Mick Percy - 346 054 283

Vent Wing Rear Rubber

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 16:00:00 -0800

Not too much to report for the past week or so. I did order one of the rear vent wing rubbers that recently appeared on Ebay - I forgot to get one of these when Pop was still trading and thought I'd not manage to find one. The rubber turned up in record time and is a nice quality item. I'll let you know how it fits.

The other thing that I managed to sort out is the rear engine bar. Somehow it managed to do a disappearing act at work (whilst some restructuring work was carried out) after finding it again I set to straightening it out. The rear engine bar is from a 2.0 litre combi and has an offset bend on the left side to clear the oil cooler and tin-wear. As this isn't needed on my engine I decided to straighten it out.

Straightening it was simply a case of heating it to cherry red using an oxy-acetaline torch and then carefully 'bending' it until straight. All that's left to do now is shorten it to the correct length and weld on the mountings I had made to the ends.

The mountings are to marry up to standard Porsche 911 engine mounts - these will be fitted into custom fabricated brackets that site in the rear corners of the engine bay - very similar to a stock 911.

The ends will have to wait until I finish the new rear suspension setup so that I can take some accurate measurements with the engine and box in situ.

New Rear Suspension

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 16:00:00 -0800

Last weekend I decided to dive in and get cracking on the new suspension. It was some time ago since I bought the second IRS subframe, and at some point I think I had decided to leave the current setup in there. Discussions with one of my colleagues at work had led to a very new idea - one that really need to be tried out. The basic premise of the idea is that as the torsion bar setup is being replaced with coil overs ther is a lot less torsional stress in the whole suspension, this means that the oversize side plates and general beefed-upness of the subframe was overkill.

The new idea is similar to my old idea based on the MBT Unibal set up with a ball / rose / heim jointed adjustable 'spring plate' but this time does not require the complex mounting to get the ball joint to fit into the pressing where the spring plate cover would normally sit - this is cut off leaving the end of the torsion bar. Instead of the afforementioned mount a large 'plug' is welded into the end of the torsion bar - this is bored and threaded to the correct size to accept the ball joint being bolted to it.

The ball joint has a left handed thread and is joined to an adaptor that bolts to the A-Arm which has a right handed thread via a 'turn buckle'. This gives toe adjustment to the rear wheels.

With the sideplates cut off there are two problems to address - the first one - where to mount the Coil-over - it is easily addressed by utilising the existing mounting at the rear of the car that the side plate originally bolted up to - the same place that the shock absorber would have been bolted to. The second problem (one of strength) is addressed by tying the mounting to the torsion bar with a tubular cross brace - similar to the old side plate but a lot less heavy.

So with the idea firm in my mind I set about prepping the rear subframe and getting it ready. The first thing I did was to remove the side plates - this was a fairly easy task utilising an angle grinder. Next the A-Arm pivot housings were removed - again the angle grinder was used - this time to to grind away most of the weld before finishing it off with a cold chisel - this way the minimum amount of metal is lost from the pivot housings allowing them to be reused.

The pivot housings were removed in this manner to allow them to be welded back on further inwards - thus reducing the track (width) of the rear suspension. This is necessary as the 944 A-Arms are too wide with the type of wheels that I'm using.

I'll get around to finishing the rear suspension off in a few weeks time as I have a feww more important projects to take care of first. My only issue now is that ideally I would like a narrowed front beam - anyone done this on a type 3 yet?

As usual more pictures can be found in the media gallery.

My First Post

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 16:00:00 -0800

With the suspension out of the car I have set to work in getting everything ready for remounting everything back into the car. I've had some mountings turned down that I can weld onto the ends of the engine bar to allow it to be bolted to the stock 911 engine mounts, I've also designed the rear engine mounts and made some better templates up out of cardboard. The mounts pick up on the existing bumper mountings and the inner valence at the rear of the car - they are very similar in design to stock 911 mountings that bridge the rear corners of the engine bay - I just need to get them laser cut and bent up.

Unfortunately the progress has stopped there.

Progress has been made on another new project however - a 1959 DKW 250cc motorcycle, or to be more correct, two motorcycles. I picked up a 1958 and a 1959 DKW from my partner (Mels) uncle - the '59 originally used to belong to Mels father whilst the '58 was originally her grandfathers. (these are obviously now heirlooms as Mel has since informed me). They were taking up valuable space in his workshop. After realising he wasn't ever going to restore them he decided to sell them. I went and took a look and struck a deal with him.

I've been spending the past couple of weeks getting the '59 back on the road - this has meant cleaning everything up and checking everything works - repairing stuff as necessary. I also had two new tyres fitted and bought a new battery. I managed to get the bike registered and am now just sorting out getting it running correctly as it still isn't quite right.

I've stripped the engine down on the '58 and need to source a few parts to get it running again, but intend to carry out a full restoration on it.

Whilst I thought my good fortune couldn't get any better along comes another offer I simply couldn't turn down. My boss at work had inherited a MkII Jaguar that needed restoring - I went and had a look at the car with him to help him evaluate it. After telling him that if for any reason he didn't want it I would be interested - he later decided that it was a bit too much work for him. A deal was struck and I am now the powner of a MKII Jaguar.

It's a 2.4 which is the smallest of the three capacities offered (the most desireable being the 3.8) and uses the 6 cylinder Le-Mans winning XK engine.

The Jag is rot free but does require a repaint and the interior retrimmed. There are no dings in the body or bumpers and only a few bits of bodywork that will require attention. Hopefully it should be an easy project.

I'll get stuck into this when the Ghia is finished.

(Or should that be IF the Ghia is finished???)

As usual there are more pictures in the media library - I've added two new sections - one each for the Jaguar and the DKW's - I'll keep them updated as I get more work done. Currently I'm getting the DKW running properly as it would be nice to use it to commute to work on. After that I will move back to sorting out the Ghia. :)