Ok.
So for the most part, my rally car is done. Yeah, I am swapping the front suspension and doing some driveline work [built T5, yoshi clutch and flywheel] but it's passed tech, done two rallies so the heavy lifting is done.
Back in February, I got a pretty bad concussion that I am still feeling the effects of, mostly with my vision. Rallying is not the safest thing to do if lights and movement are triggering migraines. Between that and COVID pushing everything back to October/November [I'm not a health expert but I am not liking the forecast of it right now...], I have kind of abandoned plans to compete in any events this year and just want to take it easy and take care of my head.
I feel like one thing that would be good for my head would be finishing projects I have not completed. This 1800ES being one of them.
One thing I did at the start of quarantine was strip down an 850 Motronic 4.4 harness to be a standalone harness I could drop in a chassis. I got some wiring also from a 960 and added coil on plug. Karl Buchka hooked me up a while back with a shortened 960 pan, pickup and shortened water pipes. I thought this would be the ticket to go into the 1800 eventually.
About a month ago I took a long hard look at the car and thought to myself why I was not driving it right now. My plan initially was to make the body and paint flawless, as well as the interior and make it a proper show car. I thought it would only do it justice seeing as how they are increasing so much in value.
But part of me was just saying screw it, **** how it looks and just drive the damn thing again. I figured the best course of action would be to do a more tried and true engine conversion as opposed to sticking a whiteblock in it.
I noticed recently Josh at Yoshifab came up with some slant mounts for the vintage models to swap an OHC engine in. I previously had a set of Bob Foltz mounts to put a redblock straight up in this car, but I sold them. I like the idea of the slant mount much better since it allows for way more space.
Back in late 2017, I purchased a 1983 244DL w/automatic from Chris Ng. It was cheap, I needed some wheels soon to take my C30 off the road for a few minor repairs so I rented a car and drove down to LA where Chris was at the time.
After a few months, the car served it's use. I put it on non op, than proceeded to part it out and cut the body up to possibly use someday on my racecars if they ever got wadded up. Don't feel too bad - the car had rust, and as I tore it apart I actually discovered it was 2 240's welded together!!! The entire passenger side, from about a foot behind the firewall, about 2 feet in from the side all the way down to the back end of the car was part of another 240.
The engine from it, a high comp B23, sat in my driveway under a tarp the past two years. I've recently been mentoring a kid on how different systems on a car work, so I figured I would save myself from getting dirty [it's the dirtiest redblock I have ever seen] and let him tear it down, all the while explaining what does what on the engine
It's stripped down now, and with all the ports covered I have been spraying it occasionally with diesel and it's starting to actually look like a redblock again.
Back before Oregon Trail last year, I took the MSW 15x7's I had on the ES off of it. I mostly wanted to use the pristine Uniroyal Tiger Paw tires they had on my rally car to do all of the street driving required to break in the differential and sort out any other issues. With a week to go, I looked at my budget and it looked grim. So I sold the MSW's for $500. I had nothing to put on the 1800 besides some stock C30 wheels I had taken off of my DD. They looked really sad sitting on the rollers with flat tires [no valve stems]
There's a lot more to a project like this than wheels, but I got tired of looking at the C30 wheels with flat tires so I picked up some Remotecs from Mike Howells. These wheels I believe are part of Turbobricks lore, as they may have been the source of "paint the centers gold and sell for $1000"
You can see in those pics where the rust repairs have been performed. Instead of a full paint job, I am going to try and blend the paint myself. Besides painting race cars, I have no real auto body experience. The car has collected some dings and scratches from being parked in that somewhat cramped garage. I'll attack those too.
Well, now that I have an update on this I guess I will keep rolling with this finally
[Also if I change plans with the drivetrain one more time I need sense smacked into me]