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No - not our car, but Mark's VX powered track-day car.

As the trackday season for 2004 finished, Mark decided to get his car tidied up a bit. It had a long history of competition before Mark bought it, and has the battle scars of roll cages, slight knocks, and lots of re-riveting. The idea was to get the chassis renovated by Arch, with bent tubes replaced and holes filled. The chassis would then be repainted and treated against rust, before a complete set of new body panels were fitted with a re-skin. A slightly new colour scheme would be applied, with the green parts resprayed as a metallic graphite grey.

After the re-build - replacing parts where required - Mark would fit a 'new' engine, a 240bhp VX with all steel internals.

I am particularly interested in this process as I expect to do the same with our car sometime in the next few years (except the new VX engine bit!) Our car certainly suffers from a bad powder coating, and is showing signs of the associated corrosion. [thanks to Mark and the help of our friends, we have indeed gone through this process now!]

On Friday Marks car was thrashing around Hullavington - 24hrs later it looked like this!


Never leave a car with Mark in his garage if he is bored....


Big bits were taken off whole, to be dismantled later on after the chassis had gone off to Arch.


Mark is either afraid this reversing light is about to explode, or is not concentrating on the job in hand!!


Side panel about to be ripped off.


Gentle persuasion was the order of the day!


Floor panel shows signs of corrosion and moisture retention - in this case between the floor panels and the honeycomb panels. All these will be replaced the the car is re-skinned, although honeycomb panels will be reused where possible.


A chassis stripped of most of its components is pretty light, and easy to turn over to work on. Biggest job is removing all those rivets.


Side panel being peeled away, showing signs or stripped chassis rails, as the powder coating has peeled off.


More of those rivets - quickest way to remove was chiselling them off.




Some of the joints were quiet scary. This is the notorious black spot found just at the back of the engine bay, in between the side panels and the footwells.


Lots of grit, dirt, oil, peeled paint and rust was gathered in the gaps between side skins and internal panels.


Amazing what you can find!


That pile in the corner is what is left of Marks car - minus the chassis.


These panels are now scrap!


And off it goes, up to Arch for its new lease of life.


Once at Arch, Mark discusses options with Bruce, such as which tubes would be replaced and any extra strengthening Mark wanted done. Not sure what Mark thought we were going to do with the slicks though!


UPDATE!! - well, since helping Mark with his car we have gone through exactly the same process with our car, as can be seen in our main rebuild section!

 
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