1.3 Ghia rebuild

[alancdavis]

Looking good ,,, wont be long now

[robrs2]

As soon as possible. Want to have a play

[robrs2]

Slow progress. Been getting parts together and altering other bits to fit.
Got the car back home and refitted the cage.




A few more bolts to fit parts on.



Had to mod the gear box mount after the MT75 box was removed, back to a Type 9 for now.


Then onto altering the engine mounts. Got them off eBay and it turns out they fit no where near. The sump was hitting the cross member and engine touching the bulkhead.



Set the engine to cross member with enough space to clear the steering column.



The cut up the crap mounts and re-did them




Cut back the cross member for a little clearance



All in place and clears fine





Water rail is a little tight but clears



Prop on


Then onto some new bits. Rally design tension strut kit. I had roughly put this together to get the shell rolling. But trying to get it to fit right has been not easy. Holes dont line up, bolts are too long and had no washers. Also one bolt is impossible to tighten. The whole bracket and clamp is also very thin.
Trying to get the main bracket on i found the clamp bracket bolts were hitting the chassis and stopping it fitting.




So i took it all apart and found that the clamp part had bent when getting the ARB rubber to fit and the tension strut mount bolt was not in line with the captive nut and would not screw in.




With the big bolt in place the other bolt holes were about half a hole out.




After some bending, filing and welding the parts started to fit. The clamp part requires an 8mm spacer so that it does not deform when tightened.




Now it bolts in but requires a shorter bolt for one hole, washers added for now




Though i'd do an easy job and refit the steering column, no that needed the engine mount altering for clearance too. Even with the Group 4 joint on.




Then the bias box to fit. This at last was an easy fit thanks to arrow engineering.



Back to the rally design parts. got the rod ends a year ago and were still in the packet. Fitted them and found the rubbers were cracked.



Back on the engine. I was trying to cut the ST170 exhaust manifold to fit the RWD format but took a gamble on an idea. Found a RWD manifold that look to be a good near fit. just the flange to change to the Zetec one. That should save so fitting time.

[robrs2]

Filled in some time by sorting out the inlet side. Got some throttle bodies and made an adaptor plate.

[Davecos4x4]

the pic with the steering coupling in, is the cross member cracked on the weld.

nice work getting around the problems.

[robrs2]

No crack, its just the pic. The cross member has welded on every possible seam, not by me. Think the cross member came from a grass tracker. It has skid plates and wider chassis mounting brackets. Had to cut them all off to get it to fit back in an escort.