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'68 Viva GT


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  • 1 year later...

Came to realise that's it's been over a year since the last update on this car. Nothing major achieved, just a few mods here and there to catch up on.

Up until I started work on the Firenza we had been out in it most weekends, bot WOF is run out now and needs a little TLC before next one so will be onto this again soon.

 

A while back it developed a crack at the header flange and started sounded like a tractor, so that went in for repairs. The guys did a nice job, had to replace and he re-shape the spagetti so they look a bit more even and swept back but remain equal length. They are a 2 piece design for these slant motors as not much room to work with, so 2 pipes run around under the engine mount.

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and back in the car.

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Next up I removed my home made cold air intake, was just too big and made the engine difficult to work on. I cleaned up the trumpets and got some trumpet filters to go on them.

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Also spent some time dicking around with a replacement gearbox for the car, 4 spd as per the original, as you can see they have a interesting little setup with external linkages. When the pivot bolts and holes get worn they tend to get pretty sloppy, so I went through those and re-shimmed what I could to tighten things back up.

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Also added my own little mod and installed a nice strong spring between the linkages, what this does is help the gearstick return to central position, so instead of just flopping around it wants to return to the natural position between changing gears easier.

You can see the new spring in the lower right of the pic.

RIMG0229.jpg.

 

I need to get the internals checked out by an an expert sometime before installing the box, hopefully it's better than the current one.

 

Also swapped out the steering wheel for a wood (fake) rimmed one originally out of an Opel GT, has a nice dish which is what I was wanted, the previous wheel I could literally stretch my fingers out when holding the top of the wheel and touch the windscreen!

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My next mod is to change the rims from 13" Rostyles to 14" MG Rostyles. Been wanting to do this just to get a slightly bigger wheel/lower profile tyre look, but also open up a few more tyre choices. Been thinking on this for awhile, have had the rims sitting for ages, issue being that the Vauxhall PCD is 4" and the MG ones are 4.5". I had been researching suitable adaptors out of the states when some came up on TM randomly, so snatched them up.

 

On the car.

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And MG rim on and checked for guard clearance.

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All looks good, still have room to widen the rims outwards by an inch, and inwards an inch to make them 7" overall, which is the next step, then repaint them to original silver/black.

 

So that's about it for now, will add a couple of glamour shots taken after installing a chin spoiler late last year.

 

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  • 1 year later...

Another overdue but not terribly significant update on this car..it really needs to come off the road some stage soon for a body restore but having not long done my Firenza the memory of endless nights of bodywork again is still a little fresh...maybe next year..

 

Anyway, meantime I have had the MG rims widened to 7.5" for the rears and 6.5" for the fronts. Because the wheel stud adapter is about 20mm thick I couldn't give them the offset I would have liked for that extra wide rim look, but they still look good. Even as they are I will have to stretch the tyres to roll the walls a bit and give clearance to the guard lip. My guards aren't rolled and I really don't want to have to do that. Will likely need to try a few different tyre combos for best fit.

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Test fit pics.

 

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They now need to be sandblasted clean and re-painted, which will begin this week. I bought some paint masks some years back in anticipation of doing this conversion and for making the job of masking the silver/black easier, so should save my painter some time.

Also need to decide whether to install chrome trims or not to these when all done. Thoughts?

More pics when painted.

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  • 2 months later...

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