Father & Son "Phantom 38" project

[mr]

after seeing a home built rat rod in Rochester a couple of years ago my son started pushing for us to have one.
answer was no from the wife but in the end I said id let the mk2 Granada go to make space and raise the money. she gave in and we sat donw and looked at ways of getting something that wouldn't cost a lot and that was simple enough for us to do together.
firstly we looked at the choices of chassis's that we could use and also what size car we could try to use as a base as we only had a small amount of room next to the garage.
after a good amount of adding up cost and working out how big the car could be we settled on a triumph vitesse chassis. we haggled the seller down to a sensible price seeing as it wasn't ever going to be towable home with 6 wheel nuts holding all the wheels on and the tyres wereabout 100 years past their use by date and had cracks in. the discs were shot and.............................basicly it was all curse word but the guy was nice and a deal was made. a friend of a friend collected the "tesse" up and also some assorted parts from the kit car that was originally on the chassis.
the car itself will be my sons car when finished and he is going to be working alongside me all the way through.

[mr]

the front end suspension was found to be wrong ( I joined forums a triumph forum for advice). turned out it just unbolts and you swap it to the opposite side? handy that
we got new discs and calipers and started taking it all apart

[mr]

[mr]

managed to clean things up quite nicely.............
a guy on a triumph forum said he had an engine and box we could have................wasn't the bargain we expexted though sadly.bit gutted as I gave the guy £50 as a thankyou

[mr]

turned out after a quick inspection that it had a bent push rod..............

[mr]

un deterred we carried on..................... hubs and discs sorted all be it with a little modding

[mr]

while the engine was at my work,we carried on in the garden

[mr]

at work the engine look over was going from bad to terrible.........................

[mr]

while away I was trawling through the classifieds here and bought these.
turned out they didn't fit ...........well they did but mods were needed. we love these wide steels.
the fronts needed 5 mm spacers which I bagged at a boot fair for £1 but I need 8 longer wheel studs.
the rears are 7" wide and the rear fouled on the rear radius arms. pair of 1" spacers sorted that out though
we have some retro ride classified bargain red wall tyre slips too


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[mr]

decided to carry the engine across the workshop. a test lift while stil on the stand and I decide that "I got this"....................6 feet later and I realised that I maybe over estimated my strength and had to lower it to the floor while also scoring a nice scrap down from my chest to my stomach. eventually got it on the bench for a look inside.
wish I hadn't to be honest

[mr]

[mr]

engine turned out to be like a tube of pringles.....it just didn't stop
new bearings slipped in, block cleaned and yayyyyy........turned out we had a bust spring too

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[mr]

decide we going to go for a truck ..................rover doors acquired but they turned out to be ally so were going to be an issue for me
the old kit car frame was cut about to see what looked right where





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[mr]

while we were meddling at home I started reaasmbling the "rumph". we needed a new engine now as I had had to sell off the inlet,carbs etc to finance the new rings and bearings plus the ness gaskets. basicly we were cutting off our feet to pay for shoes................all our future money now sat in the engine and kit car panels so things came to a halt

[mr]

we started dropping into boot fairs to buy in and sell on stuff to raise cash.we also ended up with usefull stuff too.

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winter was coming in fast so I decided to drag all my "stuff" in from my stash zones and make a lean to so the car would be sheltered throughout the cold month................then things took off.
being a fan of American diners I thought we should see if we can build something similar so when the car was done he would have a cool space in the garden for my son and his mates to hang out in

[mr]

screws, wood left over from packing,random metal pieces etc were all "joined" to make a framework

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the timing worked out great as a call to a good friend Mark "the no fear king" saw us with a bodyshell.
it needed a ton of work and then some but after half an hour with an angle grinder and a hammer later and it sat on our chassis.