1970 Ginetta G15

Well the carb got slung on the Roller and it started and runs quite well. Happy enough with that outcome and it was an interesting task. Lovely old car that I will try and get a couple of shots of to complete the write up.

Today was spent doing a bit more work on Ictchy's G32 - Seats this time.

The original seats were utterly shot due to sitting in water for a good few years causing everything to rot, leather, steel, foam, fabric, all done for so there was nothing that could economically be done to repair them. Replacements were found in the shape of a pair of MGF seats that suit the car very well as they are black leather with blue Alcantara inserts. The downside is that they are a very tight fit in the G32 with the runners just squeezing into the seat pan and the seats being a bit wider than the runners. The seat pan is about 40mm deep at the sill and 125mm deep at the tunnel so on the first fit we raised the runners up so that they sat flush with the top of the pan at the sill and shifted the seat as close to the sill as possible to clear the side of the services tunnel. They looked fine and were okay to sit in, but for a sports car they failed to feel in any way sporty and secure. The issue was that to get them in and clear we had mounted the seats flat on the runners and the runners need to be at an angle to provide rake on the seat squab.

To give the seat the required angle the seat needs to drop at the back of the runner and rise as the front so we have a overall rake of around 3". To get to this number we dropped the rear 1-1/8" and raised the front 1-7/8". We are about 1/2 way through the job at the moment as we complete the design works and completed the majority of the fabrication of the front frames. My task tomorrow is to find some suitable plate for mounting feet and on Wednesday the Migmate will be dusted off again to complete the job. I will also remember to take some pictures ......

Test fit with the rake angle the seats look better by a mile and more importantly give a feeling of sitting in them rather than on them.

Nice work getting seats right makes such a difference to the enjoyment of a car.

Wednesday meet was at the molebert hideout adding a couple more brackets for the diffuser rudder deflector. and to finish a weld I had missed. Missing weld not 100% required as the bracket was welded but I like to weld on both sides.

- focus not wanting to play ball.






And welding














The brackets are for picking up a full length engine/gearbox protection plate - just the attachment points and the support framework off the rear cross member to design and build when the engine and box are in.

Probably some G21M work on this thread soon - unless some more engine stuff turns up in the meantine.

On the G21 the 150lb springs arrived and were fitted - do the job pretty well but the proof will be when the car is completed and rolling - Rolling wise the new tyres have arrived but I am short of a tyre fitter. As the car will not be moving up to Itchy's place for works I may well just get stuck into some of the other jobs that will be needed.

G15 wise there was a bit of a bargain to be had on ebay with a 7.25" Super Clutch





I was hoping that there would be enough meat left on the ultra light flywheel to accomodate a 2.5mm cut that is required to fit this clutch but when I had it measured there is only 4.2mm left in the area I need to take 2.5mm from - two choices here - Choice A - I do have another flywheel I can get modified - or Choice B - I really really like choice B



As Wednesday night club meets are cancelled until further notice there will not be much to report on any activities from that quarter so it's onwards and upwards in quiet isolation.

Flywheel arrived today - It was one of those parts deliveries where you pick up the box and wonder if all that's inside is the bill! It goes rather well with the clutch, it all "snaps" together. A very different looking item to the original Hillman Imp assembly. As we don't have a steel box with 4 peeps and luggage to take into consideration - Just a lighter than normal lightweight 2 seater coupe - This one is only for the race engine.







Better get some good bolts on order.

With ordering up the Aluminium sheet and tubing for the Strato's and the Gemini I also ordered up some U section channel to see if I can fabricate some window frames for the G21.

The rear wheels will coming off tomorrow to get the scrap tyres changed over to something more suitable.

I was involved with the stainless steel frames that John's mate down in Devon made a while back and thankfully I grabbed a couple of sets of those. The biggest pain with G15 frames is getting the stainless steel sheet folded to the right profile - if you can find a place to do the folding then the rest of it is reasonably straight forward. There a couple of places near me that may be able to do the folding - Shropshire Stainless Fabrications and Shropshire Stainless and Aluminium.

The G21 has wind up and down windows so just a single channel which in some ways makes it easier. The G15 has two panes in runners which makes it quite thick but only a slim door top to mount it all on so using aluminium is not an easy option.

With BOY I have been contemplating going to an alloy frame with a single fixed window fitted with a sliding aperture.

Mike Just swapped from his old chrome frames on PHX to the Stainless ones.

Text posts are so boring - let's have a few visuals

That reverse gear and box - although at this res you can't see the issues with the cluster on the shaft.





G15 (IMP) head getting the porting treatment - Running the seat cutter down the exhaust which provides a guide for how much is needing to come out of the port.



Big bore manifold and "silencer" next to a Triumph 955i silencer that will be re-purposed.

Just catching up on the last few posts looking good, and great find with the close ratio box!

I've found lockdown's been a funny time to get car work done. So long as you have all the bits you need on site you can make great progress, but as soon as you need something ordered or done externally it slows down quite a bit!

Unless it was always that pace externally, and you just had the lack of time to match it...