GT40 Australia #27

[Bill Musarra]

Some great work Peter. I like the treatment of the door panels in particular. My upholster guy is making up some panels for mine, and soon will be in place. In mine , he incorporated and invisible cover for the speakers that are mounted in the door. Just have to get the other projects done on the car first.

Bill

[Peter D]

Thanks Bill - I still haven't made up my mind about a radio/stereo for the car, so we left a blank area of door panel at the top/front for future speakers if required.

My major problem with a full in-car system is that, in the great "rush to rego", I forgot to install wiring into the doors for speakers. Retro-fitting this wiring would be a non-trivial task - removing the interior side-panels (Sikkaflexed in), etc.

So for the moment, I am going to rely on ear-plugs & the new Nokia phone which has an FM radio & a 1GB card for my music library. When working in the garage, I have the phone connected to a set of PC speakers/sub & the sound is fantastic. Sooner or later, someone will offer a 12V version of an iPod docking station with decent sound - so maybe that can be fitted into car without all the wiring dramas !

After a run of rainy weather, I managed some spray painting today - final primer on the front clip. As to why I am painting - see my next epistle titled "Disaster" !!

Kind Regards,

Peter D.

[hoppy]

Hi Peter,

Looking good.What material is the "cod piece" made from?The reason I ask is that my Simmons have been chromed and would be interested in these as long as they can be chromed to match.

Your wheels fill the arches very nicely.One of the reasons I got a DRB was that I felt their wheel arches looked smaller than other brands that I was looking at,some cars seem to have an almost 4wd wheel arch clearance.

Keep the updates coming.

Hoppy

[Peter D]

Thanks Hoppy - the "Codpieces" are 3mm aluminium, so I assume that these could be successfully chromed.

Yep, the DRB seems to have hit that "sweet spot" in terms of wheel arch radius vs tyre radius with the 17" jobs - they just look "right". My only issue was with pushing the wheels outboard to fully fill the guards. As mentioned, I went with the old DRB offsets (about 5 years ago) & found that they were too far inboard.

I had just enough adjustment in the rose joints to allow me to push the whole rear uprights out another 3/4", BUT, the travel on the drive-shaft splines would not allow that option (I even had to get 5mm machined off the male splines to avoid binding on full drop-down with the suspension wound in to its standard position).

With the Vette front suspension, I was screwed - whilst I could shim out the top arm, the bottom arm is totally fixed in position.

That left me with 2 options :

- Get Simmons to modify the wheels - replace inner & outer rims to give me 3/4" extra track per side. This turned out to be impossible as Simmons have changed the bolt pattern on the FR17's since I bought mine.

- Only one option left - wheel spacers !

How are things going since the lifting of the Windsor engine drop-dead date ?

Kind Regards,

Peter D.

[hoppy]

Peter,

Will PM Jim C about the "codpieces",thanks.

Currently at the mercy of QT,am awaiting approval for the final inspection.Apparantly after the engineers inspection and report is submitted it takes anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months for the approval and in the meantime no work is can be done to the car as it has to be as presented to the engineer (same as pics in initial report).
Will be seeing PR in 3 weeks time when back in Brissy so will be interested to find out what he knows about the Windsor story.
One of the guys I work with thinks that one of Anna Blighs kids is biulding a car and wants to run a Windsor,just speculation.

Hoppy

[Peter D]

Hoppy, entering the "no-man's land" of bureacracy is just such fun - NOT !! It all seems to depend on who's on annual / sick / maternity / paternity leave, and on what the last bum on a seat had for dinner last night !!

I love the Anna Bligh (QLD Premier) rumour - but let's leave that alone until you've got full rego !

Kind Regards,

Peter D.

[Peter D]

4. DISASTER
The plan was for a short trip to the local auto parts shop, then a nice drive down the Old Pacific Highway & back home. Well, I got to the shop, parked the car in their parking area, & as it is on a bit of a slope running down to the shopfront, I thought that an extra notch on the handbrake would be a good idea. With the shopping done, I get back into the car & try to start it - a couple of sluggish revs out of the starter, then the clicking of the solenoid (flat battery, I assumed). And so started an interesting sequence of events :

The Day's Events :
- Open rear clip, borrow a jump-start battery pack & connect to battery
- Try to start, & get exactly the same result
- Bystander shouts "FIRE"
- I look around to see clouds of smoke rising from the back of the engine compartment
- I switch off the ignition, grab the fire extinguisher & jump out
- As I get to the back, I can see a nice little fire going around the back of the starter
- I point the fire extinguisher at the fire, & the car decides to move off down the slope
- Having followed the car some 8 feet, it stops suddenly - brick walls have this effect !
- Fire gets extinguished
- Some colourful language !
- Tow truck summoned & the car is returned home
- Tow truck can not fit up our battle-axe driveway, so the car is dumped in the street
- Kind chap from the local garage comes over with his 4wd & drags the thing up the drive to the house
- I pour myself a large scotch

Diagnosis :
- When the handbrake was pulled on hard, I had failed to notice how much the main handbrake cable assembly moved
(the DRB has a self-balancing setup where the inner core pulls a slider on one side & the outer sheath pulls a slider on the other side).
- The handbrake cable assembly pulled up against the main battery feed terminal on the starter with the handbrake on hard
- Over the last couple of years, this finally wore thru the plastic coating of the handbrake cable, so this day was "arc-welding day" !
- With the inner spiral steel cable sheath arcing to the starter terminal, the remaining surrounding plastic sheathing caught fire
- This fire was cleverly located just under the hydraulic hose running to the clutch slave cylinder
- Being rubber, this hose caught fire too, melted, then fed clutch fluid onto the fire - there was so much smoke that I thought Lucas had escaped !!
- The heat from the conflagration surrounding the handbrake cable caused things to expand enough to ease off the handbrake
- In my panic to get out of the car with a fire-extinguisher, I totally forgot to shove it back in gear
- Gravity then took over for a while - until it was quickly brought under control by the corner of a brick wall !

Consequences :
- Upon reflection, I figured that I got off fairly lightly. It might have happened on a big hill with no brick wall in the way - not a pleasant thought.
- I was going to have to do some glasswork anyway - to clear the front tyres from the guard / tank-cover lips (caused by the wheel spacers)
- I was also planning to eventually do other glasswork on the front clip :
- Open up the fake NACA ducts in the guards
- Strengthen under the flat sections (across the nose, & just in front of the windscreen) to get rid of some sink-holes & general ripples
- Hollow out the insides of the recesses for the clip latches to provide more clearance for the brackets on the chassis
- Given the above, a full resto on the front clip was started - oddly enough, the repair of the crunched-in nose was the easy bit
- Opening up the NACA ducts & making short extension ducts under the clip was not all that easy
- The "weather guy" hates me : every time that I had things prepped ready for sealer, primer, etc, the heavens opened !
( I reckon that I could make a living by driving around drought-stricken areas in a freshly primed GT40 & with a spray-gun on my belt ) !!

I finally finished all the repairs & mods on the front clip (including re-inforcing under the flat sections of the nostril panel). The latter just seemed like "a good idea" at the time, so I finished that & let it cure for a couple of weeks, Then I blocked back the top surface & discovered the distortion caused at the front corners by the prang ! (You can see the yellow primer showing thru in the "after" pic - I had to sand away 4 coats of clear & 4 coats of colour, plus some old primer, to get it flat !).

So with all that done & primed/re-primed, the car is off to a professional painter next Tuesday for a full run of colour/clear over the front clip & nostril panel (I have had to wait over a month for the painter, so it had better be a damn good job !).

After that, it will be some catch-up time - just driving the car for a while. THEN, its onto the next project - a gearbox re-build !! I had the G50 rebuilt (& a higher ratio 5th installed) a couple of years ago by Albins Off Road Gear here in Oz. All my research told me that these guys were the "bee's knees" when it comes to Porsche boxes - supposedly, they supply gearsets all over the world. Well I could not have been more disappointed - after shipping interstate to Victoria, the box came back with no 2nd gear & a really bad whine from the new 5th gear set. So out with the box again, send it back to Albins - "terribly sorry, but we did put the 2nd gear synchro in wrong, but won’t have a replacement 5th gearset available for 6 months" !! They fixed the synchro problem & sent the box back, then sent me a new 5th gearset a few months later. There is no way that I will send the box back to these bozos, but Jim C has a local contact in Sydney who sounds like a much better proposition.

I’ll let you know how this goes !

Kind Regards,
Peter D.

[Mark Clapp]

Wow Peter, glad you stayed with it and got things back in even better order than before. Your car has always looked great and will continue to be a terrific GT replica example for all.

[Bill D]

Man, that really sucks!! But I'm glad the damage wasn't any worse. Great story though!!

[MReid]

Wow, sorry to hear that tale of woe! Glad you are on the road to recovery. it's hard to believe the painter needs a month to spray the front clip?

[Craig White]

Peter, sorry to here about that unfortunate incident.

But it's great to hear that's it going to be better than ever.

Thanks for sharing.

[Dalton]

Hi Peter,

Those door trims are great. They make a welcome change from the usual flat panels and are usefully reinforced as well. Good thinking; it's these finishing touches that differentiate a really well constructed car.

[Peter D]

Guys, thanks for your kind words & commiserations !

The exercise was a salutory lesson in checking everything - again & again !

I was just lucky that it was an 8' run to a brick wall, not a 100m run down a hill to a school crossing !! Naturally, I am now totally anal about parking the car on a slope - handbrake on, in reverse gear, wheels turned to the kerb (trust me, I have even thought about wheel chocks !).

Mark, the painting delay is simply another manifestation of my intimate relationship with "Murphy" - I rang the painter 2 days after he got an order for 2 x show-class hotrods !

Thanks & Kind Regards,

Peter D.

[Pat Buckley]

Humor and tragedy in one story!

I am sorry to hear about this but thanks for the chuckle...

You didn't have video going by any chance, did you?

[jnielsen]

Peter, Wow glad you can see the good in the days events. The large Scotch sounded quite nice.
Jim N

[Peter D]

A pic for Tim Dutton - paint colours :

[Dimi]

Hi Pete
Copies of the photos of today's run to Palm Beach.

Dimi