Mister Towed's Tai Chi build

[Mister Towed]

Ok, so it's about time I started a build thread of my very own.

The story so far is that I bought a Vitesse 2 litre mk1 way back in April and started stripping it immediately. I sold off most of the excess bits on ebay, making back all but 98 quid of what I originally paid for the whole car.

The bonnet alone went for over 300 pounds and I'm left with a reconditioned unleaded straight six attached to a non overdrive gearbox (less trouble in the long run) exhausted through a stainless steel system all bolted to a chassis that's rather more corroded than I'd hoped it would be.

I picked up my Sammio body on July 13th 2011, making it somewhere around number 50, collecting it on the same day as a chap who loaded a twin head fairing body onto the back of a pickup truck (and I'd be interested to know the exact number if you're reading this Gary...)

Work and family commitments over the rest of the summer meant that I made no real headway but I've been busy hoarding away shiny new bits to attach at vast expense and planning what I want the finished jobby to be like.

One of the most adventureous modifications is that it's going to have a self built water/methanol injection system. This isn't intended to increase power as such, it's just to allow the distributor advance to be set where it was originally intended to be with the 5 star fuel the Vitesse engine was designed to run on, but using 93 ron unleaded pee pee fuel. Hopefully this should restore its full 95bhp with no detonation.

I'm also hoping to sqeeze some luggage space in somewhere as I'd really like to take it touring across Europe one day.

I'm adding a servo to the brake system, mainly to ensure consistency of pedal feel between the spyder and my (modern) daily drivers: a Saab for personal use and a Mondeo estate at work. I tried a Lotus Elise on a track day earlier this month and had a massive omg moment when I got to the first hairpin bend at over 100mph and rediscovered how hard you have to hit the pedal on unservoed brakes to get any retardation at all.

I'm aiming to do just about everything myself: sand blasting; welding; spraying, even though I've never done most of them before.

I have to admit I'm not completely clueless, however, as I undertook a fast-track engineering apprenticeship in the military when I was sixteen and served as an armament engineer for 23 years. I've also previously restored and heavily modified a vw beetle including converting it from a semi-auto to a manual gearbox while keeping the double jointed rear suspension setup, which was quite a task. In my current job I don't get my hands oily at all which is one of the reasons for wanting a project like this to keep my hand in so to speak.

I have a few trick ideas up my sleeve that will make my car unique, which is part of the joy of Sammio ownership of course. As a teaser I'll say that I've always found a tunnel mounted handbrake rather awkward to use in a low sports car so mine will be relocated somewhere else...

I spent today assembling my multi-purpose blasting/spraying/wedding receptioning garage extension so I can start sand blasting bits tomorrow:



The front bulkhead in the background should give you an idea of the scale of the thing which is huge but didn't cost an awful lot (ebay again). The idea is to keep the garage relatively free of dust during the blasting process, and to make it easier to produce a relatively sterile booth for spraying in.

First job in the morning is going to be to sand blast my ebay mgb wires. Here's some 'before' shots:





I'll upload some 'after' shots once they're nice 'n' shiny (I hope!)

I'll also be degreasing the engine prior to replacing the leaky sump gasket, sealing the new one in with hylomar to stop the damned thing piddling oil all over my garage floor. It's currently out of the chassis courtesy of the one tonne hoist bought new off ebay for 28 quid delivered!



I've absolutely settled on the colour choice, which is going to be... It's going to be, erm. Bugger.

I've always loved silver, black or bright red on sports cars but if anyone can give me the paint code for either the dark red Lancia D24 on the Google images or the Aston Zagato spyder in the pic's on 'the next sammio' thread then I'll possibly make a decision...



Yes, that one, that's the colour. Or should that be colore?

Anyway, time to click the 'submit new thread' button before this entry gets longer than war 'n' peace.