1962 Rochdale Olympic - Let's crack on

Wow, I was just thinking that you would only change the body colour and the wheels.

The new direction looks very promising!

This car is phenomenally good looking and I love the mods you've had done, which all serve function and add to the whole package. Amazing

Good luck mate with the fibreglassing I look forward to seeing the results

Cheers,

Josh

I'll be sitting here expectantly all day

Umm, last time the engine was pulled apart based on the suspect noises, it was found to be all okay, and was reassembled. All a complete waste of money and time. The engine is yet to be started since that last rebuild, so fingers crossed, when it is, we'll be fine.

So, about my visit to the car earlier in the week.......

My timing was poor. Although the guys have made good progress on the rear of the car, my visit coincided with a poorly looking rear end because the clay buck had been removed, and the mould was off the car. So, what I was left looking at was a car decidedly uglier than when I saw it last. Certainly not what I was hoping to see. It felt a bit of a let down as I basically got a day off work to review what they done and make sure I was happy with it.
Anyway, there was some use going down because we got to talk through the shape of the front wings and vents before they were tackled. .
So, for those of you reading this who might be new to the car; the rear wings, used to look like this;


Sculpted perfectly to fit around that wheel and tyre combo, and in particular, wide enough to deal with the wheel offset.
Since the new wheels, the arches just didn't work. The narrower offset meant the arches were now comically oversized.


This has presented a real challenge. The whole rear bodywork of the car had been sculpted to make the arch extensions appear as if one piece, with the whole rear end shape as one. These pictures from many moons ago show how much had been changed from the original shape -


To remove width has meant undoing a lot of work. It was never going to be less than drastic, expensive, so mixed feelings. Here is the first view of the car after a little bit of trimming -

You can see a very clear line running from the front of the arch down to the rear light recess. This line represents where the modified bodywork was removed. You can see from this that the newer fibreglass had been laid over the original shell.
The fibreglass that is jutting out to the side is the inner arch that had been made as part of the last work. So, that indicates the minimum width of the extended arches.
From the front of the car -


The new fibreglass will be laid up so that instead of being a second skin on top of the original wings, it will become part of the monocoque, with the original skin cut out to keep weight down. Talking of which, while I was there, it seemed like a good time to do that cutting. It’s a bit scary, but at the same time exciting, to see such fundamental changes to the car. I’m trying not to dwell on the wasted work previously, so focus on this being one step closer.






Because the rear of the car had been widened to hide the wider track and allow the arches to blend in, the cutting has extended all the way to the rear lights. There will be much more of a taper to the rear end this time but this will be evident in the pictures so best wait until then.
Incidentally, the workshop had removed A LOT of material as part of this. There was a lot of filler, very thick in places, and so far, what has been removed weighs close to 20kgs! That’s 20 performance blunting kgs, or 20 kgs of weight to counteract rear end lift, depending on how you look at it.

Here are some shots of the new rear arches in clay.
I didn’t actually take these on my visit, they were taken the week before.


At the moment, those shots are as clear as I am about how well they will look. They are the right shape, but I think I am similar to most on here in that I know their success will be totally dependent on how they hug the wheels and tyres. I will reserve judgement until I see it back on its wheels but I prey it’s going to come together.
In both of these last shots, you may also notice that some work is going on with the rear side windows. I think this is one of those occasions where a small detail becomes important to someones vision. I have long thought that the shape of the rear windows could be altered very slightly, but make a marked difference to the car in profile. Only time will tell, although it will be so subtle that I don’t suppose many people will notice.....I wil though and as we all know, with your own car, that’s the most important thing.

Loving the heritage of these cars now.
This period cine film of a demo run isn't exactly Vimeo but is great.
The poor quality of the film and the other cars in the background make the Rochdale look like something out of a sci fi film.
Love it


I hope someone else gets a kick out of it too.

Thanks for the comments.
I had no idea you worked at a fabricators. Looks like a cool little company. You're right, hopefully I'l get everything sorted through these guys but good to know anyway.
They will be using the mould off the car, as even with the second skin removed, it would be tricky to lay the fibreglass with it on.
The whole thing has me very nervous but excited at the moment. It's quite difficult to communicate this sort of stuff, let alone only on the odd visit.

My plan for the right seats is still going on in my head.
I visited Demon Tweeks recently, which has a brilliant selection of seats on display. After lots of trial sitting, I now appreciate how much more supportive modern bucket seats are than the low back classic type I am used to.
I am still not too sure on the look of modern seats in a retro car though, but realise they are probably a lot safer too. I then stumbled upon the sheer genius of an MX5 owner on the Club Roadster forum who managed to turn these -



Into these -



That guy is a legend in my eyes, great vision. Food for tought definitely.....

So, as some of you may have picked up from my recent posts, with my car, I have started to enjoy looking back now that I am enjoying looking forward.
I realised this week that it is 10 years ago that I first saw the car. This was pre digital camera for me, but I did take some photos that I have just got scanned. So here they are; my Olympic as I first saw it. Glad I could visualise where I wanted to take it……









The glass sunroof was never going to stay. The side vents looked pretty ugly to me at the time too, although ironically, I am now trying to find a solution for better airflow from the front arches and engine bay which they assist with.





I get the impression the interior was a work in progress before the last owner decided to give up on the car, the centre binnacle is interesting.





It looks like somebody got caught in the wiring loom and panicked escaping before they got trapped forever.

Nice to think about bringing a car back to life in a new form, like we do…..

Love the grey. You might also want to look at space grau BMWs

It's slightly darker grey.