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Goat's 1976 Suzuki Fronte 360 Coupe


Goat

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Gidday all, This is my first time posting on any type of forum. Ive been visiting the oldschool forums for the last couple of months and i must say, there are some pretty awesome rides on here.

This is my baby:
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360cc of ground ripping power. Putting out a massive 37bhp at 6500rpm. Happily revs to 11k +. Driving one is like driving a chainsaw/sewing machine. It hums, really screams when you give it nuts. but doesnt feel like anything else iv ever driven. And when you stop at the lights that lovely sweet 2-stroke smell wofts past the window. Last year i used to roll round welly in a multi coloured 4door version until it started running rough. I ripped the head off to find the crown falling off one of the pistons. And i didnt have any spare pistons so that has gone into storage. I bought this coupe with another 2 coupes from whangerei. Shipped them all the way down to welly. This was the best one, but was pretty shit. There isn't one straight panel on it, it had no brakes and had some pretty nasty rust in the floor. Got the rust in the floor done and was gonna get a wof but the people at ABC in welly "couldnt find seals for the master cyl" It just lay in the carport for a few months. I decided to do a bare metal in december:
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Theyre an absoloute joy to work on. So simple took 2 days to completly strip it:
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The lovely litle tripple 2-stroke. This is the sports coupe so it has tripple 22mm carbs. My 4 door fronte only had 1 22mm carb. The whole unit. Engine gearbox and exhaust system, all held in with 6 bolts:
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Someone had undersealed the "boot" in the front. I scraped this off to find some chronic rust:
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Once the shell was stripped it was off to the sand blaster. They said bring it in and we'll give you a quote.
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Took the car in and they wanted 1200 bux not including the doors, guards, bonnet or boot. Fuck that! 3M grinding disks it is. Spent all janurary grinding all the paint off and finding more & more rust. I cut it all out and made templates out of card. Waiting for some sheet metal shears to arrive off trademe so i can cut the sheet metal. Its a bit thick to cut with snips. Put some n00btek corrosion primer on some of the bare metal. This pic gives some extent of the rust i had to cut out in the front, it was all double skinned and shit:
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Theres also plenty of rust around the back window too that i have cut out and need to make up some patches. Tacked in one patch (made from an old letterbox) for the front window today. Quite happy with how it turned out. Never done any fabrication before:
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Sorry for the shitty pic but im useless.
Well thats what been done up until today. Should have it all newteked by end of tomorrow.
I hope someone finds this interesting. I will post my progress as i go. Aiming to have it done by end of feb (not that unrealistic i think) so i can have a gangsta car in welly for uni. Got some mean 12" tridents to sack it on too. Once i have it wofed and reged i plan to make a quad headlight front cos i think the current front is fugly IMO.

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Did a bit more today. Patched the rust in the A pillar. Pretty happy with the outcome. Bit o bog and it'll be MINT

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After:

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End of the day i have both sides and the roof in newtek. Bogging next. The roofs gonna be fun :rolleyes: Its got the worst case of haemaroids ever. Its like someone jumped on it and the previous owner poked it back out with a broom handle or something. :lol:

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the photo makes it look good. It is really TERRIBLE!!

Heres a pic of my bad boy 4 door, Served me well:

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It has 2 part steel wheels. a 1" and a 2.5" put 2 2.5" together and had 5 inch with nice dish. Although the drum brakes make up the center of the wheels so nice set of mags couldnt be done. The coupe on the other hand has disc brakes and studs. (same pattern as charade i think) so i can definately roll on some bogan tridents 8)

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Fingers crossed i might have the coupe running soon. Fixed ALL the rust on thur, fri and sat:

firewall (most of it cut out and replaced inside and out)

front windscreen (both corners)

rear windscreen (both corners)

Passenger Sill

floors

A pillars

B pillar

Just prime, bog and paint left NO RUST, ALL METAL YAY!!!

A Fuck load of rust repair, but i think its worth it. Didnt cost me anything, some cut fingers, skinned knuckles and a few nasty splater burns. but hey, its all metal now!!, no cancer.

Hopefully next weekend i'll lay on some primer and start the bogging. Can anyone reccomend a really good, strong paint, thats not hard for a relative n00b to spray?

Will post some pics soon

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  • 2 months later...

Havnt updated in a while. Uni and stuff been really annoying. Went hard in the seccond week of uni holls and started the bogging. Spent a week of 12hour days and 4.5kgs of bog to get it semi strait. the roof and the bonnet were major!!

Over the summer holls cut out all the rust and welded in new metal. It may need lots of bog but atleast its all metal.

Some rust cut out:

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Metal welded in etc:

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Awesome rust repair around back window:

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l33t sill repair. Went a bit wonky. but hey, real metal beats major holes:

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Got bored and did a mock up with my other "rusty" coupe. Looks tuff as i reccon. Mini flares and widened 10" ftw. Was going to do it to my car but want to get it going first before i spent time/money sacking it out:

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Getting it smooth around the back windows:

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2kgs of bog right thur:

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Fortunatly alot of it was sanded off. So many applications/sands. Grr

Me, hard at work priming it. Mean headaches!!:

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Finally end of it today: all primed up. Now just final sand and guide coat + more primer and it will be mean. Tryin like mad to get it ready for the oldschool nats:

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that is all..

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  • 1 month later...

Didnt think i would get my other fronte finished in time. And i either had the option to paint my project on (professionally) or buy this gem on trademe. Paints availabe all the time. Fronte's are not. Also, i collect frontes so i would have got this anyway. So, photoshoot:

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So small:

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All wofed and reged, ready for the nats

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  • 1 month later...

Havnt been doing much for with the fronte lateley. In the Uni holidays i sat down and made some templates for expansion chambers. Used a simpla as program called exhaust.

I enter in the exhaust port timing. The size of the cylinder. The size of the exhaust port. And the power i want to make. It only calculates it for one cylinder. But you just do it the same for all cyls.

I aimed for 20bhp per cyl. Which would make 60bhp @ 7500rpm. Quite an improvement over the factory 37! Although i expect it to be nowhere near 60bhp. It should atlest be a bit gruntier than standard. Will also look wicked and sound awesome.

The program gave me a 2d plan for an expansion chamber. I then had to calculate the angles and lengths and radii for all the cones. Maths came in handy there!

Here is some of the working out:

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I then had to make the templates. Some of the cones had to be drawn with a radius of 1.2meters through an arc of 6.13 degrees. = impossable to draw. Being the geek that i am. I have linux on my laptop. And downloaded a free (thanks open sourse) 3d cad program. It made it an absoloute breeze to draw up and print off the templates. even though some of them took up more than one page. Here are the templates once they were cut out and stuck together. The stinger (the tiny end pipe) is just 18mm pipe so i dont need to make that out of sheet metal. Same with the very first part of the pipe. Its just straight round section. All the others are cones. Some of them with the tiniest amount of taper! :(. All i need is sheet metal now. And time :(

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Lastly i made up 3 actual spannies using the templates. Out of paper ofcourse. They actually look like expansion chambers!!!:D Now i have to work out how to cut them up to fit into the fronte engine bay. Will need lots of curves and shit. Will look mean though. Will update when ive got some sheet metal and started making them. Will be fun. But im focussing time on the jag at the moment. Want to finish it after 4 years!!

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That is all..

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  • 2 weeks later...

Clearing out camera and found these pics from the nats.

Fronte and Kpizzle:

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Oldschool small car vs Newschool small car. Oldschool wins:

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Bought another parts fronte this weekend. Was cheap as chips. Has had the whole arse end cut out and a civic motor put in it. The motor was in parts tho so no skids :(. Bought it mainly for panels to make fiberglass moulds. Will eventually do an engine repower with this one seing that it has already been cut up. Outboard FTW!!

Looks pretty good:

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Bit of rust in the corner of the back window. Nothing i havnt fixed before :P :

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The motor in place. Hollow. no head. Rocker cover sitting ontop. Will probably scrap it as it would need a full rebuild to get going. And also If I do a repower, I will do it the extreeme way :lol:

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I really have to finish my original fronte. Only needs paint now. but yea....

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  • 3 months later...

Update!

The epic construction of the expansion chambers. Didnt take many photos cos cameral was flat so had to use shitty phone, and i had to do the mean rush to get them done for trackday. Took a few from my phone:

Cutting the templates out of sheet metal:

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The cut out templates and some made up cones. Hammered the cut outs into shape using a bolt locked in the vice and a hammer. Was a cunty job:

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A finished chamber minus stinger (the small exit pipe):

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Thats the only photos i took. The hardest part by far was getting them to fit in the engine bay. So much cutting and so much welding! Got mega arc burn on my legs. Most people would have seen/heard the finished product in all its amature glory. Will update this once someone post some pics of them.

The best part was they actually worked :D. Was able to do 90ks in 3rd. and when i did a few laps with standard exhaust i was only able to do 80ks in 3rd. Another problem was that my exhaust gasket was broken so it was leaking at the monifold really badly. (you could block the exhaust tip and it would still run fine) This would mean that they were probably not working very effectivly at all seeing they use exhaust back pressure etc. So most of the usefull powerenhancment stuff would have been escaping. I'll fix that up and we'll see how it goes next trackday :P

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  • 2 years later...

So yea, was going to roll this to nats, well i did, but it exploded 152ks into it. Did all the prep and paint myself at classic cars (where Seedy Al works and i used to work) took forever because the last thing i felt like doing was sanding & prepping my own car after doing other peoples cars for 8 hours. But allan keep harrassing/molesting me so it eventually got there. Anyway, its a bit dusty here, but you get the just....

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Haggard as petrol cap ftw.

Still needs finishing touches in this picture. Have put on red dual pinstripe since these pics, and widened steels.

Also needs new door rubbers. But yea, not a spot of rust and its straight as an arrow. For those who may remember what the roof was like. This was my blue one, not the primer one in this thread.

But now, its sitting, awaiting a new engine :(. Oh well

Plans are to lower a bit, get some nice new 10" tyres with whitebands, and repaint the rims gunmetal.

Other projects have now forced this under a sheet in the shed. Bring on classic jap meet 2011!!

May dig out my expansion chambers and put some mufflers on them so its roadlegal.

mean

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  • 3 years later...
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