Part 1 Teardown | EJNProjects

The Restoration

The restoration began with collecting the car from a mechanics workshop, who disassembled the vehicle before informing me that they had to close the business, this involved transporting the car, engine and all of the cars parts, which were strewn everywhere.

After the car had been transported to its new home, the tear-down could begin, this involved stripping the vehicle apart in order to repair, replace and restore components and get them into a condition good enough for the car to be put back on the road, occasionally raced and taken to the odd car show. The engine was the first subject to be attended to, and was taken apart to be given to a machine shop. Cornwall Engine Company were selected to carry out this work, due to their excellent track record in quality service. The specification for this work was as follows:

Bore out cylinders and replace with hardened liners, to retain stock bore size of 81mm
Install Audi S2 ABY forged pistons with new rings
Resurface cylinder head and install new valve seats
Replace all engine shell bearings with new parts
Reassemble engine with metal layer head gasket and new hardware
Resurface flywheel

While the engine was at the machine shop, I set about stripping more components from the vehicle and began with the subframe and front suspension. As the car was quite old and had also been sat for quite a long time, a lot of the parts were very rusty, I planned to refurbish anything I could and replace parts that were too far gone.

As I wanted the components to last for as long as possible, I required a process which would result in a robust finish, it was for this reason I chose to use powedercoating, and enlisted Blast Clean and Coatings in Cornwall to carry this out for me. When the parts returned there was a clear difference...

Before

After

I proceeded to strip apart more components from the engine bay including the brake master cylinder and servo, this would enable me to clean the bare engine compartment properly, I also refinished the gearbox and engine mountings.

With these parts all refinished I carried on with disassembly and stripped down the front brakes, rear brakes, dust shields, suspension and beam axle. As with the front suspension rust and corrosion was present which had to be completely removed before refinishing the parts.

The next stage involved stripping down the CV axles and getting the shafts ready for new CV joints and boots to be installed, the high pressure fuel pump was also removed form the vehicle and taken apart to be refinished.

All of the brake lines were then removed from the vehicle to allow for a more thorough cleaning and to make way for them to be replaced with brand new brake lines, the old brake lines were used as a guide to make new ones. The exhaust was also removed from the car.

With the engine bay almost fully disassembled the engine wiring harnesses could be removed, these had to be re wrapped as the existing covering had deteriorated and was falling away. All the connectors on the wiring harness were labelled to make re installation easier.

I made more progress by refinishing the intake manifold and camshaft cover, these were the most visible parts on the engine when the bonnet was open so I wanted them to be done to a high standard, I began by repainting the lettering on the top of the inlet manifold, then mirror polishing it, I then primed and painted the cam cover.

The theme of painting continued with removing all of the corrosion from the brake calipers and painting them to match the cam cover in yellow, the Powerflow rear silencer was also cleaned and polished and exhaust heat shields cleaned.

More refinishing of parts then took place, with items such as the warm up regulator, shift cables, fuel distributor and power steering rack getting prepped then having a fresh coat of high temperature and chemical resistant paint, this was important as many of these components would potentially be exposed to petrol.

I was now at the stage where all of the major parts of the vehicle had been restored, refinished or replaced. I decided to give the underside of the vehicle an intensive clean with a steam cleaner as the cars body was in very good condition with no presence of rust, I also wanted to keep the cars original paint, and since it was intact I chose to keep it that way. I also steam cleaner the gearbox while I was at it. The engine compartment was also given a clean and the before and after results speak for themselves. The long process of reassembly could now begin.