Project Return of the Red: 2/3/15 MOT ahoy?

[ruffgeezer]

I originally posted this a while back on the blue forum, but since I've found here to be more of a home, I hope you guys don't mind me posting it here too. Its a project that took up around 2 and a half years of my best mate, Mark's, time to build.

I'd been driving a year or so when I ended up buying a complete lemon of an axgt, it wouldn't do because at the time, I was covering 50 miles a day, the ax had cost me a lot of money, but I knew I couldn't sell it for anywhere near what I'd paid. Long story short, I got a loan and a newer car, and I gave the gt to my mate for the price of the alloys it stood on.

He spent a bit of cash on getting it a fresh mot, and that started the ball rolling.

The one that started it all (shown right); Opv a tragically crap mk gt, Next to it, my mk2 gt that Mark would buy later.

After running around in the gt for a bit and spending some time lurking the axownersclub forum, Mark and I bought another gt between us, sight unseen for parts, we turned a good profit on the car and Mark would catologue everything we sold and how much for.

Mark prepares to remove the tailgate from the gt (he's facing the car, his brother is to the left)

The gt was so rotten we ended up cutting the car up completley, we had a policy of not selling on anything that was as crap as the grey one had been.

Garage envy, I has it. Mark's workshop with the halfcar and hydrualic lift.

After the success of the white gt, we moved along to another gt, this red one, we worked for around 6 months on dechaving the car and making it saleable, after all the work, it was still basically crap, and we spent over an hour trying to explain this to the guy buying it, but he bought it anyway for £250.

Before and after, GMX, an ex-max power feature car.

Whilst the work on red shed took place, ebay and beers bought us this from 12 miles away. Our friend Chinese Gav towed us home in it at 60, not what you want in an engineless pile of rust!

Bought for £20.50, the darkness suited it, but the wheels were decent enough!

We bought and scrapped several others over the next year or so, but Mark had decided what he wanted, we set out to find a decent forte/mk2 gt/gti shell for him, which is where the story of BTW starts.

The ebay advert read: "Ax Forte, engine knackered, body knackered, wiring knackered. Spares or Repair, west Essex."

I dropped an email to the owner and found that she'd had the car from new and bought it from the garage that my company had just bought.

This was BTW as she was found:

The bodywork knackered related only to the pink paint, this was and still is the most rust free ax I've ever seen! I did a deal on Mark's behalf and secured the car for £50, it then cost around £200 to have it transported to Lincolnshire, and later in that month, I moved to Lincolnshire too.

When the car arrived at the farm, Mark wasted no time in getting to work with the sad looking forte. Initally the engine was pulled and replaced with that from an Ax Gti we broke, this for Mark was just an exercise to see if he could do it, needless to say, with what he'd learnt from the other cars, it worked fine.

Engine out, BTW looked this way twice, once after binning the original 1.1 unit and once after the trial fitment of the Gti engine.

By the time the gti lump had been fitted, Chinese Gav had brought Mark a Saxo Vts engine, and it's new home would be BTW. This in turn meant that a brake and suspension upgrade would be necessary.

Halfway through a back axle replacement, a photoshy Mark hides behind his car

Axle replacement meant finding a lot of crap under the back seats

A shot of the original melted engine

I'll update some more later, Mark never took the car to any shows or told anyone about it, so nobody really knows about it. He died late 2007, something I'll never really come to terms with.

The Car was such an achievement and I am proud of how well he finished the conversion. He learnt everything from messing about in the garage, but his eye for detail sets this one apart from most other conversions.

His parents have talked to me recently about the future for the car, it hasn't been used on the road since I replaced the broken clutch cable, and just gets shunted around their yard occasionally, sadly it's faded to a similar state as to when it was first bought.

[Jim Bell]

Please fix all the img links. Good thread otherwise!

[daveb47]

Please fix all the img links. Good thread otherwise!

Just fixed them

[Mr Lobster]

Interesting reading despite the sad ending, be nice to see it fixed up though.

[Sudsprint]

Great cars - but a sad story. For many of us our car histories are inevitably intertwined with the people we have known.. and lost.

[ruffgeezer]

Thanks Dave, I'll sort the next batch now.

 

Part 2:

 

The suspension that was fitted to BTW was a decent spec, the rear axle came from a Saxo Vts and I collected it from south mimms services from a lad from Southampton called Sam, he was running a 205 with a 106 rallye lump on bike carbs- nice!

 

In anycase the beam was delivered to Mark who stripped the callipers and rebuilt them before fitting them to the car.

 

The front brakes were different again, The struts and callipers were taken from another Saxo Vts, this time it was one that I'd bought from a local scrapyard for £500 delivered. Mark bought the front suspension complete and rebuilt it all before fitting it.

 

The struts now contain Koni dampers and have Ax spring platforms and koni springs. The brakes are fitted with a Goat Developments 283mm disc kit. The discs are drilled/grooved items from a 306 gti-6 and the vts callipers are moved out using -well- spacers! 

 

15" Tsw Razors were sourced to fit over the new braking setup, cheap and cheerful with a good set of yokohamas included.

 

By this time the installation of the engine was well underway, Mark modified a Saxo Vts catalytic converter to mate up to an Ax Scorpion exhaust system, with a nice subtle 3" exit.

 

Now sadly I've not got a picture of the vts engine installed in the car, but it was once this was done (including a very complex architect style drawing of the conversion loom he made) that Mark started work on BTW's body work.

 

That's 3, yes 3, bottles of t-cut colour fast all used up on BTW's paintwork

 

Its also worth noting just how much space has been lost in the garage due to the amount of axs being broken around the car. 

 

Now the engine was running and the suspension was all settled, Mark set about rectifying the front arch scrub the new wheels caused, he did this by dismantling a spare steering rack. His dad machined up some collars to attach to the end of the rack to limit it's travel. Scrubbage sorted.

 

The car, with the freshened up paintwork and the new underpinnings looked like this:

 

 

Not bad when you compare it to how it was found:

 

Obviously the car needed it's stance correcting, Mark spent hours researching the job on the internet, the various methods of adjusting the torsion bars and the correct methods of setting the height.

 

These are the last pictures I have of the car when it was on the road, Mark lowered the rear so it was just higher than the front, and knocked up some rubber bump stops to fit the the Koni rear shocks to stop the rear wheels scrubbing the arches. With this sorted the car was put through a rigarous mot and Mark used it up until the clutch cable snapped in september 2007.

 

 

With the time gone by, the paintwork has started to fade back to it's original state. The car was never fixed and is still sat in the workshop until it's time comes round again.

 

If you've any questions or comments, please feel free to post them, I just wanted to show what one guy achieved with only research and patience.

[fordperv]

That's a cool ax, if I were you I would take the car on, get it back to its former glory, cherish and drive it as a fitting memory of your best mate and his hard work

[Minimad5]

Fantastic Story !
Thanks for sharing, and i do hope the car is put back onto the road

[wackywacerwill]

It's always a shocker loosing someone before their time and can have a profound effect on those around that person.

 

I guess Mark built this car to drive and enjoy and it seems a shame for it to sit after all the graft though I could also understand that one may wish to just preserve it too.

 

Great car and great thread, thanks for putting it up here.

[Lord Sterling]

Great story but with such a sad ending. The BTW Forte deserves a good new home, to be ressurected and cherished to how Mark would have wanted it. As you are his friend, maybe you could take it on. No one else will shower this car with the love and respect it needs.

[Rusty Pelican]

As said great story but a miserable sad ending , hope he didnt suffer and also hope the car gets back on the road exactly how Mark intended 

[ruffgeezer]

I think I might make the call this week, although I vowed not to own another ax, I hate seeing this one sitting wasted.

[Split_Pin]

Thanks for sharing this, it was a good read and the sad loss of your friend lends a different light to the story of the car.

 

I think your friend Mark would have loved to see it brought back to life. Call me soft but I reckon people who have passed away still watch over us.

[dugong]

That's a cool ax, if I were you I would take the car on, get it back to its former glory, cherish and drive it as a fitting memory of your best mate and his hard work

 

Couldn't have put it better myself. 

[mat_the_cat]

Speaking purely personally, I'd like to see you looking after this car as a tribute to Mark; but you will know best what he would have wanted. If I meet an untimely end, I would be pleased that I had a friend who shared my story afterwards.

[Felly Magic]

TBH I think only you could really give this car the home it deserves. I can tell that the car does mean a lot to you, and it would be a fitting tribute for you to cherish it. It would probably be what he would have wanted too

[Station]

I'm going to France and Germany, and want to go over in an 80's/90's French diesel - does anyone know of an AX diesel for sale?

[Bren]

The first car I learned to drive was a brand new ax on an F plate - miserable spec but a cracking town car.

 

My mate bought an immaculate F plater for his son to learn in - it was left on the drive before being bridged.

 

I offered it on here but nobody wanted it.

 

This site is'nt what it used to be.

[dugong]

Are you wounded?

[ruffgeezer]

So I went yesterday, equipped with a few spanners and a new battery, after re-priming the fuel system, she was once again purring away, the brakes bind which is as to be expected, especially as it is running discs all round.

 

7 years have not been kind to the Venetian Red:

 

Taken when it was last on the road:

 

As she sits now, Pogweasel pink I think:

 

Genuine Mileage (for the shell!):

 

Engine is a 1.6 16v Saxo engine, with Pug 106 management:

 

Big brakes mean 15" wheels are necessary:

 

Quite where the last 7 years evaporated to, I don't know.

 

The plan is to get it to an mot, and if it is green lighted, a full service & fresh belts, only then will I attempt to sort the paintwork out.

[lisbon_road]

Thanks for sharing this moving story.

 

This might be obvious to you, but a proper bodyshop buffer with professional compound, G3 I think it is, makes light work of that sort of paint.  Much quicker than T cut.

[ruffgeezer]

Yeah, I think I'll have to research if there are any products that slow the blooming down, I have seriously considered a grey bodykit so there is less red to keep up with.

[ruffgeezer]

Ok so if you missed the News24 Thread, this happened earlier in the week:

 

 

Last week I thought I'd better start getting the new axle ready for the Ax, "recently refurbished" and "ready to fit" were phrases that had been used.

 

So brake plates held on with thin wire, brake pipes made by Stevie Wonder and a week's worth of lunch times leave this:

 

This bit is buggered because of the broken off bolts:

 

 

I had to pull a nearly new wheel bearing off of the stub axle to get to this point:

 

This side of the axle is back to bare, I'll have to do the same trick on the old axle now to get it built properly.

 

 

 

Oh and after an hour of my time clearing the back workshop, this happened:

 

 

 

I'll update with today's work once I get in from the pub.

[ruffgeezer]

Day 2:

 

Remove the knackered back axle; luckily all but one of the brake pipes came undone, that which did not just has a union seized on the pipe.

 

 

 

Today I had the C5 in for mot, so half of lunch was spent chasing an earth fault on the back lights, with that done, I got on with stripping the pipes from the old axle and fitting to the new, during which I discovered that the car already has braided hoses, so now I have two sets. FUCKSOCKS.

 

 

End of play today (time spent so far 2.5hrs)

 

 

[overrun]

Fantastic to see you giving this car another day in the sun - if the paintwork will pardon the pun!

 

This is a great way to honour your mates memory, without feeling compelled to take on some total basket case.

 

Great work.

[ruffgeezer]

Mess means progress...

 

[DSdriver]

Good work! Farecla, the people who make G3 also do a UV wax, which may help with the pogweazle protection. I have some of both in stock if you can't get it locally. One problem, especially with red cars is that there is only so many times you can cut the paint before you are back to primer. I'm not sure about the later models of AX but the F reg Splash we had was all about getting fuel economy by saving weight. I am sure Citroen used this philosophy on the paintwork as well as panel thickness and everything else.

[brickwall]

Great work.

 

Definitely a severe case of Weaselus Pogus, to use the Latin.

[ruffgeezer]

Live updates:

 

Back axle ready for refitting

 

With the axle fitted, work starts on the timing belt:

 

I'm having a bite to eat whilst the completely flat battery has some juice forced into it. I need to find what is causing the belt covers to rub on the cam pulleys.

[ruffgeezer]

Ok today's endeavours finished at 4pm, I'd got a long way through the to do list, most of the heavy work is done.

 

Front brakes were removed, they included some huge discs and spacers for standard saxo callipers, which after some thought I have decided to bin, for the extra weight I don't think the increase in disc size is worth it (246mm vs 283).

 

Action shot:

 

Cambelt covers and belt removed to search for the whining noise:

 

I couldn't find any evidence of the belt or pulleys chaffing the inner cover, so I took the outer covers to the cleaning tank and discovered this to be the cause:

 

Clearly the alternator belt has been om nom nomming the belt cover, so I'll have to be careful refitting it!

 

Finally the thumbnail is too small for me to make out what this is, but I was doing some work and this picture was involved somewhere along the way:

 

 

 

I hope this isn't too dull for you guys?

 

 

Edit: Oh it's the bollocksd brake pads! Yes, I'll be needing a set of those too!