What do you guys think so far??
Let the history continue...
Timeline here is late March 2012, the warmest weather ever recorded here with 30 degrees where my car is located at..
So it was perfect to do things like paint, spray glue etc, so I set off to cover a 2.8i/Ghia center consol as my car is a short center consol car, and I don't want to replace my carpet.
As someone may know, 2.8i carpets is split in the middle of the car length wice, to cover the center consol, but my carpet only covers the floor..
First I covered my secondhand consol with some 10mm foam, by gluing it to the metal, then I covered it with some subwoofer carpet bought at my local motor factors.
And I could not be more happy with the outcome!
The subwoofer fabric matched my orginal carped very well, you don't notice anything when you look at it with the bare eye..
The plastic bits were covered with some plastic refreshner, looked good but did not hold up very good in the long run, so it needs to be redone, but at the timeline point it was perfect.
Then I fooked it up a bit..
You see, I wanted to wash it before a local car meeting, the old cleaner bottle turned out to be non mixed degreaser, which etched the paint, curse word!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The bonnet were rubbed down and then wet sanded with 1600 grit paper, but the etching would still apear after a short while.
I took the bonnet first thing you would see first..
Then I refitted the dash facia and some painted lower dashboard panels, looked better, but the red dashboard have to go!!!!
The dashboard facia is a stainless steel plate from Ceberus racing in Australia, that were painted black as I don't wanted the glare pointed at me in the strong summer sun.
He does both LHD and RHD ones, mine took a bit grinding to fit around the holes perfectly, then I glued it to the dashboard facia plastic as the vinyl mat that did cover it was gone.
Looking a bit better with every step...
Still a multi colored interior, need to get the amount of colors to be fewer..
The homemade wood parcel shelf was bloody heavy, and the amount of speakers don't help either.
Hmmm, something needs to be done with that too...
Notice how you now can see the light bulbs even without having the lights on?
And the reflectors now shining as never before, well chuffed
The Slot Mags got sold to a chap with a Taunus in western Norway, and my mate lend his spare set of 13" 7 spoke RS wheels, to make it rolling again..
In the middle of the summer I got hold of a garage that I rented form a old lady.
At last I had a place to store my car and having a space to work on it.
It also helped that it was close to my home with just a couple of miles, whereas my mates place is located 9 miles away.
Grey headrest's, now you see them..
Now, you're not.
These are for the Mk3 Mondeo, but just slide onto the Capri ones, a couple of mm smaller, it would have not fitted on there
The car was a pig to drive as it the accleration pump did not work at all.
So this is the offender on the Solex carb.
The old black one seemed to be ok, but I changed it anyway..
Fitted
Brakes were rubbish, the front brakes could not lock up at gravel roads at all, and as the rear seemed to work I suspected a bad booster/master as the help from the booster was not great either.
Removed..
My mate took this picture without me noticing that lol
Installed, and Huston we now had brakes!!!!
No problem locking up the front now, happy chap indeed
Then I attended my first meeting with my car about 70 miles away in Skien.
My mate with his Monster V8 also attended
My mate with his 2.8i that was sent to Turbo Technics in early 80s for their 230 turbo kit, this is one off car, never done again on a LHD car.
It also a full leather interior done while it was in UK, so was the vinyl roof and the glass elctric sunroof.
My mate bought it semi good and rebuilt it to a concurse standard, but it gets used to, not a trailer queen here!
Another mate of mine built this GAA replica with a YB cosworth engine.
It has been featured in Retro Ford magazine, so was the TT230 above
My mate sitting on the wing built this car with a 2.8i engine, Recaro interor from a 2.8i and built the x-pack lookalike wings in steel himself.
The wheelarches is also lifted up so he can lower it to the ground if it wants to.
He is currently building another car, that was famous here in Norway, is it was back then fitted with extra wide x-pack wings with 345 tires in the rear and approved with turbo engine in the papers.
It also had a complete custom leather interior in red and with red paintwork.
Also had a problem with my upper waterhose neck leaking throu the dirt, so I took it off and cleaned it a bit, no wonder why this was leaking!!!!!!!!!
The previos owners diden't put antifreez in the coolant, and I suspect that why this was leaking in the first place...
First thing I did with my engine when I got home was to flush the engine block, radiator and heater matrix from rust and gunk, and there were pleny of that stuff!
I made damn sure I flushed it in both directions several times till there was only coming out clear water, engine block took nearly 10 minutes to do so.
Waterhose neck were filled with epoxy, but I having overheat issues still with antifreeze added (both cools and prevent rust in case you don't know
), so I suspected the old cast iron waterpump to not work as it should...
Removed..
New one fitted..
One of the orginal bolts broke when removing them, I was out of tools then and there, so I just fitted the pump and hoped the best.
The reapaired waterhose neck, had to do for the time being.
Made the new gasket myself.
The radiator looked a bit sorry for itself, so I painted it with some proper radiator paint
And fitted...
Notice the radiator spacers, radiator is intended for something else, I suspect a Taunus of some sort, but not sure..
Mentioned spacers..
Work in progress...
My mate Heikki, which I belive is on here to, sent me a sand blasted Granada waterhouse neck to replace my worn out one, for free too, very greatful for that mate!
The waterhose neck was fitted, so was a new electric cooling fan, to prevent it from overheating again.
Then I did a visit to a traffic station for a registration appointment, failing to have the right paperwork, and two bits needing to be done.
And they were to fit a orginal steering wheel and fit side indicators on the wings (side indicators or no longer needed as from 2016 for imported cars).
So a 2.8i steering wheel was lent from a mate and fitted
A visit to a mate in the summer resulted in some more parts.
Including this dashboard in black, complete with HD heater eyeballs, never heard about a HD heater you say?? Read on
The HD heater was mostly delivered to scandinavian countries as it get a bit cold up here.
HD heaters had a pair of extra hot air outlets that was connected to the eyeballs in the dashboard.
As you can see it both have the regular hose end and a smaller one that goes to the extra outlet on the heater..
As I don't own a HD heater I painted my regular ones from the red dashboard and installed them.
And now it looking 1000 times better in my opinion!!!!!
And I also changed the headrest's from something unknown, someone may know to what vehicle these was fitted to??
New side indicators was fitted, these was a ebay item with stick on backing, took a good while longer than intended to fit these, measuring up, drilling and connecting them up.
These looks like the Mk3 Mondeo ones as I like this shape, the square ones mainly fitted to Fords of this period is boring imo.
The kick panels needed to go from red to black. You can spot them in a previous photo above.
Turns out the were only covered in vinyl with minimal amount of glue left, so this was a easy task.
Vinyl skin off
Kick panels cleaned and fitted. MUCH MUCH better!!!!!