.00 Hire of car transporter for a day
£50.00 Fuel in car transporter
So to buy it and get it into my garage at home it cost a total of £677.00
All of that was expected, but I had a few surprises when I got home.
• Having to request a new registration certificate (V5 form) There's no charge for this as it was a Cat-C at the auction and the insurance company had destroyed the V5. I should have anticipated this but no bother, I've filled in and sent off the forms. ( V62 and SORN )
• Only one key supplied, It is the main key with all the remote locking and boot opener but I will need to some spares made and they are not cheap. This is an expensive item to fix. I've been quoted £80.00 for a man to come out and make a second key, I heard that some do it for £50, so I'm still shopping around.
• Stereo is a Radio and Mini Disc Player ( very useful , if I had a minidisk collection) No bother, I don't need it anyway, but I don't think it will fetch anything on ebay.
• Wheels fitted with locking wheel nuts but no key for removing same. This is an absolute pain but I have found a universal locking wheel nut removal kit and ordered that at a cost of £26.00 delivered.
• Someone has removed the wiper blades front and rear. I don't need them but it's a bit cheeky anyway.
So that’s another £106.00 pounds.
Cost of donor car now, £783.00. Hmmm, not as good as I thought it might be but I still have a sweet running 1.8 with only 56k miles on it.
It seems the reality is that you need to add about £450 to the hammer price to understand what it is going to cost to get onto the drive and get the wheels off.
Wednesday 9th
Engine hoist delivered today.
Universal wheel nut remover delivered today.
The hoist was expected and that's why I was working from home but the arrival of the wheel nut remover on the same day was a bonus. I had only ordered it the day before.
Getting the wheel nuts off was not as straight forward as I had expected and despite the use of an impact driver I could not get the tool to "bite" on the locking wheel nut. After much hammering and the occasional comment to no-one in particular I realised that the removal tool was too deep and grounding on the wheel surface before the nut was far enough into the tapered void in the tool. Some modification was required to make the tool less deep and allow it to get a better bite. Out with the angle grinder, in with a metal cutting disk and off with about 7mm from the end of the "too deep socket". Hardened, chromium steel makes a very pretty shower when cut with an angle grinder, for once I was glad that I took the time to get my goggles and mask.
The modified remover could now get a good bite, if pressed in hard enough. This is not an effortless process, especially on the wheel that I had been hammering away at for 20 minutes with the impact driver. I have never been very confident about which way to twist the impact driver to set it up properly. I probably got it wrong as the three remaining locks all came off with much less effort. Removing the nuts from the tool required that the nut was gripped in a vice and the tool twisted off.
Blimey, this is just getting the wheel nuts off, I've a whole car to build before there's a "humour failure". Anyway, there is a perverse satisfaction in having to modify the tool to get it to work.
11th June 2010 - 1st visit to Scotland.
Not exactly my first visit as I have been there many times but the first visit on account of this project. The mission on this visit is to help my brother prepare his garage so that it can receive the kit in a month or so. The kit will be built up to a rolling chassis and the engine fitted in Scotland. The plan is that it will be finished off in my garage near London in phase two.
15th June 2010 - Browsing on ebay has turned up a new 1.8 zetec engine for £450. After not enough thinking time a decision is made and I agree to buy it. Now I am going to shoot for a new registration and the price of the new engine can be offset against the cost of tidying up the old engine. I recon we would have spent the best part of £300 servicing the old engine with new clutch, rocker cover gasket , timing belt and so on. The new engine comes with all the inlet manifold/injectors and gubbins. See, I might even convince you dear reader if I carry on. The only hassle is that it will be a 6 hour round trip to pick it up. I've scheduled the pickup for Saturday 26th June and I have to get there before noon as they only work a half day on Saturday. Another 7:00am start on a weekend. Apparently they have 300 hundred new examples of this engine all direct from Ford , six to a pallet/tray.
18 June 2010.
Just received a letter from MEV that the kit will be ready for collection from the 28th June. I was hoping it would be a week or two later as I still have to start on the donor vehicle. I hope that Stuart can accommodate a Saturday pickup. I was thinking to take a week off in July but it seems that everyone else has booked their holidays at work and someone needs to hold the fort, that someone being me. So a change of plan, Stuart willing, I will collect on a Saturday and drive it to Arbroath on the Saturday, hopefully with all the donor parts which I will harvest in the next couple of weekends. I will then drive back on the Sunday. It saves on the van rental as it will be a weekend rate with unlimited mileage. ( It'll be a 1,300 mile round trip ) Depending on when I pick the kit up I will have one or two clear weekends to strip the donor.
20th June 2010 - made a visit to the Newark show. Another 6 hour round trip at the weekend.
I've arranged with Stuart at MEV to collect my kit on the 23rd of July. That gives me time to strip the donor and for my brother to get his garage ready.
I think I will start on the donor in the evenings this week. First job , removal of airbags and emptying of fuel tank. I wonder if I can sell the unused airbags on ebay, perhaps the Royal mail will have something to say about that.
26th June
Picked up the new engine today, 8 hour round trip to Great Yarmouth. 4 people, including myself to load it in the back of my car. Just me to remove it when I got home. Fortunately I have an engine hoist but it was still a bit of a balancing act.
5th July
So far I have removed the dash, all removable panels from the front of the car and the rear bumper. It's still runs and drives. I have listed the car on eBay and I have had some enquiries for most of the body parts and arranged to show prospective buyers the bits, however I have had two no-shows and I am now harbouring a negative impression for the eBay selling process. How much effort is it to call and say that you've changed your mind and are not going to turn up. It wastes my time and I don't need the money that much, for me it's more about avoiding waste. Anyway what doesn't sell I'll just send to the dump in a week or so.
The only job that makes me nervous now is empting and removing the petrol tank. I've dealt with the airbags, at least they are removed. Another job that might prove a hassle is empting and disposing of the air-con gas.
I've had two new keys made , £100.00 for the pair. I want to get the odometer reset to 0 miles and I am hunting around for someone to do that. From reading on the internet it seems that the mileage is recorded in an eeprom chip on the back of the instrument binnacle.
I see that other members on the forum have a job remembering what all the connectors are for so I'm labelling every connector as I remove it. There are lots of connectors. I plan to do the same with the hoses as I remove those. Pictures are going to help a lot as well, so I plan to photograph as much as I can as I'm going along.
The replacement V5 has arrived for the donor. DVLA denied that it was CATC or any type of CAT for that matter so I had to pay a £25.00 V5 replacement fee. hmmm.
7th July
LWB Transit van booked for collecting kit and travelling to Scotland.
Engine and transmission is definitely coming out this weekend.
9th July
Air con gas removed by specialist auto air-con engineer. I'm £40.00 poorer but the environment is still intact.
11th July.
At last I built up my determination and the engine/transmission is out and sitting on a purpose built skate. I left the driveshaft's in the diff so the engine is still full with engine oil and the transmission still has all the gearbox fluid. These fluids will be replaced in due course. The whole process took two full days. I know that is lot longer than some would do it in but after following the Haynes manual for about 30 minutes I realised that I was removing the engine in a way that made the Haynes process difficult to follow. The manual was useful for explaining how to remove the driveshaft's, gear selector cables and other connectors.
Several sets of bolts really held me up.
The heat shield on the exhaust manifold has four small bolts, the top two came off easily but the lower two would not budge so I cut the heat shield off using an occilating cutter with a metal cutting bit attached. I now have two surplus bolts stuck in the catalytic converter. I'll have to deal with them later.
The top suspension strut retaining nut is an 18mm fitment and my socket set does not have an 18mm socket. A visit to Halfords was fruitless as they were sold out of 18mm sockets and had no deep set ring spanners. I have since ordered a comprehensive deep set ring spanner set for £27.00. The other bolts that tripped me up were the exhaust pipe joint bolts which were very stiff. I eventually made another trip to Halfords and bought a 16" T-Bar (type thing) to drive the socket and that did the trick, with a little use of the great persuader. On the suspension, the lower ball joint retention bolts needed a lot of hammering to get them out. A slide hammer would have been really useful for pulling the retaining bolts rather than pushing them out. For future use I've ordered a sliding hammer set. With the top strut bolt still tight I had to pull the strut quite a lot to get the drive shaft out.
The only item I had to cut/break in taking the engine out was the vacuum pipe going to the brake servo from the inlet manifold. It was the last connector I tried to get off and it just would not budge. I did not need it, so out came the snips and when I cut into that pipe I could hear pressure being released/relieved. If there was a significant vacuum in the pipe then it was not surprising I couldn't pull it off. On reflection I probably should have tried the brakes a few times to release the pressure. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
21st July.
Pick up rental van in the morning before going to work. Take it back because side door does not lock and get another one.
Start loading the van in the evening. Even with the engines on skates it takes hours to get all the heavy stuff loaded and strapped down. I’m wondering where the kit is going to fit in. This is the second Van from the rental company and the entire nearside front light cluster is not working. I notice this because I want to move the van forward a meter in the garden and it is dark. It’s 10:00pm and Investigations under the bonnet reveal a half finished job, someone has removed the light cluster access panels, they are lying in the engine bay and all the bulbs are blown, dip, main beam, parking light. Of course this is after dinner and glass of two of wine means that I’m not driving anywhere to pick up replacement bulbs, I’ll have to walk to the local garage. The van rental company does have a 24hour line but refuse to send out a repair van for blown bulbs. Man at van company recons the main headlight is a H4 fitment but the local garage is without. Anyway he’s wrong as it is a H7 fitment and as the bulb looks familiar so I “borrow” the bulbs from my VW passat which are an exact match. Now I’m all ready for departure the following evening.
22nd July
Make a final load of all tools and nickable stuff, depart for Mansfield Travelodge. Picking the kit up tomorrow at 9:00am and then driving on to Arbroath.
23rd July
Pick up kit from MEV in Mansfield, 2 hours to load. Stuart very kindly pressed out my hubs from the donor stub axels. While I was there, I had a glimpse of the new Exocet being adjusted by Stuart in preparation for the AMM - at Curborough.
15th August
Progress seems rapid, at least a lot faster than my expectation. In the last couple of weeks the gearbox has been stripped. A Quaife LSD is going to be fitted and the gearbox casing and bell housing is off to be shot blasted before painting or lacquering. Lots of other bits are being prepared for shot blasting at the same time, driveshafts, all the aluminium mounting brackets from the old engine, exhaust brackets.
16th August
My first post to the MEV forum. I must confess that the main reason for the post is that we have some questions about the handbrake location.
Pictures for your amusement.
picasaweb.google.co.uk/116243598854623843130/Sonic702?authkey=Gv1sRgCLTn6ovfwbW8Mw#