1970 Ginetta G15

[Darkspeed]

As I am going to have a look at yet another G15 just shortly I did a bit of digging into its history - The Ginetta Owners Club has all of the factory records and the club registrar keeps logs on the cars history when details are provided. This particular car originally left the factory in Burgundy paint with an 875CC sport engine.



Along the way it changed to bright Red, was fitted a Greetham 998 and rolled on some White and polished four spoke Revolutions - The car seems to falloff the radar in 1996 - probably due to the chassis rotting out and we think that from there it became a project.

Been doing some weighing of parts as well as sorting out.

Parts for KBW: Rack, Rack mounts - the ones fitted are "factory" ones, I will try and get a photo's of them - they are woeful - and the back plates.





These are standard and heavy duty Imp drive shafts - 7/8" and 1" respectively as we have had some made based on Lotus Elan drive shafts we thought we would weigh up all the options.



Standard 7/8 Shaft - 3.0 Kg - shaft UJ spider and axle bare
Heavy duty 1" Shaft - 3.4 Kg - shaft UJ spider and axle bare

You can also just make out in this picture a twist in the drive shaft



And here with the yokes all flat the angle difference due to the twist



These are the Elan type Tubular shafts - cannot see these bad boys being twisted.




And as is the way of things - with the probable purchase of this just another G15 - an ebay search alert that normally only pulls up magazines for sale with articles for this vehicle, only pulls up an actual vehicle for sale! Hmmmmmm just when the fleet was looking manageable.

[Darkspeed]

Forgot to say - As well as the info on the car the Club Registrar sent me another email with a note - Hi, Forgot to mention that I have the original steel petrol tank from that car in my garage if you want it LOL - The Ginetta world is an un-remarkably small one.

Still too warm to do any glass work but I did sort out a couple more moulds to do some lay up practice with.

This is a side vent moulding that fits into the O/S rear side window to provide a cold and clean air feed to the carbs - not been used for a very very long time. The series 1 cars with the small windows only lasted for a 100 or so chassis before the bigger windows were introduce - Early on I would think that a few owners that were active in competition may have found a use for one of these but with so few cars at the time and them being a rare sight these days its easy to see how it would fall out of use if it ever was used.

[Darkspeed]

Well shock horror I have bought another G15 so this may end up being a multi G15 restoration thread - I will be collecting it in a couple of weeks. So we will see 3 off G15's here for some time - discussions about its future were had on the 5 hour + trip back after looking at it - only took 4 and half hours to get there!


I eventually made an attempt at the bumpers still too hot really and it did not give me enough time to wick out any excess resin as I would have liked but it was enough just get them consolidated before the resin started to gel.

Popped out of the mould easy enough and they will do - just over 300gms each untrimmed so will lose a bit of that and these are gel 300/600 lay-ups

[Darkspeed]

There will be yet another thread along soon ! - Contrary to all my better judgement I have done something I would never normally do and I have made a purchase of a car sight unseen on the evil bay.... So, Tuesday I transfer the funds to pay for the '73 G15 and Friday I throw in a late bid and win project "G" - not paid or collected it yet - Will try and organise that for later this week.

As mentioned previously I have been looking for one of these particular cars for quite a while and as fate has it one turns up at the same time as the G15 project.

At last I think I may have something to fit these onto.



And I was only looking into a huge box of old gauges and clocks thinking what the hell am I going to do with all these? Well I think I have found a suitable recipient, fingers crossed with not getting messed about.

[Darkspeed]

Working with the glassfibre and the smell of Styrene made me think of one of the bands from my yoof.

Some work music please maestro....



And another with a hint of PPE



And an all time fave - appropriate for a bit megasquirt tuning.



Better sign off with something with a bit of RR content

[greencarfritz]

Low Rider is the song that I always play over the vessel comm's system when we've finished the last dive of the project and will soon be sailing for port.

[darrenh]

that top left paint looks like land rover marine blue

[Darkspeed]

Anything Ginetta did was generally led by how cheaply they could get hold of it. Hence why most of the cars are held together with roofing bolts! But even with this constant eye on the purse strings a few of the models did end up far greater than the sum of their parts. Others not so much, but they all form a blank canvas for engineering improvement should the mood take.

[Darkspeed]

Sneak preview

[greencarfritz]

Excellent, there's a guy who owns the Turks Head pub in Penzance that Hillclimbs one of these down our way. A lovely thing.

[Deleted]

Jul 25, 2018 23:15:07 GMT Darkspeed said:

Sneak preview

And I thought that I was bad at accumulating projects and this pic is by no means all of them - these are just the ones that the wife knows about

[greencarfritz]

Classic car guy situation!

[Darkspeed]

Jul 26, 2018 6:48:18 GMT @grumpynorthener said:

And I thought that I was bad at accumulating projects and this pic is by no means all of them - these are just the ones that the wife knows about

I was doing so well at culling the collection - I was down to just three projects - now in the space of a few weeks I am back up to five with an increasingly empty war chest....

[Darkspeed]

That was rather a long day 425 mile round trip - left at about 8:00 and back just before 21:00 - Bloody glad my co-pilot was along for the day again otherwise it would have seemed even longer than it actually was.

There was quite a lot to cram in the old truck as the car was pretty well stripped.



And this pile was before we had dropped stuff down from other storage spaces



Engine one was in a couple of bits - a decent enough standard sport lump



Engine two needed a little more care how we treated it as its a freshly built 998



Starting to get it loaded. By the time we had finished it was rammed top to bottom with stuff and the back seat was taken up with engine cover and screens.



The weekend will be sorting through it all and attempting to reduce the sizes of boxes required to keep it in.

[Darkspeed]

Oh nearly forgot -

[peteh1969]

But you put the fuel in the wrong vehicle

[Darkspeed]

Aug 1, 2018 22:16:46 GMT peteh1969 said:

But you put the fuel in the wrong vehicle

Best I could do Guv'

[Darkspeed]

1:1 Scale resin G15 kit ! - I really should try and finish a smaller scale one first.

[Darkspeed]

Sorting through all of the parts to see whats what

A selection of Janspeed small bore manifolds and differing silencers.
The brand new one will be set aside for use on SLiC whilst the best parts of the other two will be combined to replace the bashed one on KBW - That will leave us with two less than perfect spare Janspeed small bores to fettle.



KBW's owner is a fan of Revo's so this 3/4 set will be heading that way and know doubt he will be on the lookout for a 1/4 set to combined with these. I do have a 1/2 set of wider Revo's up the barn but think they will be just a little too wide for the back end but it will be worth checking as there is a little more clearance to be had at the back of a G15



The owner of #13 came up on Thursday and collected the engine cover and the bonnet from SLiC so that he can complete his car body wise and have it painted.

[Darkspeed]

I dropped a mail to Jim the guy I bought SLiC off as after going thorugh all the boxes making an inventory I noted the gearshift and rod and the lower steering column were missing - After haveing a good look round his place he has found them and another two boxes of odds and ends which will be making their way over.

One of the jobs over the weekend will be to make up an engine stand box for the old 875 and roughly assemble it to keep all the parts in one place. I may make a steel one rather than the usual plywood.