'86 Capri Turbo

Cheers mate, when i spayed a test piece i was a bit worried about the satin but reckon it's come out well. Pretty much looks like this now then! Managed to work through the list pretty effectively and managed to charge the battery up too. When I left the garage it was reading 12.55v so I'll check in the morning and make sure it's still a decent battery. Must be 6 years old now and hasn't exactly had regular charges so could well be goosed, we shall see in the morning.

Shaped my indicator binnicles and Tcut the lenses, I also spent a while polishing the intercooler and it came up much better. The supplied bracket with the peep mirror was no way near wide enough to fit the Capri door frame so I scoured the garage for something suitable. Settled on a left over bracket from building my workbench a few weeks back. Measured up and marked it, lobbed it in the vice and very carefully smacker it with a massive mallet. Fit like a glove!

Anyway, enough yakking. Pics!















Also hoovered the interior and took all the rubbish out! Passenger seat has a few marks on the base which is a bit annoying, might have a go at them tomorrow. First thing I'll do is organize the workshop as it's a right mess and I can't think straight in there! Then I'll check the voltage on the battery and if all's good shove it on and check the electrics. Need to torque up the exhaust manifold nuts and refit the exhaust and the MAF and filter. They're the main jobs but there'll be loads more. I think I'll pop to Halfords and get some paint to tidy up under the bonnet too. Looking forward to another day in the garage!

That looks spot on, bet it turns a lot of heads, very Mad Max looking

Cheers man! Well, it was full steam ahead and I was making nice fast progress until the other day. I was just torquing up the exhaust manifold bolts when something caught my eye. Where the floor meets the sill on the passenger side looked a little dubious. It's normally hidden by the cherry bomb side exit and so I clearly hadn't noticed that the metal had begun to be replaced by rust! Doh!

Well annoyed, it stopped progress instantly as I clearly needed to sort it out before the exhaust went back on.



This was the state of affairs after I yanked the seat out and pulled back the carpets

Poked about and broke old mr Whizzy out to find solid metal.. This is it sans rust and with copious amounts of Kurust applied.



Unfortunately, I don't currently have a welder to hand so progress was halted for a day or two till my mate was free to come round with his mig. In the meantime I charged the battery up and tested the electrics. Dash and dials all good, power to ignition and starter - excellent! wipers - check, indicators - check, brake lights - fail, side lights - fail, headlights - fail, mainbeams check!

So - some electrical gremlins to work through!

Whilst I was unable to make real progress I tidied it up under the bonnet. I went for muscle car engine bay look with some actual satin black (more satin than the body). It's not mint under the bonnet - far from it - but it's tidy enough.

Once the paint was dry I stuck the carpets back down and fitted the Cobra subframe again. If only it was that easy! There are captive nuts welded inside little 'cages' under the floor for the seats to bolt in to. I managed to get the first one to bite through the thick carpet and slowly began cranking it up. Until the captive nut broke loose inside the little cage.. So Mr Whizzy came out again and sorted that problem, new nut and bolt - jobs a goodun.

I also cracked on with the electics. I managed to get the sidelights working easy enough, the contents on the cheap eBay sidelight units had decided to go a nice shade of brown so I sanded them clean and refitted - we have sidelights The headlights were also relatively easy to fix. Turns out my modified headlight relay had become a bit loose. The steel top had lifted and the contacts weakened - only took ten minutes to fix so now I had all the lights working.




Next onto the brake lights..

Great to hear that this is back. Never really liked Capri's but love this one, something about the muscle car aesthetic!

Good luck, absolutely love this car, very talented bloke.

I still fecking love this car.

Please tell me you'll be at RRG14, cos I know my kids will also love to see this!

Thanks for the comments fellas, made up your kids are into it too Mr Speedy! - unfortunately I'm not at The Gathering and I'm pretty gutted about it! Kinda lucky I didn't sort the tickets in time as I've had yet another set back just before I was going to MoT it. Unfortunately, I knocked the wires out of my fan relay under the bonnet, following the crude wiring diagram on the back of the relay I replaced the wires and thought nothing of it..

Got it running and was checking for leaks/smoke etc.. and it just cut out. There appeared to be something amiss in the bay fusebox as lifting it to inspect the fuses caused the EGI relay to click. Not happy with this I took the battery off and began to root through the fusebox loom to see what the problem could be. Finding a damaged boxfuse that was intermittently connecting up (wobbly filament) I thought I'd fixed it and replaced the battery.

My brother-in-law, Sam, was in the workshop looking at the car, I was underneath replacing the fuel line. The conversation went something like this:

Sam: "what's going on there?"
Me: (from under the car) "what do you mean?"
Sam: "the cars filling up with smoke!"

Quick look up from under the car to see plumes of smoke billowing from behind the dash panels

Me: curse word, lots and lots of curse words!

Within the space of about 10 seconds I'd disconnected the battery, grabbed the fire extinguisher and literally ripped the whole dash out with my hands! Yep, smashed the bloomin lot to pieces with panicking Hulk powers.

It turns out, after lots of investigation, that I had stupidly connected a live to an earth point on the fan relay and not realised. It didn't cause an immediate problem but was clearly heating up the wires all the way back to the ignition until the wires decided they couldn't hold on anymore.

IT WAS READY FOR MOT!! Permission to use the fox of frustration: