1970 Ginetta G15

[Darkspeed]

Get it rolling I did - bit of a faff but the old wishbones slotted into the cross-member OK and after a bit of running about back and forth BOY is up the barn in the dry.

Super.

Now absolutely knackered. - much like the back of my mate who came to give me a hand - He's now back home downing pain killers so he can get to sleep tonight. I would owe him a good few beers except for medical reasons can't drink.

A bit more tidying up and moving parts up the barn and we will be set up for winter works.

[Darkspeed]

Itchy's G32 has always had an issue of the modified Fiesta door catching the bodywork due to the profile of the frame not quite matching the body. Door shuts and panel gaps on low production glass fibre cars are never the greatest but the annoyance on this car is that the fit is "good clearance " everywhere except upper top corner where the flex in the body chassis end up with the door chipping paint from the body. With the next stage of restoration being paint it would be annoying to get the body in paint only for the first bump in the road to remove large chunks of paint.

Today I was invited to assist in seeing what we could do with getting a more even panel gap.

Where we are starting. Drew a few lines to see how much we need to remove and where - as is ever the case with these things its either much more or much less than you think.

















Armed with the latest toy I lined up for action whilst we took bets on which direction it would all spring when the cut was completed.




The blade is about 0.75mm and went through Fords finest tinfoil like a knife through - Jelly..... The door frame was wobbling all over the place trying resist the saw teeth. Lovely cut though. The result being that we were about 0.5mm away from perfect








Being 0.5mm away from perfect some gentle work with a flap wheel provided us with a frame about as good as it was ever going to be.








We then broke out the old Faithfull Clarke 100E and dialled it in for some tacks - No pictures of the 8mm perfectly round hole it blew in the stretched to oblivion Ford tin foil on the top of that curve - you could not have drilled a more perfect hole. I threw some more tacks on leaving the hole to be filled another day.










All in all we were pretty chuffed with how it turned out from a 1.25mm slice - Itchy will now refit all the glass and window reg's to make sure its all good prior to taking all apart again and removing the door for full welding. Not yet settled if it will be completed with £000,s of TIG equip or £0's of Clarke - each will do the job adequately!

All good.

[Darkspeed]

I had hoped to get the cover off the Strato's today and see how well the new sander removes surface rust but that will have to wait for another day. This morning molebert dropped by to deliver some wooden storage boxes for up the barn and to collect the roll cage from BOY for test fitment in KBW - to see just how much work we will have bending and chopping to get the full cage fitted.

Once that was done it was next door to watch the F1 GP - not a bad race. After that is was a quick visit to my mate James for a brew. Following two mugs of Yorkshires finest the light had faded and the cold had descended - great view of the moon coming over the top of the hill at Alderton down to the turn for Sleap.

I may have to get all of the cage parts together and weigh them all - I think the fasteners alone must weigh a kilo!

[Darkspeed]

A picture of the hole that I blew in the Ford tin foil going for a tack that was more than the steel could take.






I took a few more pictures of adding in bits of weld here and there and filling up the hole above but those kind of spot fill tack welds in such small areas are just ugly. These sorts of ugly weld trying to weld corrosion in a area prior cut and shut in a window slider channel.




Now grind that down....


It took three visits in all to get the job completed - More fine grinding in hard to reach places with carbides and rolls - PITA - Removing as much corrosion as we could tack-welding in slivers of steel 25mm x 5mm to deal with those sorts of tiny little break out corrosion blisters you find around door seals and trim. Building up edges that just have rusted away by a couple of mm.





Now ready for its cosmetic work.


No work on anything else as storms Arwen - Barra have really stalled things. Still a a load garden work to do and a neighbours tree to get removed from off my shed... I was hoping that today would be a decent day to get a few things done but overnight man-flu appears to have developed so it will be Lemsip and the GP for me.

[Darkspeed]

The G32 got a bit of paint thrown over the welded parts and the windows assembled to check operation. - All good.











The Ginetta G21M has been sold so I need to assemble all of the parts up with the car at the barn ready for collection by the new owner. That will involve quite a bit of shed searching to find it all.

Lots to do over the holidays

[Darkspeed]

G21(M) gets collected by its new owner tomorrow morning - bittersweet for the seller who does not get to see his vision realised - but not being able to get in and out of low cars does not leave much in the way of options - And the G21 is low and he lowered the seat in the chassis by an extra 2" for increased head room. New owner leapt at the chance to get hold of a G21 for a retirement project so its going from one barn straight into another.

For me it's out of the barn and away and although it was a paying project it frees up more of my time to spend on the two extra G15 projects that have recently arrived and maybe even to get going on the Strato's that desperately needs to get progressed.

So what of BOY in the last 12 months - not a huge amount as the content covering the car in this thread over the past 12 months testifies. It is however up the barn under cover so it does provide more opportunity to go and work on it as it's permanently in the dry now.


This week has been mainly listening to Sublime - another sad tale of talent lost.



And a load of 50's Doo Wop ! which was led to by me remembering a picture disc that I had from Street Machine when picture discs were a thing.

There was a full set of them but I only recall this one

Which had the Earls - Remember Then



Not much to do but relax kicking back listening to music waiting for it to be less - wet and damp

[norfolkginetta]

Great photo of Revenge, must have been taken by one of the magazines at the time, as it’s fitted with a 5th wheel on the back, which was part of the kit for measuring vehicle performance

[norfolkginetta]

Being the new owner of the G21(M), it’s now in deepest Norfolk, awaiting restoration. The previous owner had a great vision with this car and I plan to continue develop it and get it finished, but it may take a while. I’m still trying to recommission my G15, as well as other projects
Regards,
Andy

[Darkspeed]

Jan 5, 2022 11:16:21 GMT norfolkginetta said:

Being the new owner of the G21(M), it’s now in deepest Norfolk, awaiting restoration. The previous owner had a great vision with this car and I plan to continue develop it and get it finished, but it may take a while. I’m still trying to recommission my G15, as well as other projects.

Good to see you got back with it all safely - You mentioning your G15 has reminded me about water pumps.....

[Darkspeed]

G15's - My old mate with #13 sent me a drawing before Xmas of a couple of parts he wanted so today I got on with them - There was no urgent need before Xmas and there should be no requirement for them for a couple of months whilst he recovers from a heart valve operation and a few other tasks on his ticker that required the use of connecting tubes raided from other parts of his hydraulics.

Done for when he needs them

[Darkspeed]

Something to test the bass and try and bring on the summer early - Yep still in Sublime mode - Rocking all day long to this groove with two dogs and two budgies. Helps me make it through the day. Budgies sing along, one dog is deaf and the other just buries its head under the deaf one.



Projects.

This weekend me and the welder will be visiting molebert to drop a few more crush tube sleeves into KBW's chassis. At the end of the day he will be fully conversant with the Sublime playlist and how badly I sing. Lucky for him he its my welding ability that he needs not my ability to carry a tune.

Better try and find some 1/2" tube in the stock pile.

[molebert]

I'll have the heater running first thing, though we'll lose some heat getting the welder in.

I'll hook up the laptop to the stereo and go searching on YouTube -anything to help! :-)

[Darkspeed]

What was going to be a quick hour or so putting the sleeves in the chassis turned into a 7 hours - And listening to full Sublime catalogue at least 4 times, mainly because I left the stick with Rancid and the Transplants in the car. molebert noting that the lyrics are not quite mainstream radio friendly.

Sleeves

















And as this was done before chill of the garage had reduced the first brew of the day to tepid, rather than just packing up and heading back home, there was still a fair bit of time before lunch let alone the day ending, it was decided to crack on and build the rear roll hoop.

Measuring and comparing and the like being done








After some manual work profiling tubes and similar stuff it was welded up.











Left molebert with the task of making a diagonal that I shall return and weld up on Pizza Wednesday - Which by a strange stroke of coincidence will take place this Wednesday.

He seemed quite happy with the progress.


I also had a chance to look at the body and its all looking very nice indeed.

[Darkspeed]

Here is a guy that loves his G15 - very popular in Japan.

This just tickled me - He's just picked up a takeaway

[molebert]

In my head every trip in the G15 sounds like that speeded up video! :-)

"Left Molebert with the task of making a diagonal that I shall return and weld up on Pizza Wednesday - Which by a strange stroke of coincidence will take place this Wednesday.

He seemed quite happy with the progress."

Happy? how about Ecstatic!

A master class in fabrication. :-)

[molebert]

While I’m sure the future is for PVC and Card composite roll bars we’re not quite there yet!






I always knew you were good Darkspeed, but stone the crows it's chuffing hard making up those cross pieces , never having done it before.

That puts the G27 chassis in to a whole different perspective

More admiration!🤩




May decide to go for just the one diagonal, but we'll see, and if it's anything like Sunday you'll have it welded before I've made the second pot of Tea (first on arrival - obvs!)

[Darkspeed]

Did a bit of final fettling and tacked it all up.








Shortly after that I fully welded it all and then went and ate Pizza.

molebert seems pretty pleased with the outcome - Just needs to clean it thoroughly and get some paint on it. The rest of the work - which there is still a considerable amount - to fit the extra feet, the front cage and the door bars all get done once the body and chassis are back together.

[Darkspeed]

Jan 26, 2022 8:01:47 GMT molebert said:

That puts the G27 chassis in to a whole different perspective

There are some interesting tube junctions on that chassis.....





However I will say that working with 1" dia x 16SWG is easier than 1 1/2" dia 12SWG

[Darkspeed]

Not much to report on G15 wise - just slowly moving stuff up the barn in order to free up space elsewhere.





Everything has dried out nicely and we took a little time to have a look at the 2 chassis - The original chassis for NHK has most of the rear engine cradle rotted off.....







..... but the main platform is probably slightly better than KBW - The "spare" chassis is only useful as a reference as although it looked okay from the top - once flipped to check the underside the rot was extensive.

Next time up the Barn the Sawzall and a sander will be packed and some initial cuts will be made and the steel cleaned and checked to see how much metal thickness has been lost. May even lose the rear upright/diagonals to see if any rot has made it into the top of the main rails.

Also going to knock up an engine test stand to run up a spare unseized engine - try and get it running to give the rings a bit of a rattle and see what the compression is like.

The Racer chassis also need to be dragged out to have a good close look at it.

There are some parts missing





But also parts that appear to be quite reasonable





I expect that as with the chassis on NHK the entire rear cradle will be replaced.

[logicaluk]

That chassis looks a lot like my Bond bulkhead.