What the hell, why not?
As with every other GVR-4 owner out there, I want to preserve mine just as much as anyone else. I finally have a car that is worth putting hundreds of hours on, so I have began to do some pretty crazy crap to the car, well at least I think so.
I pulled the motor a few weeks ago. It's going to be a 16G car, for now, so I won't be doing anything crazy to the motor besides a freshening of the head along with a porting and polishing that will take just enough material out to remove the casting imperfections. The motor will be cleaned, of course, and I will assemble it with a fresh OEM head gasket, ARP head studs, new front case with the balance shafts removed, and new timing stuff. Pretty much I have no desire to do an engine break in and the motor has 155psi compression +/- 2psi variance. I have a set of FP2 cams and Crower springs and retainers that will also make their way into the head.
The chassis is where I'm doing all of the time-consuming work. I dropped the front and rear subframes out of the car. I have sourced a place to do some media blasting (You may have heard of it... Vermont Sportscar /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif) and powdercoating, locally, so both front and rear subframes will be stripped down to bare metal and then powdercoated black. From this thread you can see that I will be installing as much whiteline bushings possible; I will go OEM with the rest. That thread also contains pictures of the subframes that I pulled out.
Stripping undercoat is a complete bitch. Instead of stripping all of it, I may strip around the edges and where there are holes from the factory. I have noticed that there tends to be surface rust UNDER the undercoat around the edges where there are holes from the factory. I fortunately have not found any new holes from body rot. In general, the shape of the car is pretty good. I was surprised how good of shape it was. There are definitely some areas that will be focused on, but overall, I shouldn't have anymore than 50 or so hours under the car stripping and undercoating.
A little history on the car. Need I say more? I bought the car this summer after a friend mentioned it to me. He said he though it "had some problems," but boy was he wrong... I spoke with the previous owner and he seemed like a really decent guy. His son had been the actual owner of the car and was obsessive about washing/waxing/cleaning the interior and the exterior. He apparently made a point to at least once a week go to the car wash that cleaned the underneath too /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif I went to look at it and I KNEW I had to have it, I was however afraid of the price I anticipated. The previous owner even put it way up in the air and let me roll around underneath it; he seemed to be very proud of how clean it was. To make a long story short, and I quote, "Well, since I got it for such a good deal due to it being a new car salesmen that sold me the car, I'll pass my savings on to you..." He did get a good deal on it; I have the receipt to prove it /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif Did I mention that I have every receipt for any activity that ever went on with this car AND a "gas log" of when the previous owners got gas? I lucked out, big time, and so this is why I'm spending so much time (and money) on trying to preserve a car like this.
Here come the pictures:
When I first Got it...
Like I mentioned, I started to do some work on the underside of the car. Here are some pictures of the finished rear passenger wheel well cleaned up and freshly re-undercoated...
I also started working on the front passenger's side wheel well. I didn't finish it tonight, but I got a pretty good start. Pretty clean, eh?
Empty engine bay pictures... Reminder: this car has been a Vermont car it's entire life; the original owner of the car is/was a Middlebury College Professor.
General under car pictures...
Passenger's side frame rail...
Tunnel of love...
The worst of the rust... It looks bad, but that is untouched. I haven't done any brushing, scraping, drilling, grinding, etc. yet. I have this 3M "rust remover" pad that rips surface rust right off and I also picked up this stuff that is supposed to have some kind of chemical reaction with rust /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif f***
As with every other GVR-4 owner out there, I want to preserve mine just as much as anyone else. I finally have a car that is worth putting hundreds of hours on, so I have began to do some pretty crazy crap to the car, well at least I think so.
I pulled the motor a few weeks ago. It's going to be a 16G car, for now, so I won't be doing anything crazy to the motor besides a freshening of the head along with a porting and polishing that will take just enough material out to remove the casting imperfections. The motor will be cleaned, of course, and I will assemble it with a fresh OEM head gasket, ARP head studs, new front case with the balance shafts removed, and new timing stuff. Pretty much I have no desire to do an engine break in and the motor has 155psi compression +/- 2psi variance. I have a set of FP2 cams and Crower springs and retainers that will also make their way into the head.
The chassis is where I'm doing all of the time-consuming work. I dropped the front and rear subframes out of the car. I have sourced a place to do some media blasting (You may have heard of it... Vermont Sportscar /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif) and powdercoating, locally, so both front and rear subframes will be stripped down to bare metal and then powdercoated black. From this thread you can see that I will be installing as much whiteline bushings possible; I will go OEM with the rest. That thread also contains pictures of the subframes that I pulled out.
Stripping undercoat is a complete bitch. Instead of stripping all of it, I may strip around the edges and where there are holes from the factory. I have noticed that there tends to be surface rust UNDER the undercoat around the edges where there are holes from the factory. I fortunately have not found any new holes from body rot. In general, the shape of the car is pretty good. I was surprised how good of shape it was. There are definitely some areas that will be focused on, but overall, I shouldn't have anymore than 50 or so hours under the car stripping and undercoating.
A little history on the car. Need I say more? I bought the car this summer after a friend mentioned it to me. He said he though it "had some problems," but boy was he wrong... I spoke with the previous owner and he seemed like a really decent guy. His son had been the actual owner of the car and was obsessive about washing/waxing/cleaning the interior and the exterior. He apparently made a point to at least once a week go to the car wash that cleaned the underneath too /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif I went to look at it and I KNEW I had to have it, I was however afraid of the price I anticipated. The previous owner even put it way up in the air and let me roll around underneath it; he seemed to be very proud of how clean it was. To make a long story short, and I quote, "Well, since I got it for such a good deal due to it being a new car salesmen that sold me the car, I'll pass my savings on to you..." He did get a good deal on it; I have the receipt to prove it /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif Did I mention that I have every receipt for any activity that ever went on with this car AND a "gas log" of when the previous owners got gas? I lucked out, big time, and so this is why I'm spending so much time (and money) on trying to preserve a car like this.
Here come the pictures:
When I first Got it...
Like I mentioned, I started to do some work on the underside of the car. Here are some pictures of the finished rear passenger wheel well cleaned up and freshly re-undercoated...
I also started working on the front passenger's side wheel well. I didn't finish it tonight, but I got a pretty good start. Pretty clean, eh?
Empty engine bay pictures... Reminder: this car has been a Vermont car it's entire life; the original owner of the car is/was a Middlebury College Professor.
General under car pictures...
Passenger's side frame rail...
Tunnel of love...
The worst of the rust... It looks bad, but that is untouched. I haven't done any brushing, scraping, drilling, grinding, etc. yet. I have this 3M "rust remover" pad that rips surface rust right off and I also picked up this stuff that is supposed to have some kind of chemical reaction with rust /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif f***
