Time is ticking by alarmingly quickly this week as we have been busy getting the “French” car ready for the road. The engine was in last week as you know which was a very tight fit to say the least. Yogi has now wired the front end up in order to start-up from the key. The engine has had some modifications, the first being the heater matrix. As this car will be France the heater will not be needed most of the time. As the hot water flows around the matrix by default, heat in a warm country is not required. Now there is a isolator valve in place to stop the water flow or allow it to work depending on the climate of course. The valve is shown here by the arrow at the back of the engine next to the firewall.

The second is the Holley 670CFM carb that now sits on a high-rise polished intake manifold. This is different from most intakes as the airways are not mounted between the cylinder heads. This means the air can flow over the pipes fully,  this allows the air/fuel mix to atomise better before hitting the chambers. In other words, better power. What’s the point of having 400bhp engine when you don’t make the most of that potential power. It’s a little difficult to see from the pictures, but you can see the spaces below the intake. We love the “Made In USA” badge on the intake, nice touch that.

Yogi has done his thing with the pipework (no, not what bears do in woods), he bespoke made the fuel line, and the plug leads. This attention to detail makes for a clean uncluttered engine, allowing the cold airflow over the intake manifold. We are waiting for the air filter which was ordered in, due to the size and limited space clearance under the hood. The engine belts are in place now so the power steering, radiator fan and water pump now work. Due to the hot climate where the car will be kept and used, there was only one option – Evans Waterless Coolant. This pretty much guarantees that there will be no overheating. With the engine in place there was nothing left to do except the fire up. Here we have the very first fire up of the engine. Yes, it will need to have the timing set up, carb balanced and all the other little tweaks we do to make it run right. But, for the first start-up and run we were pleased. Forgive the slightly distorted sound as the car was running with open headers at this point and was a little noisy shall we say. Only a short run and video to make sure the plugs and electronic ignition fires. The Engine has had to have racing spark plugs fitted for the heat and compression.

Here we have some close ups of the carb.

With the engine running we could add the next security mod which was the battery immobiliser which runs from a remote control key fob. With all that done we added the standard decal set for the car, all of a sudden the car looks authentic.

Remote battery immobiliser in place

Of course there is one sticker that everybody wants on their car, our seal of approval.

We’re proud to put our name on it.

Next job was to get rid of the old horns that were in place and didn’t look or sound right, to fix that we added a set of our Concours Correct horns.

old left – concours right

Inside the car the there is the fire extinguisher, and the custom mounted gear lever knob which we had to modify to fit the shifter.

We had Paul “The Paint” turn up on Saturday to give the car a final once over to make sure the paint was spot on, tiny blemishes or imperfections were sorted out in no time at all and a quick mop over of the car was done.

There are a few more things to do on the car before the road test, the prop shaft has been sent away for our custom sizing, the exhausts will be fitted this week, as well as some under-body sealing. The dash needs to be put back in with a KPH speedo now as it will be in France. The convertible roof will be replaced with a new white one, the body decals can be applied now as the car has had a quick polish. With all that done we will put some miles on the clock and  make sure we are happy. There will be a few tweaks after she has settled down as we expect. But, we are on schedule to have her ready for the rally in a few weeks. We hope to have a few pics of her in the glorious French country side. (Hint Hint!) 🙂

Parts:

We had a car in this week which had awful vibrations, things didn’t fit correctly after and the engine was sitting at a weird angle under the hood, possible DIY fit, or somebody who doesn’t know what they are doing. The cause was an engine mount that was bought on the cheap and fitted. We seriously don’t recommend buying cheap parts for this very reason. You may save yourself a small amount at the time thinking you got a bargain. But, you end up paying mechanic bills to sort it out and have to buy the correct part again anyway – very much a false economy. From the pictures you can see the differences and understand why we say these things.

With the correct engine mount in place, things fitted correctly and the problems went away. All that aggravation to save £5.

Original As It gets:

Lastly we have here a couple of pics of a car that is so original it still has the stamp on the paint work from the factory fifty-one years ago.

Not only that, the chassis still has the factory chalk marks on it.

Something tells us that this car hasn’t been driven through a puddle, let alone seen a cleaning sponge.

Just Incredible!