1972 Granada Mk1 coupe build - Still going... 14-10-2024

[eurogranada]

So, quite some time has passed, but during the last two weeks of any year most of the time not much happens due to the holidays etc. Still I have not been sitting idle. Though most work was done to the house for our ongoing remodel, I also managed to....

...PUT THE CAR BACK ON ITS WHEELS!!

That is again quite a milestone as it's been at least 3,5 years since it was last seen like that!

I can waste a lot of words, but I'll just say that it was a joy and with a bridge and some huge stands a relatively painfree proces to put the suspension setups back on the car.

With the good comes the bad though... The diff is leaking very slightly through one of the bearing cap bolt threads... That is a bummer as probably there is no way to fix this on the car. The fill plug is so badly stuck in that I can only fill the diff by resting it upright. And I also don't want to damage the powdercoating. But that means the diff has to come out for a simple fix. I guess I didn't use enough locktite.

After this step I will either start modifying the bulkhead and wiper motor or just painting the engine bay, inside cabin and trunk area. Then put on the doors and weld on the window channels. All of these have to be done before the car can be prepped for paint.

Some pictures:



























Tonight I'll mount the steering link so the wheel will turn the weels and theoretically the car can be moved from the bridge it's called home for one and a quarter year!

[grifterkid]

That is a glorious sight to behold, just glorious...!!!!!!!!

[Oldbus]

Nice one mate.

Now get that painter of yours busy so that we can see your pride and joy back on the road this summer

[eurogranada]

Jan 6, 2014 16:04:08 GMT grifterkid said:

That is a glorious sight to behold, just glorious...!!!!!!!!

Thank you for this very enthusiastic response! To me personally the contrast between floor and mechanicals is spot on for what I was going for!

[eurogranada]

Jan 6, 2014 16:17:51 GMT Oldbus said:

Nice one mate.

Now get that painter of yours busy so that we can see your pride and joy back on the road this summer

The goal is to have it in paint end of march or end of may, depending on who will actually do the prep and paint. There's a small issue there... reason being the fact that the painter at "my" body shop has decided to move on to another (non car related) challenge and a new one hasn't been found and will also have to prove himself worthy of painting my car. So I may have to switch to plan B on that...

But even when in paint, there will still be a lot to do... Get the engine in and running, sizing up a driveshaft, finishing the brakes (require some modification) and then building it up in general with the sunroof being a real pain etc.

But I'm optimistic. Although time has a habit of going by so fast!!

[dansktaff]

Congrats, a true milestone reached

[eurogranada]

Again a week has passed (boy does time fly)... It wasn't my personal best week to be honest. I'm getting a bit tired or more accurately exhausted from the past couple of months. Caring for wife and kids, remodeling , extremely busy work schedule and then also working on the Granada seems to have taken it's toll on me a bit.

I already went on my a$$ very hard on the ice skating track with the kids a couple weeks ago, but this weekend was especially disastrous. I nearly killed (it escaped as by a miracle) our new tv when I dropped a 180x235cm sliding door I was building on it. Then I had an accident with PUR foam that covered my hands in the stuff (still not all scrubbed off) and to add insult to injury (or in this case more the other way around) I also fell from my bed while stepping off it after mounting a wall panel above it. Falling again on my still very and now even more sore a$$! While simultaneously pounding a drilbit head down into my new floor.... There's now a nicely defined philips head mark in my floor... damned!

Still this hasn't stopped me from also getting something done to the Granada.

After more then or just about a year, the car has left it's position on the 4 post lift. To get there, I mounted the steering arm to the steering column and steering rack. Then made space to get the car off the lift. This went without a hitch and conterary to the plan of just cleaning up the corner of the shop I had been fouling for a year, which was done by the "hired hand", I was asked to mount some bolt on panels back onto the car. This to make sure we would be getting the doors hung right before we were going to weld on the window surrounds. The panels have not yet been lined up very well, but a reasonable startingpoint was set.

I'm goint to clean the inside of the car and engine bay and get that painted and stuffed with sound deadening. At the same time I'm going to fix the left front wing's mounting edge (it is a replacement to the car and an original ford piece, but it was apparently very crudely removed and suffers a small rust spot. Then I'll fine tune the doors and wings with regards to panel gaps. I hope all welding and interior painting will be done when february comes.

As it stands now...

[eurogranada]

So, another week has passed and for a change, I didn't get to visit the car at all! Too much work at work and at home, coupled with an off day where I didn't really feel up to it all.

But, yesterday I dragged myself down there. As always after a high, comes a little low. I felt I had no direction and didn't really know where to start. Fortunately, my friend had a pretty good idea about that...

So he basically set a target of getting the boot area, inner cab area and under hood (non bodyschutz) area painted next monday. Quite a challenge as it meant scotching the entire inside of the car, cleaning/vacuuming it all out, creating acces by removing the freshly hung doors and wings and seem sealing the internal areas that heed it.

So I set off taking the bolt on panels off again and scotching the inside areas. I would have liked to vacuum out the dust etc. but the hose was MIA. So that will have to wait until friday.

As I couldn't start sealing until the car is clean inside, I choose to investigate the rust issues on my left wing. It's a good one, but it has it's issues. First off, it has a bit of rust in the bottom corner in both the inner framing as well as the outer skin. To get to that properly I opened up the folded skin edge and what greated me there was worrysome. It was full of rust, the bottom edge was seriously powdery the rest was simple surface rust, bút knowing the granada and it's love to rust through right on those edges I decided that opening up the edge over it's full length is a must. I also decided to take out the full framing so I can reblast these edges and reprime before putting it all back together. Thankfully the other wing is a lot better, but still might just get at least the same treatment for the folded edge just to be sure. Ah, more work... yey!

Friday I hope to have a full day on the car, starting with the clean out, then sealing some seems and then fitting sound deadening in the trunk area. Should be ready for it's paint at the end of the day.

[eternaloptimist]

How are things progressing?

[eurogranada]

Thanks for asking, I am lagging behind a bit on the updates so I'll fix that right now. I've just uploaded the new images anyway.

I left you with a car that was looking a lot like a car again. Well, this update mostly looks like a step back before moving forward somewhat.

The idea was to paint the inside of the engine compartment and the interior spaces like cabin and boot area. So off came the bootlid, off came the wings and doors and bonnet... So I was where I was a week earlier and thinking to myself why my body man had at that time insisted I put them parts on. I guess the thought was that it would allow us to finish the door frames, but time overtook us and changed the plans.

With the car back to a rolling shell with no bolt ons, I started sanding the interior and seem sealing the welds. With that done I sprayed several of those more delicate areas with a coat of bodyschutz before a chemical resistant paint was applied in semi gloss black. Then I taped it up as best I could ready for the paint booth.

The car was them painted black. It felt good to see the interior in a nice black again. It also felt good that the primer now had a decent coat of quality sealant and paint over it. Less chance of rust in the future. I made the choice to paint before sticking on the bitumen based sound deadening mostly for the reason just mentioned. The floor area and roof area will be covered up with carpet and headlining anyway so I didn't have to do it for visibility reasons.

So, much of this shiny paint will be covered with bitumen matting, then some underflooring and then carpeting.

While this was going on I knew I had to focus on fixing the one wing with a rust issue. I thought that would be easy, and the repair itself is, but it brought to light that the folded panel edges were starting to show orange through the primer. Because of how paint lays down on surfaces, those edges are always slightly less covered anyway. So I decided to bite the bullit and just hammer and fold the edges open in order to remove the inner frame. I'm glad I did, cause this original 1973 ford panel was definitely showing signs of rust which would have eaten through in less then a year or maybe two. Rust in that edge was the cause of the small outer skin repair I had identified to start with.

So, with the edges open, I'm hoping to have the edges of both frame and skin reblasted this weekend so the can be primed monday. That would put me on schedual to put the fenders back together friday next week. They will then be bodyschutzed on the insides before being mounted/aligned on the car.

I'm sort of working towards getting the car to the paint prep person in less then a month so hopefully in may it will be painted!

Some pictures:
































That's it for now!

Up next, fixing and fitting the wings and other bolt on items.

[georgeb]

Good call on the wings. Nice to see it coming together after all the trials.

Did I miss something or do we still have the, "Where do we put the air-con" debate to go?

[grifterkid]

It's all looking good sir... The day this is all ready is going to be a good day for all!!!

[eurogranada]

Feb 13, 2014 11:35:38 GMT georgeb said:

Good call on the wings. Nice to see it coming together after all the trials.

Did I miss something or do we still have the, "Where do we put the air-con" debate to go?

Someone has been paying close attention!!

To be honest, I have sort of postponed that discussion with myself. I still want to do it, but it ain't an easy fix. I have to move the wiper motor which is not easy in itself although I think I know how to do that. Then there is the considerable hole to be cut in an otherwise very solid bulkhead. Then there is the issue of getting both internal air and external airstreams to the unit. Last but not least I need to have custom lines made up.

I THINK I have a solution for three of the four issues mentioned. But the thing that keeps me in doubt about actually doing it is getting lines made up. As the unit will be facing the wrong way, the connectors are inside the dash area and I will need to get U shaped connectors made to flexible hoses with again a fixed end connector. There is not much DIY aircon stuff to make one's own lines available. At least I haven't found it yet. The one solution I found, was a 700 euro solution as you had to buy a kit of different hoses, connectors and crimping tools. I'm not going in the aircon business, so that was a bit much.

Furthermore I have decided in order to move things along, that it was wiser to get the car prepped and painted and on the road first. Taking out the engine/subframe on the granada is not that hard and could be a very nice winter job. The advantage of this is that first of all the car has had it's shakedown runs and second that there is no guesswork involved in what will or will not fit under the hood. So placing the mechanical parts associated with the aircon should be easier.

In short, you've not missed the discussion. And I'm still open to smaller units (dash part with vaporiser/heater box), but the need to be able to cool the huge interior of the granada. Which is why I still tend to drift to using what I have as the scorpio frogeye system was very well up to the task!

[eurogranada]

Feb 13, 2014 11:38:45 GMT grifterkid said:

It's all looking good sir... The day this is all ready is going to be a good day for all!!!

well it will be for me! It'll mean I've suddenly got more time on my hands and can enjoy the car as it was meant to be.

But after paint, there still is a lot to do. Even forgetting the aircon for a while, i'll have to remake doorpanels, rear panels, a headliner, possibly even a centre console etc. But most of the bolt on parts such as lights, bumpers, trim etc I have available new or good used and is just a simple matter of mounting on the car.

I tend to think that with the car painted the steps will be:
- fitting headliner so screens and windows can be fitted
- building the doors up so the car can be locked
- building the rear
- building the front

And somewhere putting in the front subrame with engine and box... just not sure what to do first though.

[eternaloptimist]

Great update, you're making solid progress there!

[mk2fiestachris]

This car is going to be amazing when it's done keep going not far now!

[eurogranada]

Thanks for your responses and support!

I hate to say this but... I had a bit of a breakdown yesterday...went a bit nuts...

I guess it's just becoming a bit too much to do all that needs doing... My kids need me for all sorts of things, same for my wife, our house needs finishing mostly paintwork now and work is driving me insane with deadlines and building pressures. And besides that I need to keep the granada moving along cause it's being stored for free but still takes up space.

It's making me lie awake at nights now too... (mostly the work thing) and whem I'm supposed to be relaxing I'm either dead tired or my head is still racing in the background.

And then that makes me think about how much there still is to do to the house and granada.

The house, I don't even want to start a list in here, cause it is just so much. Part can be postponed but at least some things will need finishing now.

The Granada, well, I've accumulated many new parts to simply fit on the car. Just a polish or a protective spray here and there. But the engine loom needs to be stripped of fuseboxes and sized up for the granada, the engine needs to be cleande and tested, then there are headliner, doorpanels, rear panels and rear seat bolsters to be made... Even if the car is painted in May, I don't know how I'm ever going to get it all done.

pffff, just needed to vent a little. Why can't life be just a little less hard, less demanding... It's frustrating to see others fly through with never a problem (be it health or financial or anything) and always struggling with something or other yourself.

Ok rant done...

[dansktaff]

Stick with it, the work so far is first rate and I have enjoyed your updates. Perhaps a bit of singing from the classic Monty Python film would help sooth things !

[Oldbus]

.....walk away from it for a couple of weeks until things settle down mate.

Take care of the family and once you find time to get the house sorted, ignore it and get down the workshop....

works for me every time

[eurogranada]

Feb 14, 2014 16:54:42 GMT Oldbus said:

.....walk away from it for a couple of weeks until things settle down mate.

Take care of the family and once you find time to get the house sorted, ignore it and get down the workshop....

works for me every time

If there weren't at least two big problems with that option I sure would...

I can't not show up at the workshop as the owner is kind enough to have me work there for free and I do take up valuable space. The other is that at least for 6 months I don't see work slowing down really...

I'll just have to suck it up and plod on...