KCC Restoration

[Simon Willis]

Tim and I spent half a day working on the GT40 on Saturday. It's always good to get in the garage and make some progress, even if it just for half a day. Currently we're working on brake lines and the muffler mounting. Tedious jobs, but progressing none the less.

Brake Lines

Tim has been ticking away at this job for quite a while now. It's all coming together and will look awesome once the lines are all braced. This has been a very frustrating job for Tim, but I think he's though the bulk of it. On Saturday he was able to put fluid in the reservoir for the front callipers to check for leaks. As expected, there were a few, but he was able to fix them and see movement in the callipers

No doubt you've noticed the orange cable. This is the battery cable. We've decided that we'd like the battery at the front of car for weight distribution and tidiness. The cable is double-insulated welding cable that my mate Jason Broadhurst picked up for us. He's terminated it at the starter motor and started routing it through the chassis. However, we're not really sure where we want to run it: down the side or down the centre? For now, I think we'll leave it loose until we start panelling and can see what's going to work best.

Muffler Mount

The rear muffler mount is done. It just needs painting. Last week I bent a steel flat-bar strap for the muffler to sit on. This week I spent time setting the muffler's position and then welding eyes to the flat-bar so that it bolts to the gearbox. Setting the position of the muffler took quite some time, because I wanted to get it right since the muffler is so visible from behind the car. I'm pretty happy with how it's turned out. We were originally planning to have 2 mounts, but it's very rock solid now. The pipes support the front of it very well. We're not sure if it's worth the effort to make another mount. Particularly since there aren't any easy bolts to attach a bracket to at the front of the gearbox.

The Garage

I thought I'd take a few more pics of the garage for the guys at The Garage Journal.

This little trolley has been absolute gold. My wife picked it up from her old work. They were going to throw it out. Now it holds a lot of scrap offcuts and is perfect doing odd jobs on, welding on or for putting tools on.

The shelves had another clean-up. Still a work in progress.

I installed a new shelf above the bench to hold random stuff. It worked out well.

 

[Richard Knight]

hi Simon, have you completed the gearlinkage system, if so any chance of details and pics as I will be running the same setup?

 

[Tim Willis]

I finished the gear linkage a couple weeks ago. I will leave simon to get some pics.

It seems to work ok - able to get all 6 gears (5+R) without much of an issue. Just a little more effort than a brand new off the shelf car.

 

[Richard Knight]

Thanks this will be great to compare my ideas!

 

[Simon Willis]

Yes, sorry Richard, I was meant to take you some pictures ages ago and also forgot to mention in my blog that it is finished now. Tim needed to remake a linkage at the gearbox. The old one had fallen apart. I'll take some pictures of the whole setup next time we work on the car.

 

[Simon Willis]

With the muffler out of the road, it's time to return to the steering column and the painting of the front frame and steering area. The steering column needed another mount added. I got part-way through this job months ago and then realised it would foul the windscreen wiper arm. After fixing that I got distracted by the muggler. It's good to finally get the steering column sorted.

Tim came around on Monday and painted it all. It looks much better.

In the meantime, Tim has been continuing on with the brake lines. This is an endless task, but looks great.

The other day I was driving home and spotted a GT40 in the front of Motorsport Accessories, a local shop. I had to go in and check it out. It turns out that it's a well-used race car with a string of trophies to its name. It's running a Ford Cleveland stroked to 363ci (I think) with solid lifters and fed by a Holley carb. It's very nice to see a GT40 that gets used on the track and is still street driven.

Some time ago Richard Knight from gt40s.com asked me to take some photos of the gearshift linkages since he is building a similar kit. Here you go Richard, sorry for the delay..

 

[Simon Willis]

Yesterday we had a long, but rewarding day in the garage. Now that the front of the car has been painted, our attention has turned to finishing off a lot of loose ends in the front of the car.

First up, off with the front body work. It's been a long time since we've had this off, so it warranted some photos.

Next up, we bolted the front frame in properly (we'd unbolted it for painting and were using odd spare bolts). Recently I bought a bolt set. This is the best $120 I've ever spent. Unfortunately there are no bolt shops in the area that are open on the weekend. So since we started building this car our normal method of procuring bolts has involved driving to Supercheap/ Autobarn/ Repco and getting ripped-off big time for 2 bolts in a Champion plastic-pack that are normally the wrong size. Now we have a full selection of bolts there will be no more wasting time and money getting bolts. Why didn't I do this 2 years ago?

The next job involved securing the coolant lines. We never finished securing them after we ran the coolant lines (too keen to start the engine). We wanted to get the coolant line rubber away from anything it could rub on. Tim spent some time looking at this a few weeks back and came up with this awesome idea of making a hanger off the round K-frame bracing tube. A quick bit of welding and drilling and I was done. Very happy with the result.

Tim recently bought a Rivnut (nutsert) kit and was keen to test that out so he mounted the brake reservoirs.

Another job was to make up some spacers between the top of the K-frame and the chassis. For some reason, the manufacturer leaves a 20mm gap here. I think it is so you can adjust the chassis alignment. The previous spacers were very flimsy. Tim welded two bits of 10mm plate steel together. Job done. Pics coming.

So all-in-all, our long session in the garage was rewarding. Hopefully we continue to have sessions like this.

 

[Simon Willis]

New brakes!
Good news. An upgrade kit has arrived for the front brakes. Tim and I spent a fair bit of time a few months back trying to get BA Falcon PBR callipers to fit. We tried a few discs and mocked up a calliper mountain. We had something that looked like it would work with modified VT Commodore discs. It was super-tight in the 15" wheels. Just when we were about to order parts and start to design calliper mounting plates, we stumbled across this kit on ebay at a good price. It's for a Ford Cortina. For the amount of messing around we'd have to do to DIY this, we jumped on this auction.

The seller (free plug for upc.online) was excellent and agreed to drill the hubs and discs in 5 x 112mm PCD (to suit current wheels) and 5 x 114.3mm PCD to open up more wheel options in the future. The kit arrived this week and looks like fantastic quality. I just did a quick test-fit this afternoon and it fits perfectly (except the wheel studs are different thread).

Damn happy with the result.

They make the wheels look even more crap, but certainly fill the 15 inches well.

Other than this, work has been fairly slow over the past few months, but we have managed to finish a few jobs. First up, the throttle cable is done. We decided to run it under the engine as this keeps it away from the exhaust and gives a nice radius bend.

Secondly, the clutch slave cylinder has been fitted and works. Tim bled it himself using the yellow strap in the picture above. Haha

Thirdly, I've knocked up a bracing for the alternator mounting bracket. There was far too much flex in it before, so I've braced it back to a bolt on the head. It still needs tidying up and painting.

During one of my stints in the garage, I couldn't help but introduce Bianca to the GT40. Gotta start em young...

 

[Jimmy P]

Keep up the great work. This is one build I've been watching from the start and can't wait to see the final product. Last photo shows a keen sense of where Bianca thinks the pedals should go and you can almost see her pondering just how long it might be before her legs reach those pedals.

:idea:"this will be all mine in about 17 years!!"

 

[Simon Willis]

Thanks Jimmy. There have been several comments along the lines of "you have 16 years to finish this so that Bianca can use it for her high school graduation" Haha

 

[Simon Willis]

End of Year Update

It's time for a quick end of year update. Work has been slowly progressing over the past few months.

Front Brakes Fitted
First up: front brakes. The brake kit has turned out really well and fits nicely under the wheels.

For a bit of a laugh, Tim gave the wheels a quick clean and polish. Yep, we know they're ugly. They will be replaced one day. It was surprising to see how well they cleaned up. I don't think this car drove many kilometres in its past life.

Brake and clutch pedals now have non-slip pads.

Aluminium Panelling

Now it's time to turn the corner with this build and start the aluminium panelling. This is something we've been looking forward to for a long time. It really will make the car look a lot more complete. We picked up a sheet of 3m x 1.2m of 1.2mm sheet. A big thanks goes to my mate Harley at All Inn Brewing Co for assisting us with a truck to pick up the Aluminium sheet.

So here's the progress so far. Tim and I are still getting used to working with Aluminium, so we've chosen a few easy panels to start with. I picked up a bending brake ages ago and now it finally sees some work. It will be awesome to see this panelling finished.

Tim recently started riveting some of the panels. The brand new rivet gun failed after 10 rivets! Time for an upgrade...

In other news, we finally have the rear left stub axle back with a repaired thread. About time! This means we can fit the other drive shaft. The rear brake pads are also here, so once the panelling is done we might finally be able to drive the car down the driveway. Hopefully that'll happen in 2015. Fun times ahead!

 

[Terry Oxandale]

It's come a long way since the start. Enjoying the build and progress.

 

[Randy V]

Great progress guys!

Simon, is that bar above the pedals of any concern? IE fouling your feet during the dance?

 

[Simon Willis]

Thanks guys. The bar is no problem. It's a bit deceptive on that photo. The bar is actually up under the dash. So it's much higher and much further forward than the pedals.

 

[Simon Willis]

More Panelling Progress

I thought I would share some more pics of the panelling process. In the hunt for pictures, I found these gems. Tim tightening the driveshaft bolts a few weeks back. Sometimes it pays to be a short arse.

So on with the panelling. Tim and I managed to have a good session on the car on New Years Day. Here are some pics of the process.

First up, we make the panel out of card. This takes ages for a complicated panel.

Next we transfer the template on to the aluminium. We've started using ballpoint pen on the Aluminium. Generally it works pretty well. It gives a nice thin line, but can be a little bit tricky to spot when cutting out the panel.

Next we cut out with a jigsaw. We've glued some vinyl to the underside of the jigsaw to stop it scratching the aluminium. We also use a bit of WD40 to help it slide.

After that it's off to the bending brake. We have an 800mm one. I keep forgetting to take pics. This complex panel wouldn't fit for this bend, so I had to make a DIY bending brake.

In the end it worked out pretty well.

However, there's one problem... We never realised this would leave a very large gap between the panel and body shell.

Previously the front of the car looked like this. There was no inner guard at all! The road grime would have flicked straight into the front of the door. That would explain why the doors are so dirty in that region. I guess this is one the many downsides of an old GT40 kit.

The photo below shows a modern kit. This one in particular is a GT Forte (thanks to Andrew on the GT40 forum).

Notice the outer edge of this wheel arch panel extends further outwards than ours. I still haven't figured out if these panels seal against the hinged body on a modern kit or if there is always a gap. We'll have to give some thought about how we fix this gap on ours. I guess we have the options of extending the steel work further and making new panels, making an extra aluminium panel that extends into this region or fibreglassing a guard into the body work. You'll see what I mean about this in the pictures below.

Anyway, moving on... Here are some more pics of Tim's work on Thursday. He's finished off all the driver's side panels.

On Friday, Tim spent another day working on the car (unfortunately I had to work). Tim tackled the large panel in the wheel arch (behind the one shown above). Unfortunately Tim packed the car away before I could take photos. Here are a couple I squeezed through the wheel arch.

I'm pretty happy with how this has worked out....

The blue piece is attached to the hinged body work. On our KCC kit car, the body panels have inner wheel guards already fabricated in fibreglass. This is what you can see in blue above. The bonus of this is that you don't need to encase the whole front end in Aluminium. The blue fibreglass in the picture above was trimmed back quickly when we did the steel work. I'm quite happy with how this has mated up to the aluminium panel. It'll need a bit more tidying at a later date, but it's a good start. One option would be to do something similar for the panel behind the front wheel.

Anyway, that's enough from me.

Thanks for reading.

 

[Marc Tolken]

It's great to see the progress you guys are making! It's gonna be a great KCC when it's completed. I saw the other day a very original KCC in mint condition being sold off for £23,000. It seems they've gone up quite a bit in value recently.

I'm about 50-60% complete with my build at the moment. The last 40-50% is going to take a few months, but I've found a guy almost around the corner from me who has a lot of experience with the cars (including KCC), and who can assist in chassis and suspension upgrades. He also has a motherload of parts available.

 

[Simon Willis]

It's crazy to hear one selling for that much.. Well done on your car. It sounds like you are moving along quite quickly.

 

[Marc Tolken]

In South Africa their prices have also gone up.

Here's a link to the one I was talking about:
Bonhams : 1992 Ford GT40 Coupé Re-creation Chassis no. KCC 032 GT 4087 Engine no. BG0223/0F15C603-9012C

When I have the time, I might create a build log, or I'll send you pictures directly of my car and how it's going.

 

[Simon Willis]

Good find! It's a shame there are no pics of the front end. It would be interesting to see what KCC builders have done there.

 

[Marc Tolken]

I found this on a local classifieds site:

Ford Gt 40 Polar silver in colour, 302 Winsor engine, Naturally aspirated, leather trim - Alberton - Cars

Ford Gt40 For Sale | Johannesburg | Classic Cars | Junk Mail Classifieds | 38258361

Bit of an upgraded KCC.