Update # 6

A lot has happened since my last Blog entry, so I'll try and fit everything in as it happened.

The trip down to Harrigan's car show went without a hitch, the Bearcat trundled along the M1 motorway at an easy 100ks. Svenja came with me, and as there is no windscreen on the passenger side she got buffeted around at 100 ks, and quite wind burnt after the 130 k round trip. We did enter the judging out of curiosity, but I guess because he's not a hot rod or a hotted up old car didn't get a place. I guess no one can really figure out what he is.  

Back in mid November 2024 my son messaged me about another 'Frankenstein' car for sale about an hours drive north of us. The ad mentioned it was powered by a straight 8 Rolls Royce engine. Well that had my attention! From my early teens I fell in love with RR's, but had concerns about buying one; could I afford the costs of repairs? After the initial inspection it followed me home ;-) There will be a lot of work on this project, but that's for another Blog entry. 

  

Another 'small' project to fill in the spare time spaces is fitting a new engine and gear box to my wife's '73 VW Kombi, along with upgrading the braking system, new shocks, new gear shift linkages and some rust removal.  The engine is being upgraded from a 1700 cc to a 2lt, so the old 1700 gear box needs upgrading with the extra hp. Apparently you can use the 1700 box but it can have issues, so as I don't want to be doing this again anytime soon I opted for a gear box to suit the 2lt. I bought the 2 lt engine out of Cincinnati USA a couple of years ago, fitted with twin Webber carbs and some other goodies. Thus the braking system upgrade.

         

 

During my spare time I finally got around to installing the new ignition system parts, dizzy caps, condensers, rotors, points and leads, the plugs had been replace a while ago. The engine ran soooo much better but high lighted the popping and back firing cause by air being sucked into the exhaust system on deceleration. The system was literally full of holes from the flexi-tube used on the exhaust from the heads. I did this while the seats were at the upholsterers getting re-skinned. 

I mentioned the exhaust system was full of holes, here's what I mean.

I'm hoping to seal about 95% of the leaks, then attended to the rest from the outside. I've got another day of sealant curing time before firing up the engine and see how successful it all was.

That will be for the next blog entry.