Claytopia's XB GT Coupe restoration

[Claytopia]

And of course if the upper is shagged then it goes without saying that the lower is worse. Now I did have this section repaired when I bought the car back in 97 but I found the repair was mainly sikaflex and to say it was rough would be paying it a compliment, Thank fully Matt is a master in his craft and worked his magic here too.

[zoesgift]

wow! good for you to take up the challenge. people who want coupes but want to pay next to nothing for them when the work has been done, need to seriously read threads like this

[KOOP74]

Good work mate, great to see you back. Make sure you use factory polish on those shocks, ha ha.

[El Tazo]

You're a funny bugger mate, love you're writing! Paint stripper on new Billies? You're keener than me!

[Bearman]

LOL at the factory caulking job on the bonnet. Looks like it was everywhere except where it was needed!!

Good to see progress, all good things take time.

[Ansimp]

Excellent build post. Incredible amount of work going into what looked like a great car when you ( Dad) purchased it all those years ago. Hats off to your level of quality and not wavering in your vision. Just like your budget your final build day will be when it is done right. Hopefully not too much longer before you can reap the benefits of all your hard efforts and cash.

[Claytopia]

Originally Posted by KOOP74

Good work mate, great to see you back. Make sure you use factory polish on those shocks, ha ha.

I have decided to block them back give them a flow coat then a few coats of clear. Was given a really good tip on painting acrylic buy and old school guru.

Originally Posted by El Tazo

You're a funny bugger mate, love you're writing! Paint stripper on new Billies? You're keener than me!

Keener maybe I say its the rocks in my head that made me do it.

Originally Posted by Bearman

LOL at the factory caulking job on the bonnet. Looks like it was everywhere except where it was needed!!

And that stuff was super hard to get off. Even harder to get off than the tar they pour inside and spray underneath.

Good to see progress, all good things take time.

Yeah I have been a bit time poor recently but as they say you don'f find time you make it so I have been making the time, not a lot mind you just some. I keep telling myself one step at a time and don't give up.

[Claytopia]

OK so I blocked back the shockies, gave them a flow coat and then painted them in clear because... because... because... well let me get back to you on that. Now I will let them dry and try to resist cutting and polishing them.

[Claytopia]

Now I did warn you all that this thread wasn't going to be tearing ahead at a rate of knots didn't i? I've had more stuff to do around the house (yep more reno's YAY) But I am keen to get this car finished because I've got myself another coupe. Oh yeah boy but as you've already seen the pace I work at this one is probably a retirement project or like my Dad said "I'll be dead before you finish that one, Hurry up and finish this one".

This other one (dubbed the pink wreck) is just a boring old falcon 500, 6 cylinder (250) column shift auto, but it was painted in the highly desirable colour wild plum (also know as pink) but I can tell you right now that colour isn't staying. But its yet another one with parchment trim but one thing I can tell you is knowing how hard it is trying to source trim bits for my current one it wont be parchment, But I am getting off track, back onto the GT.

The GT's front end has now been sorted out which was a bit of an effort. The Chassis rails have been sorted out, a new inner panel that is the right length, the shockie tower has been sorted and its measured once twice three times oh baby I know oh owww its true... the radiator panel well I will get to that.

I'm really lucky because Matt has a few other coupes in the shop to check against (I counted 7 all up last time I was there), The best in the shop's chassis is 1.5mm out of square and the worst was 5mm out, with the average being around the 3mm mark.

He managed to get mine to 2.5mm and I started to ask him is he could see if he could get it perfect but before I could even get to it he cut me off and let me know that it wasn't going to happen, explaining in detail what he had done to get it that close

Well that's enough for this post; here are some pics

[El Tazo]

Ha ha, love your writing mate!

[Claytopia]

That cursed left hand side...

I guess if I refuse to be a passenger (yeah like I'm going to be letting others drive it anyway) and I could always park along walls and the like so that I would never have to see the left hand side and live in the same bubble of ignorant bliss that Holden fans exist it (oh yeah shots fired). I could do all that and just ignore the mess that is the left hand side of my car...
But I am doing this whole project with two motto's in mind.

1. Do it once and do it well. ( I don't want to redo it again in a few years)
and
2. Every compromise comes easier than the previous, so no compromise.

Sure its hard, especially when it comes to finding those hard to get parts (parchment trim anyone!) but I haven't hit any roadblocks... yet.

So the sill on the... you guess it, left hand sill came off, and while the inner sill wasn't that bad it also wasn't great.
It had the ususal surface rust, rust holes and its fair share of damage from kerbs, pot holes that rabbit back in '98 and god only know what else.

So the decision was made to cut out the rusty sections and weld in new steel and straighten out the bottom edge as it wasn't necessary to to replace the the whole inner panel.

Also while the access was there the inside of the A pillar was blasted and painted with epoxy.

Then the sill was dummied up into place and alignment was checked before any welding took place... HA HA took place yeah right like ti would be that straight forward!

I don't know if I mentioned it (and I can't be bothered checking) that the left hand quarter panel has been replaced. Well as some of you will know the quarter panel goes under the roof skin... Well at least it does in the factory.

When your getting the meh it's only and XB GT who give a flying flock repair done in the 80's they stick the quarter over the top of the roof, and then mash the heck out of the rear mounts to make it all work.

So of course the quarter had over a 10mm gap at the sill which had been skillfully concealed with the use of fillers. Well not this time pal so as they say in for a penny in for a pound. You'll see that that's all about in the next post.

Anyway here are the inner sill repair pics, Enjoy.



Check out that damage



Check out that quality welding (you know bad's a quality too!)



It's a bit hard to see but you can make out how much the gap between the sill and the quarter are out of alignment.

[KOOP74]

Keep the pics coming Clayboy, love the work going into this.

[Claytopia]

Gulp...

[HELLOYOU]

Originally Posted by Claytopia

Gulp...

image

Turn away now kids.

[neptune blue]

Originally Posted by Claytopia

Gulp...

image

holy S***

[bionic2006xr6t]

Originally Posted by Claytopia

Gulp...

image

Looks familiar!

Cheers Ryan

[gcg2503]

Originally Posted by Claytopia

Gulp...

image

I applaud this and my panel guy insisted i do the same (which i did)

Do it once. Do it right.

If you dont pull quarter and plenum off on a coupe.....you really are playing Russian Roulette.

[Claytopia]

Originally Posted by gcg2503

I applaud this and my panel guy insisted i do the same (which i did)

Do it once. Do it right.

If you dont pull quarter and plenum off on a coupe.....you really are playing Russian Roulette.

I considered asking how much more work to pull the other quarter off while he was at it... Then I remembered the words of old "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"

[SCJCoupe]

Originally Posted by Claytopia

I considered asking how much more work to pull the other quarter off while he was at it... Then I remembered the words of old "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"

The other side doesn't look to be rust affected, there's now a pretty good view of it all. To be safe maybe spray some rust converter in there through all the gaps and crevices.

[bionic2006xr6t]

Originally Posted by Claytopia

Gulp...

image

I remember many people telling me that I was mad to pull the quarters off mine. It's almost becoming standard practice these days. The guys doing the work on yours are doing a fabulous job.

Cheers Ryan

[Claytopia]

So I am super keen to keep move forward with the restoration this year.
I've managed to get more time out in the workshop to keep stuff moving forward.
I did a massive clean out so now I actually have space to work again.
I'm in the middle of finalizing the details for my engine build.
I'm going to do a post every month this year... and its March.

****

Oh well, anyway, Seat belts. As you may know the XB's have two styles of seat belts.
The early ones have the really nice steel ones. Similar to what they have in the XY's.
The later ones are the plastic ones and quite frankly they look like ****.

So I tracked down a set of Early XB steel ones and had them restored and re-webbed.
Now there are two ways to go about re-webbing.
You can go with a very close to concours colour webbing (when you car has brown webbing that is) but the webbing and the stitching are not ADR compliant.
Yeah sure they have tested it and it maybe fine, but as I have to have my car re-licenced fine just won't cut it.
So I got them done with ADR compliant webbing and stitching which means the colour is not a close as it could be (and no the guy with the compliant stitching machine wouldn't use the other webbing unless I paid for it to be tested and lets just say that was a little out of the budget)
On the plus side the brown is a bit lighter which matches the brown dash etc and parchment interior a lot better IMHO and so here they are, My seat belts

[Claytopia]

Hold onto your hats people... Two posts this month!!!

Now I don't know if any of you have seen Tropic Thunder even if you haven't you may well be aware of the Robert Downy Jnr quote where he says that you should "Never go full retarded" Well Robert; I care not for your opinion.

So in line with my 'keep it looking stock even though it isn't' theme I present to you my latest effort...

It's a Pavtek billet mechanical fuel pump. Basically they get the base from a Holley Ultra HP mechanical fuel pump and make a billet top for it so that it can be bolted up to a cleveland block (Holley no longer make one for a cleveland themselves you see)

Its an awesome looking piece, a nice billet top and a chrome base. Unfortunately it looks nothing like the old stock Carter fuel pumps.

So I pulled it apart (well as much as I could) then I taped the top of it up. Then I filed, ground and dremeled all of the machining marks out of the billet housing. I even removed the PAVTEK in the top. Then I sandblasted the sucker so that it looked like a cast piece.

I really wanted to get the base gold zinc plated to replicate the finish of the Carter fuel pumps but due to the fact that it was die cast and has the one way valves knurled in place it meant that plating wasn't an option. Undeterred
I got the oldest garnet I had and played with pressure settings until i was able to sandblast an aluminum can without damaging it. Using these settings I keyed the surface of the base ready for paint.

Now my Mum has been painting fine china for over 50 years so she has a bit of an eye for colour. So the next time she was visiting I explained what I wanted to replicate gold zinc with spray cans. She gave me that look that says I can't believe I gave birth to this and then I dragged her to the local auto shop where we bought a bunch of high temperature spray cans.

Next we did about 20 test sprays. I could bore you with the details about our tests where we painted some using a primer v's not. Or about how we experimented with different colours over and under the anodizing effect base or how we experimented with dusting the reds, greens, golds and silvers over the silver/gold base or even how we tried different clear coats but I won't (I guess I just did to a degree )

In the end I got something that I am happy with. No it's not a gold zinc finish but it's the best I could do. Unfortunately the full effect seems to be a bit lost in a photo but here it is.

A stock pump


The Pavtek one


After painting


Reassembled. Unfortunately the pictures really show up the red and bury the green.

[El Tazo]

Horry ****, mang!

[Tex Scrotum]

I sometimes think I should have gone this far with mine......but.....probably too scared.....maybe the next one.........no NO never ever again lol.

[Tex Scrotum]

BRILLIANT!!!

I hate "bling"...this is fantastic and could be applied to so many performance pieces that are just waaaay to shiny for my tastes.

Well done

[Claytopia]

"What's happening with this post?
It's a thread baby.
What's happening with this thread?
This thread's dead baby, This thread's dead."

With the photobucket crap (and the fact I missed the window to fix it) and a few other things. I won't be updating here anymore.

The build is still ongoing.

In fact the shell is with a new panel beater and is moving forward.
The engine has been built and is waiting to be dyno'd and installed.
The rest of the driveline (gearbox, diff etc) is complete.
The suspension is ready.
The wiring harness is ready.
The stainless trims have been refurbished.
Replacement glass (old and new) has been sourced.
The door trims and parcel shelf are ready.
The seat covers are waiting in a box with the head lining and carpets.

There is still a lot to do but the pile of stuff done is well and truly larger than the stuff yet to do.

Anyways, keep on keeping on. Thanks for your interest. All the best with your own cars/projects.

[Ansimp]

I know how you feel with the whole Photobucket issue. I hardly post anymore as I can’t be bothered with all the hassle. I wish that this site had a gallery that was efficient to use and that way no third party can rob the threads of their images..

[Beastie]

We can help you get your photos back.

[Captain Stubing]

Originally Posted by Claytopia

"What's happening with this post?
It's a thread baby.
What's happening with this thread?
This thread's dead baby, This thread's dead."

With the photobucket crap (and the fact I missed the window to fix it) and a few other things. I won't be updating here anymore.

The build is still ongoing.

In fact the shell is with a new panel beater and is moving forward.
The engine has been built and is waiting to be dyno'd and installed.
The rest of the driveline (gearbox, diff etc) is complete.
The suspension is ready.
The wiring harness is ready.
The stainless trims have been refurbished.
Replacement glass (old and new) has been sourced.
The door trims and parcel shelf are ready.
The seat covers are waiting in a box with the head lining and carpets.

There is still a lot to do but the pile of stuff done is well and truly larger than the stuff yet to do.

Anyways, keep on keeping on. Thanks for your interest. All the best with your own cars/projects.

If you download your images from Photobucket, upload them to another site, such as Flickr or Imgur, send myself or Beastie the link to your new account and we can change the links for you. Hate to see all your hard work go down the gurgler!

[Tex Scrotum]

C'mon man...put some pics up... I'm still interested in your build regardless of the lost pics fiasco.
But I do understand why you would be totally bummed out... I was lucky for some reason and didn't lose any, but if I had, I would've been like you I suppose.

Cheers