The Cal-look Lounge

Hello everyone, been lurking here for a while now, it?s about time I started a build thread, now that I?ve worked out how to post pictures 🤔😎.
So onto the car, bought a year ago as a hot 1200. From a friend, solid enough car , some 80?s mot repairs, but ready to roll, here she is as bought

I have been using it a daily for the last year whilst I built a bigger motor and collected all the other nick nacks needed to run something more lively,
The motor is a 2109 built using the remainder of a previous 1915 motor and some parts/help/advice from Richie on here😎
Spec is
CB 76mm crank and 5.5? h beam rods
Alloy bubble top case
Scat super ?d? heads 42x37
Fk8 +1.4 rockers
44idfs
9.5cr
Plus a load of other expensive shiny crap that is needed to run one of these 😀[attachment=1]

The motor is now together ready for cam break in etc,
But the car could do with a little work. So a small body off tickle up is well underway,
Whilst the car is apart I?ll also be adding a mid mount, an air fuel gauge and wiring. Plus a change of seats and doors
Unfortunately losing the jolly Rodgers.
It?s currently running a 65mm narrowed beam on CB drop spindles and four stud discs.
To allow the 6 inch cobra slots to clear the archers.
I?ve been busy collecting repair panels in readiness for the big weld up. Should keep me out of trouble during the winter months

So a bit of background on how this came to be,
A few years back I put together a sweet 67 bug with a 1915 motor, was just running the motor in when I crashed and wrote it off. I was so gutted, worst day of my life, I?d put three years of graft, every spare second and every spare penny, you know how that goes. Only to see it wrote off,
After a few days I?d decided to try a type 3 as a body to house the 1915, two year Resto later , I have a solid fairly cool fastback, but the fire breathing motor sempt  tame in the much heavier fasty, also the odd layout of the type 3 didn?t help performance, I quickly decided to pass on the fasty to someone who would/could appreciate the finery of that design as I realised that a fast bug is what made my heart beat faster ( no pun intended)
Around this time my mate needed to pass on his bug, the money made from the sale of the fasty left me with more than enough coin to buy the bug and upgrade the motor 🤪😎
To be fair it wasn?t high on my must have list but a solid enough car with mot at the right price, made it..... well mine
Ok the styling wasn?t exactly what I would build but I was back in a bug 😎
More later....

The fasty
And the bug before and after
Still gutted four years later 🤢🤯

Like the cobra supa slots, I?m after a pair, can?t find any!

thanks beetletom there getting rare these days, I found both sets on ebay (sold one set like a fool)
mine are 6 inch allround pain in th rear to get them to clear on the front.

I have a pair of 4.5? us indy mags for the front of mine,
But yes! Heard the offset is terrible

Yes not the best but worth the hassle, I?ll keep an eye out for some.

Progress has been slow due to work commitments, but managed to strip the body off[attachment=2]
And chop out the old pans, found some grot in the frame head and some interesting repairs [attachment=3][attachment=4]
So got a new complete one ,wow lots of fun and not without a little worry when you get everything chopped out and remember the fun you can have just fitting things like pans etc (due to the randomness of pressings and poor quality) this is no different but think it will go in reasonably well with a bit of a massage
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Positive progress at last 😀 also managed to fit a mid mount I made a while back

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very nice project! i see you use the aftermarket framehead, be very careful with it. i tried to use the napoleon hat of the same manufacture and found out it is too high, about 10mm. the problem is you find that out when you want to mate your shiny new painted pan to your newly painted body - no way to correct that but putting a disc grinder to the parts....
you might want to check that

Thanks for the kind words and the advice Karl h, I thought ah it?s ok, I have this covered as I?m replacing the bulkhead too, but yes your right ,the panels are off by around ten mil, so appreciate you mentioning it, looks like I?ll have to adjust the naps hat area to allow it to work

Following on ,I checked another naps hat out that I?d already converted to r/h drive, it was a lot smaller in profile. So after fitting the frame head, what felt like a thousand times, I unpicked and swapped them over , not getting as much time as I?d like on this but at least it?s some progress

Is the bigger one a 1302/03 Napoleons hat? I've got vague recollections of them being thicker, and I'm pretty sure the torsion bar framehead will fit snugly inside the tunnel of a strut pan.

Hi Neil, don?t think it was a strut naps hat, just a poor pressing, it came welded to the new frame head, stranger things have happened tho🤔

Finally after age the dam thing is on, [attachment=1]
[attachment=2][attachment=4][attachment=3]checking after welding shows that the beam was higher one end by 10mm 🤬 the rest of the frame head was bang level, meaning the front plate was twisted, I ended up bolting the pan to the floor and using a trolley jack and pull lift chains to correct the miss alignment. Got to love aftermarket parts. When  all was good I moved onto the pans

seriously, 10mm off?  :o

Yes 5mm aside, the naps hat area was plum level.
 I had a new unused stock beam that I used to check it with as my had been narrowed and adjusters fitted, the pressings for beam location are poor , but hold the beam well enough, I bolted the naps hat area to the floor then tweaked the beam until it measured spot on, took a fair bit of effort and a lot of measuring

Time for an update, floor pan is finished, now onto body work, I started with some patern heater channels which I unpicked the closing plate to remove heater tube and paint inside[attachment=1][attachment=2]

No wonder they don’t last very long in raw steel, I painted and cavity waxed them and fitted hookies bottoms [attachment=1] then decided that the shell was a little too rough (roof was badly dented and mostly rotted) so located a replacement shell [attachment=2] still needing a fair amount of surgery but a lot better starting point

Turns out this one is as bad in all the same places, but had really good gutters and roof, so attack is the plan [attachment=1][attachment=2][attachment=3][attachment=4] looks like I’ll be busy for a while 🤔😀 but will end up with a solid base, wasn’t ment to be a Resto thread ... I’ll get to the fun stuff eventually

More progress, can’t believe (even tho it’s no secret) how badly some of this stuff fits, had to modify most parts to get them close , but it’s coming together 😁 really slowly

More messing around and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank mr Klockerholm for making my evenings so challenging ,yet rewarding 😅😀
But at least it’s progress and not actually that bad😳

Also managed to fettle the door pillar bottom from hookies, a lovely fit straight out of the box, although turns out later shells are contoured on the inside edge of the pillar 🤯 so a little tickle required to blend out the differences, happy days .I’m try to get as many hours as possible on this to get back to tuning and stuff
Ps note to self , Always remember to turn off compressor when locking up! To stop it auto starting at 3am and waking up the neighbors 🤭 oops

Looking good. With the exception of the framehead, we've got the same repairs to do to our '71 at school - nothing I've not done before though! Worst bit for me is the accident damage in the front. You haven't still got the old shell by any chance? And if so (and you'd consider getting rid of it) where are you?

Hi Neil, thanks, the old shell was cut up the only good parts were the screen scuttle and some bits of the roof gutters, this pic shows how bad it was
In s yorkshire

I saw the SVWOC sticker and wondered! I did my degree at SHU many years ago but hung about with the guys from Sheffield Aircoolers instead.
Your old shell does look bad! Not seen one go there for a long time.

Hi Neil was originally from Sheffield 😎 moved a few miles away now, are you running cookie cutters on your car? I have a set for this and a few fitment questions, more progress although only looks like five minutes worth, had to buy another Klockerholm panel for rear quarter as og mexi ones seem to have dried up, blurb says to 64 but can be used on later cars from swage line down 🤔 well yes if you have a good imagination and like panel beating 😀 some pictures

[attachment=1][attachment=2][attachment=3][attachment=4] just got to try to not warp it all , while welding

I did put Cookies on the race car I sold a couple of years ago - it's in the Stew Rat thread in the In Da Werks  section. They were 6" on the front and 7" on the back, on drilled discs and drums. Front fitted fine with 175/65's, back could have done with short axles.

I've just been looking for photos of the back end but haven't got any to hand. I'll look again later!

Not updated this in ages , but it’s been the typical chop,bang, weld , repeat for ever, [attachment=1]
Had to repair in sections which took more messing around and time
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Then fitted boot floor repair section
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Then replaced rotten inner sections that look ok when I started poking around[attachment=1][attachment=2]
Would have been quicker to find a decent cut ,but I need the practice 😁

Drivers side has been easier as I got a full quarter that had been fitted to another car so some repairs to tidy and fits a treat [attachment=1]
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That’s better [attachment=1]
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That about brings things up to date not shown is the door pillar bottom repairs from hookys, the typical repair next is boot floor repair and then rear engine bay trays and seal lip repair (again a hookys part that looks to be the exact size 😎)

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Been a bit quiet with this,  nothing much to report,  just lots of cut/bang/weld , almost completed the panel work now just the dash to convert to rhd and scuttle repairs[attachment=1][attachment=4]
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Hopefully I can then get on with making this go faster  ;D

So more of the same  but turns out the fibreglass short bonnet turned out to be a long one[attachment=1]
I did toy with using it but want this to be period correct (mid 70's late bug) not even sure why but I've already bought Europa bumpers/overiders ect so into storage it went and a fairly decent late bonnet sourced[attachment=2] fast forward loads more welding stuff to include extending one heater channel about 10mm to reach bulkhead panel, converting shell from lhd to right about as much fun as it sounds and making/fitting an edge to front quarter to door seam. Now done and just requiring a bit of filler here and there [attachment=3] then onto dash board mods [attachment=4]

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Finally got a glass short bonnet, 3 time lucky and it looks like it grew there, very happy
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glad you found a good one! 8)

[attachment=1] thanks Andy
Yes finally got there in body colour primer now

In other news i finally managed to track one of these down
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A dog house no heat puma fan shroud😎
A fairly rare part , I'll be fitting flaps and a venturi ring

[attachment=2]Picture trial fitted, needs a small adjustment for the alloy case
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Finally got body back on chassis, soon to start actually building a car 😎[attachment=1][attachment=2][attachment=3]

Some great work being done !

Look forward to seeing the end result 👍

Best update this as its only been 3 year's,  :o
The car was completed with a 2109cc motor that never really ran nice, so long story short I pulled it out and added some cc and compression  8) this was a few weeks ago when it finally went back in as a 2276 with 10.5:1 compression and the f8 cam on straight cut cb adjustable gears was set with 2 degrees advanced washers (was actually straight up) and 45 dell's,
That fixed it  ;D now it's the car I always wanted.
Fast capable and just enough scary to keep it fun.
Now to put some miles on it before summers completely done.

76mm and 82mm cranks not a lot of difference to see, but it's certainly woke her up

FK8 with 10.5:1 cr? I'm assuming you run high octane petrol?

Yes we have 99 Ron shell super unleaded 5% ethernol.