the rebuild of my 48 vauxhall

[barnsey]

Hi guys, thought i would put a post up of the rebuild of my Vauxhall.
It was first rodded in 1978 and ran a 186s holden engine out of a holden monaro and had a 4 speed box, the front and rear ends came from a HR Holden .
I don't know too much about the build back then, but was given these old photo's of the car when i first bought it.
this one was taken when it was first finished and on its way to be registered.

the second pic was taken about two years later in 1980 sorry bout the fuzzy pics.

the car changed hands again in 1993 and was given a freshen up in 2000,

then in 2004 it was sold to me, the first thing i did was to remove the bumpers and look at ways to lower the car.


I drove it like this for about the next 3 years, clocking up over 25,000 miles a year, It was used as my daily driver and saw plenty of hard miles towing a 7x4 box trailer with all my floor sanding tools and machines, I even had the back seat out of it to make room for more tools.
It was used for work during the week, then cleaned up on friday nights readt to attend any rod runs that might have been happening on the weekends.



anyway about 2007 I decided to try my hand at a bit of customising, and bought myself a mig welder.
first up after sitting and looking for an hour, i got the courage up to cut a few holes, i then cut some exhaust pipe to fit in the holes and tried my hand at welding.





I also tried my hand at resessing the numberplate.
end p1
cheers barnsey

[barnsey]

next on my wish list was to remove the old filler tube and replace it with something that fitted a little more flush to the body, a trip to the wreckers, with a hammer and chissel saw me come home with a nice Jaguar item. I cut a hole in the side of the car where the old flller was and trimmed the Jag one to size and welded it in.

[barnsey]

i drove the car for a few months with the rear still in undercoat, as this was my only transport at the time, and i needed to tow my trailer with all my tools to and from work. I treated her quite hard during the week, most of my work required me to take many dirt roads and tracks just to reach the properties i was working on. most of the work out here is up long driveways like this one.
see video below :(
YouTube - Vauxhall hotrod being used to tow trailer to work out in the country on a dirt road 3/2008
anyway I went too a rod run down in canberra for a weekend, which is only a 4 and a half hour drive from home, I got talking to another mate Steve who owns a 1926 buick roadster pickup built over a 59 chrysler royal chassis, it was running a 265 hemi with a eaton m90 supercharger on straight lpg, anyway we got talking and he mentioned that he was replacing the m90 with one that he got from the states, an eaton M114 and said that the m90 was for sale, he took me for a ride in his buick and i was hooked, I just had to have this m90 on my car, so a deal was struck and i purchased the m90.
here is a pic of steves buick with the hemi and the m90 still on it.

and one of it with the new m114 on it.

and the two sitting side by side.

well little did i realise that by buying the m90 cheap, i would later end up spending big dollars getting another engine built to suite it, Steve has built my new engine to run on straight lpg, it has all the good gear interally and was built to rev to 7000+ rpm and should be making between 320+ flywheel hp,here are a couple of pics of the new engine,after steve finshed building it for me.

[barnsey]

next up it was decided that i would have to box my chassis to cope with the extra hp.
so the body was removed and i started to tare the car apart and get rid of all the unwanted bits lol.
working conditions were a little harsh, i missed having a concrete floor to work on, i am still finding bits and peices that were bueried in the gravel two years ago.
removing the body.


the chassis was stripped and i then cut the centre of the old k member out and modified it to accept the new engine and auto trans, I also boxed the chassis using 3mm flat bar.the tail shaft loop was later changed to a piece of round gas pipe


I then fitted a Volvo rear end, as the volvo comes in a good range of gear ratios and was also a disc brake rear end, it also has early holden stud pattern and i wanted to keep my wheels which have been on the car since 1979, so the old leaf spring rearend was removed and the volvo one fitted.


it was then all flap discked back ready for a coat of KBS Rust seal which is made by the old chemist who used to have por15.

I brushed the KBS Rust seal on and it came up a treat off the brush, it levels out so good you can't even see the brush marks.

[barnsey]

with the lpg tank now fitted it was time to lower the body back onto the chassis and rework the boot floor.


after a few measurments the body was removed and i started to fabricate a new floor, this is the first time that i have attempted anything like this, I did build another Vauxhall before this one, but all the welding and most of the planing was done by my mates, this one is my first attemp at trying to do all the chassis and body by myself, it is quite daunting when you make the first cut and think that you have just destroyed your car.

new trunk floor welded in.


underside just got coated in under body tar sealer as i plan on putting plenty of miles on the car, I also fitted the volvo tunnel to replace the old one which was too small for the auto and was made out of scrap tin,

[barnsey]

A couple of weeks later Steve who had built my engine called to say that he was gong to deliver my new engine and some guys off ozrodders.com forum were going to come up for the weekend and fit the engine and get it running, it was a great weekend and there was lots of beer drunk :) but they made me new engine mounts, installed the engine and had it running on the first day that they were there, it was a great effort by all concidering that they had travelled a long way to help me, the furtherst distance traveled was 900 kilometres and the least distance was 450 k's so it was great that some guys that i had met on a hotrod forum wanted to help me out.

and here is a video of the engine being fired up for the first time running on lpg gas.
YouTube - supercharged 202 vauxhall, 1st start up running on LPG gas

[barnsey]

next up was to get the brakes sorted, i removed the body again (have lost count how many times it was removed and replaced) lol and attempted to fit the new pedal box, which mounts under the dashboard.


thats when i found out that my firewall was on too much of an angle and the only way i was going to make it fit was to get the grinder out and cut a big hole in my firewall.
I then fabricated a peice of metal to weld back into the hole, this was folded using a big hammer and the vice lol.
it turned out pretty good in the end


I had to extend into the area where the battery used to be located, so the battery now resides in the boot. the area left over where the battery was will be used to house the msd ignition unit.
I then smoothed up the firewall and gave it a couple of coats of paint.

[barnsey]

Next up I wanted to clean up my dashboard, ready for when my new gauges arrived, I started grinding away and discovered that there were lots of old gauge holes and smaller holes where old switches had been in the past, they were all hidden using cardboard and bondo, so i put a cutting wheel in the grinder and removed the centre section of the dash.


next up i cut a peice of metal to fill the hole back in and welded it to the dashboard.

I then decided that the glove compartments on either side of the dashboard were never being used, so i filled them in also.


then i smoothed everything up with a little nondo and gave it a coat of high fill primer.

at this stage i was going to paint the inside of the car black, but later decided against it .

so the black paint was removed and i thought this time, now that i had my gauges, i would cut all the holes out before repainting the dash.

then i decided on a color for the car and went and bought some paint.

barnsey

[barnsey]

the dasboard then got a coat of the new paint.


I am having lots of fun doing this rebuild and learnig lots along the way,
cheers barnsey

[barnsey]

next up, I had a few days off work, so i decided to start rubbing the outside of the car back and get some ubdercoat on it as well.



then i spent one sunday dry rubbing all the primer back, before giving it another coat, this time i added a guide coat and wet rubbed the whole car.
barnsey