Grind The Rust, You Get More Dust.

got back earlier from the body shop. been a week since i could visit tina in the hospital. it's now rolling around the shop's floor since they need to get the car down from the lifts to grind the exterior of the car to check for anymore rust.

again not too happy with some of the welds as they were basically tack welds again. so i told the worker to seam weld every bloody tack weld where possible. they fitted the petrol tank so i told them to remove it and store it nicely cause we don't want big bulky things like that being in the way when we get the body to the painter.



was just hanging around the shop when one of the workers decided to fit the boot and bonnet back on to grind it along with the other remaining panels. that was when i got a shock when one of the letter 'F' from the bonnet was missing! i asked the guy, "where the hell isit!?! it's expensive and difficult to find a replacement part for this you know?" then he went of searching all possible places. but somehow, i remembered seeing it somewhere around the shop thinking it was some random bit of metal lying around. then suddenly i remembered where i saw it, on top of the tina's dashboard! wth man. so anyway, reason why it was there was one of the pins snapped. so some genius decided to just put it on the dashboard. talk about proper practice. sigh, almost unheard of in malaysia i tell you.

so immediately told the guy to remove all the emblems and give them to me for safe keeping. since the painters would also need to remove them, so i'll just keep them for now. hope the painters are not blooming idiots to cover up the holes that are there for the chrome bits to fit though. it's quite possible actually. dumb-ass workers. really makes you wonder where their brains are.

harvinder still hasn't sent the fuel tank cover to ah min for some touching up and refitting. will have to wait till monday cause he'll apparently be going to subang then.

while fitting the boot, the worker ran into some problems trying to get the boot to be flush with the rear panels. the right hand side of the bonnet was fine, just that the other side refused to be flush. it instead decided to be lower than the surrounding area. so the worker hammered it with a hammer and dolly, tried swiveling the bonnet left and right. still not solved since i left. you can see the problem here:

bad


good


it is believed that some sections of my roof (closest to the rain channels), parts of the rear quarter panel (near the rear windscreen and around the fuel area) contain aluminium which means that they can't fix up the surrounding area. this is very wierd, because it actually looks like it's from the factory! i mean, how can you have mild steel and aluminium together? it's insane i tell you.

don't know if you can see it but it's the only part that doesn't look rusted (obviously). anyone have any idea? i'm quite puzzled really.

then came talk of engine transplants. not with ford engines of course as parts are harder to find not to mention more expensive over here but with japanese engines. let's face it, japanese engines are bulletproof (figure of speech ya). so the engine in question was the 1JZ from the toyota soarer. let me break it down for you.

to overhaul the current 1.6 OHC pinto:
RM 3000 (expected value based on quotation given by AMC as well as factoring in misc. items that might need replacement along the way)

to buy a toyota soarer 1JZ halfcut:
RM 3000.
this halfcut comes with the entire front end including body panels, dashboard, air-conditioning, automatic gearbox, ECU, front brakes as well as the fuel tank and rear axle which comes with disc brakes too!

so nice :)


we're talking about 4 times more power than the ol' pinto not to mention more torque (1600cc VS 2500cc), EFi and the ease of getting replacement parts in the future!

the downside of doing this is:
a) rear axle and possibly the entire suspension system would need to be reworked to properly fit the axle. therefore equals $$$.
b) our daft transport department does not allow/approve any engine transplants that are >25% of the original engine's displacement.
c) our daft transport department doesn't allow mods to the chassis unless you get extremely detailed drawings of the alterations which is to be checked by a registered engineer of the JPJ (our transportation department) which would not be approved ultimately.

*note: this is why you don't see many crazy conversions being driven legally on the roads of malaysia. if they do, they risk getting their car confiscated.*

d) if you want (b) and (c) to be accomplished, you need lots of $$$, and i mean lots of $$$. corruption, corruption, corruption.

again, it's all about proper practices which is almost never practiced here unfortunately.

on the lighter side, just look at that engine! the cortina could definitely fit it without much trouble now wouldn't it? sigh. anyone know of other japanese engines that would fit without requiring much alteration to the rear axle? let me know.

since the car's on the floor, might as well take the pic to help you visualize how good the flared arches are with wide wheels.

before:


after:


yes the left one's photoshopped. how else could it be done? notice how much meaner the stance of the car is? ahhh, satisfaction...satisfaction. (ignore the low-ness of the anti-roll bar brackets and tailpipe)

F1 Style Side Mirrors.

i kinda get the feeling that i'm veering towards a drift-style car than an old classic. but what the heck. i feel that these would look reallly cool on the cortina.


most old school drifters in malaysia use them on their toyotas (ke70, te72, ae86) and a lot of other 15-20 year old cars. they not only look good but prove to be aerodynamically sound as well. and the down side? well, let's just say they'll be very easy to steal if i don't take the necessary precautions (i'm not telling but it's a rather logical thing to do, go figure).

if i'm not mistaken, the mk3 cortinas do not come with side-mirrors as standard fitting yes? if so, these would serve the purpose wonderfully.

i've got the flared arches, the f1 style side mirrors...what else do i need? oh yes, nardi steering wheel, wide-assed rims, semi-bucket seats. if i had things my way, i'd have a roll cage and harness installed but the fuhrer (my dad) will not let me convert this into another daily/track car (for those of you who know my current daily car, putra505).

Fender Flaring 101.

the welder guy is done with flaring the fenders and wheel arches. only thing left to do is to grind of some excess sheet metal here and there. right now the 5.5" stock rims look really small tucked under such wide arches. i should be able to fit up to 8" wide rims now looking at it.


front arches.


new rust area that will be fixed, after removal of the petrol tank. it's the rear bumper hanger slot.


so basically the whole point of having wider fenders is to get wider wheels under them and by doing so, you change your suspension geometry by widening the track width of your car. handling would be better since the wheels now sit further out from the chassis. handling is still heavily reliant on your suspension setup, but in general, the wider your track width, the better the handling.

going too wide however might stress the axles unless customized parts have been made (according to your new vehicle specs) since the wheels now sit further out now. but this is really a case when you go really really far out of the body and by the time you reach that, you'd notice some drive shafts have bent or are really out of position because the weight of the car is not supported by whatever is linking your wheels to the axle. not to mention your dampers would have to be totally reworked to accommodate this setup.

enough of that technical mumbo-jumbo. one problem that i've come across is the odd PCD (pitch-circle-diameter) that the cortina has. it has a 4x108 PCD (4 represents number of bolts and 108 is the PCD) which is very rare to obtain here in malaysia which is dominated by japanese makes which have PCDs of 114.3 normally. so, hunting around in chop-shops for old school rims is gonna be difficult.

last resort would be to order something from the UK. though the rims i've seen there aren't really to my liking as i'm looking for something like this:


or this but not pink on the inside. maybe fluorescent orange.


those 2 photos of the wheels are courtesy of Hayashi Racing's website.

there are other rims out there...but it all depends on the PCD. maybe eBay might have something i'm looking for but i'm afraid of the customs officers. they apparently over-charge you for bringing in stuff like these.

oh well, if any one has the above rims in 14x7 or 14x8 PCD 108. please drop me a message ok?

If You Lie, Your Fender Will Flare.

the welder has started flaring the fenders. so far, it looks rather good. reason why i'm flaring the fenders/wheel archs is to fit my future wide wheels. looking to go around 7 to 8 inches wide at the back and about 7 inches wide in front. also it looks 'ganas' haha!

before:


after (at 65% complete):


it'll be interesting to see how the welder does the front fenders. this is because the arch already comes out of the fender prolly by 2-3 mm so if the welder starts moulding the fender after the slight bump in the fender, i will be like this: -_-" and then consequently i'll end up like this: X_X" or @_@". hahah.

comments?

A Disaster.

it's been a week and the damage has been done. what damage you ask? well, the bodywork was looking good till the shop decided to speed things up. so seam welds were left as tack welds and some tack welds were left as broken-off tack welds.

was damn pissed off so i told the boss. had to wait for him for about 15 minutes before he arrived, then i pointed all the problems that i could see under the car. all the boss could say was, "ok, can can." i was not impressed at all by the copious amounts of underbody sealant was used to seal up the tack welded parts. i mean, come on man, even though i'm a technical person, don't ASSUME i'll be happy with the welds that you're giving to me. geez...malaysian mentality.




would you accept welding like this?





some sections were still not finished eventhough he said it was! like these,





i have no idea whose work is this but i'll just put it up here cause the current welder was supposed to fix every inch of this car.



so after calling harvinder to come to Ban San ASAP, we spoke to the boss again, ran through most of the stuff that i could see that was wrong with the welding and stressed to him that he can take his own sweet time to fix the car as long as the outcome is fantastic. he confidently said that it's all small problems and that he will have it fixed in 3 days. well i didn't buy it so i visited him yesterday and thank God he wasn't finished. instead, he managed to fix both chassis rails





also, the driver side sill which he totally missed has been fixed
before:

after:


this is another piece of shoddy welding. it's under the rear bumper where he just tack welded a pieve of sheet metal. and he tacked only one side! i could push the metal or rip it out with my bare hands!

the acceptable corrected section:


as you can see, the reworked sections are alot better than what was done to it before. proper plug welds at the sill section instead of tack-welds. i just hope he will continue like this for the other sections. personally i don't think it's that good but i guess i'll have to settle for the quality of local welders. :(

WTF.

really wtf man. harvinder just called me up telling me that the welders are done with the cortina! that's too freaking hard to believe!

i'm expecting shoddy workmanship right now. i'll have a sleepless night. i mean, overall the other welds look good. but a two weeks job completed in about a week? have to check every nook and crany of the body before i can decide if i want the fenders flared.

there are certain spots that i feel should be seam-welded instead of just tack-welding it in place, eventhough the seasoned veteran welder begs to differ. i just want the car to be perfect (in the real world, multiply that by a factor of 0.6 to get 'the-real-world-perfect'). i do believe that seam-welds can be performed. usually tack welding will be done first to hold the metal in the correct position and to avoid distortion. it's silly to just seam weld the thing at first go because you'll end up with a piece of distorted metal that's more distorted than a mental patient's perception of the world! ok, so it's tack weld first (1" apart at best) taking regular breaks to let the metal and welds cool down to further avoid distorting or burning through the metal and then only seam weld. if it's a very long seam weld that is required, usually welders use a step-back technique where you start seam welding from the ends or the center of the panel and skip a tack weld and after seam welding the fore-tack weld, you weld the aft-tack weld (ie. if tack welds are positioned at 1-2-3-4, you'd seam weld the gap in between each tack weld in the following order: 1->3->2->4, get it?). this process reduces/cancels out the residual stresses formed as a result of welding (ie. expansion and contraction from high heat which is due to WELDING!).

for those of you interested in what i believe is a basic to welding, you can read this good article HERE on tack welding. feel free to google more info so you don't get cheated when you have to send your ride for bodywork/panel beating.

more updates tmrw.

Motherload Of Pics.

i've gone mental and provided bigger reso pics of the upcoming cortina. still in the welding stages. still haven't decided if i should flare the wheel arches. more 'ganas' no?







bad graffiti huh?


clear view of the new floor-pans


this needs to be re-worked.





even clearer shot of the underside





my front windshield is still in good condition :D


you can see how the front suspension of the cortina is setup. double A-arms, tie-rod and anti roll bar link the spring and damper in check. since there's no strut tower, a strut bar would be useless...there's no place to put it too! maybe i could fabricate something to stiffen up the front a bit.


close-up of sheet metal tack-welded into place before (hopefully) seam-welding it nicely.


as you can see, the exhaust has to go. don't ask me why it's mushroomed at the tail pipe and why is it bent like that.


pano of the rear axle.


rear suspension shot for the curious.


butt view of the car and the workshop.


a little blur but you can make out the new sheet metal on the door.


the front of the car and the uncle from kelantan who's been doing all the work. apparently he's the guru here.

so ends another session of pics. i went shopping for seats and rims and i won't tell what i've in mind just yet. but it'll consist of 2nd hand semi-buckets and old school jap wheels.

stay tuned.