altezzaclub

She's had the ute since brand-new, and seeing she lost her licence some time ago its just one of the pair she drives around the paddocks. Its a 1300 Datsun something or other...

We'd been getting visitors every day, you can't do things like this on a farm without everyone knowing, and Nell would come up with tea and bikkies for us starving youngsters. I saw an open sack of spuds in the back of her ute and asked if she was going to plant them A couple of days later she announced she was going to start a vege garden, I'd been chatting about how good mine was, so I went to see how a lady in her 70s or 80s digs a garden... I suppose I should've known!

With the best of our motor mounts, the motor & box went back in, and we fitted a full-sized battery (+) lead as earth to fix any wiring earth problems. I replaced the old exhaust manifold gasket and did the manifold up before fitting the pipe, which is where problems usually arise and that explained why the last one leaked.

So a morning was spent cutting the oil pump pickup to raise it and mod the mesh sieve over it, or it would have been jammed on the floor of the sump.

So we pulled off a stock sump off another and of course found it wouldn't fit nicely over our larger oil pump... Then I realised why the oil pickup was so abused in that modified motor..

For rear suspension we just raided the parts car and replaced all the arms. The shocks were replaced with re-valved Bilsteins that had about 50Kg gas pressure and instantly pushed the car back up.. for about $700. We spent a few hours re-positioning the exhaust to clear the diff, but hoped the extra height would solve the smashing problem. With the shell back on its wheels we could move it outside and get the motors out. We dropped the grooved sump off the rally motor and grabbed one off the spare 18RG. This turned out to be one that had been cut horizontally all around and re-welded on backwards, then covered with epoxy to seal it... so we made a note to strip this so-called "race engine" Steve had bought before it was ever used!!

With a cross-member in we fitted the Sigma LCAs and then we measured the brake disc thickness and replaced the hubs, calipers and discs from the parts car. This lead to further problems in the rally, as we shall come to... The struts came back from Sydney Shocks with $900 Bilstein front shocks with gas pressure greater than my 70kg weight.. and we cleaned up the old camber-tops and fitted all the front suspension on.

So I instantly instigated 6.45am mornings and work until 9pm at night, 7days a week! The parts car gave up its cross-member, hubs & discs, castor mounts and many odd parts. Naturally nothing fitted and it all had to be filed and ground! After some hours of fighting we had out first success, a cross-member in place!

I headed back to Orange and left him another list, starting with "finish rust welding and a quick paint of engine bay". There was hours of cutting and welding in a jigsaw around the firewall, and then the painting was no quick job! After three weeks I went back up on Nov 8th to find that the car looked beautiful but no actual building had taken place!

Things looked pretty good as we patched them in.

Meanwhile the boy was busy at the front, welding in chassis rail and plating over the bottom ones-

The tank support was welded up out of some odd angle, and we doubled it at one end to make the tank slope so it drained. I grabbed an inner tube from a dirt bike and sliced it up, then glued it to the tank base so it sat tight in the frame. A trip to the saddler in Walcha with a trailer tie-down gave us a double-thickness belt to strap the tank into the frame. An old 4L drench container gave a splash tray.

Steve started a tech course to learn welding, but seeing I've always used oxy-acetylene we used that. When the acetylene ran out we moved to LPG/oxy with a leaking old barbeque bottle, (which was hopeless!) then when the oxy ran out we move to MIG. Weeks later when the cover gas ran out we used old-fashioned arc, so he got a good education! We braced the turret before we welded the rails back in.

and plated over the lower chassis rails from the giant scrap pile outside the woolshed. I don't know why farmers have scrap piles outside their woolsheds, but this one had plenty of angle and 1.6mm flat sheet.

We cut the chassis top rail out of the donor car and replaced the bent one......

I took the tank up to make sure it all fitted before it was welded, and we launched into welding plates on the chassis for a few days. Luckily he has a perfect-condition spares car, the ugly liftback, but everything except the rear body fits the the rally car.

The engineer also made 4 stands that go from 400mm high to 800mm high, giving some serious working space under the car. That all totaled $800odd. The Echo filling gear was scored from the wreckers when The Girl and I went shopping, along with a Landcruiser front steering bar, to get left and right-hand threads in a pipe, and a set of Sigma LCAs.

We pressure tested it before delivery and made sure the newish Toyota Echo filler pipes sealed.

The Build- I drew plans for the little 33L in-boot tank and had it made up by the local water tank place here, then welded by my engineer. With a tiny 350ml surge tank being fed down through a piece of 40mm filler tube, the pump can always draw fuel

The brake pads were cooked, but looked burned hard and chipped rather than very worn. So at the end of the week I left him with a car in a thousand bits and a long list.. New suspension arms, new shocks, raise ride height, repair chassis, weld over rust, new crossmember, fix carbs, make cross-strut bar, new seat mounts, new rear brake lines, new rear slave cylinders, move lines into car, new fuel tank, battery sorted, remake throttle cable setup & move pedals to suit new seat position... and on it went! We had until Nov 23rd to finish it before the next rally!

The car never idled, it stuck around 1500rpm and the throttle return springs were stretched so tight one broke, and they were so big it took a lot of grunt to move the throttle through its tiny travel of about 40mm, like a light switch! The fuel and the throttle cables both traveled around the carbs then back into a connection, so there was a lot of excess wire and lines everywhere. Taking the carbs off found an obvious problem.

With the cross-member rooted the motor came out, only to find the sump had been grooved right across by rubbing on the cross-member and we were lucky it wasn't split through. The motor wouldn't earth properly, and the exhaust manifold leaked.

The wheel arches sat at 660 and 630, on Kings springs, so the drivers side of the car was lower front & rear. The castor rods had worn the round hole in their front mounts into large ovals.

Rusted in the top corner of course, and down by the bumper mounts...

The mudguards didn't fit properly and the bonnet wouldn't close without rubbing along them, and having stripped the guard off I found the upper chassis was bent from a road accident years ago, and the strut tower moved back.