sr2

Time to have a look at the booster and master cylinder.

I found a crack in the Bakelite valve body but a mate in a local brake shop (thanks Kevin) donated some 2nd hand parts and a few new seals.

Spent an evening turning this…..

Into this….

And putting it back into the can’s….

To end up with this….

I wasn’t happy with the condition of the lower wishbones….

I didn't realize how scarce on the ground HR Holden parts were getting but a quick call to Bernie at Horopito Wreckers (Smash Palace) and a replacement pair was on the way, you guys rock!

The R&P looked so good that I just shouted it some new grease,  a set of boots and a lick of paint.

A box of new suspension joints had arrived from KC spares in Aussie and I couldn’t resist assembling some of the front end.

Once the mess was cleared up I was left feeling slightly shell-shocked/hung over with possibly the world’s largest pile of J14 Vauxhall “bits” strewn the back yard.

First step was to purchase 20 liters of Supersol (cold parts cleaner & decarboniser) and 10 liters of Tergophos  (phosphoric acid for rust removal) and set up a couple of 50 litre “pickle baths”.

Thought I’d start with the front end; it came apart easily.

The smaller parts went into the pickle baths for cleaning, rust removal, inspection and a coat of etch primer followed with marine enamel.

I was worried re the condition of the cross member so I sent it to Kwik Strip in Avondale for the full treatment. On its return I could see some rust in the left chassis mount and decided I’d re-plate the bottom which had been used as a jacking point for many years. (This would give me the chance to see the condition of the inside of the cross member and rust proof as needed).

I made some extra gussets up for the rack mount just to be safe.

Then I started on the Chassis mount.

The next step was as simple as it was brutal; pull out the gas axe, the 9” and 4” grinders, the reciprocating saw, my treasured set of Whitworth/ AF sockets & spanners and show no mercy in the back yard.

To be honest I’d been dreading this day for years; initially the plan was to put the new shell in storage but for some strange reason it was easier with it parked nearby in my driveway. I stuck the glasses and muffs on, looked Rigamortice squarely between the headlights, muttered “harden up you old tart this might hurt a bit’ and fired up my favourite big 9” grinder. (A small note here for any of the fairer sex that may be reading this thread; contrary to popular belief, yes size is everything!).

“Skanky Sam” our cat however was giving me the evil eye, having bonded with Rigamortice for some years she knew what was coming.

It was brutal and uncaring and I just did it, (and then drank the remaining the Wild Turkey).

The lovely old guy selling the car looked me in the eye and summed me up.  I gave him my best man up stare back, he told me the price, I nervously said yes, we shook hands and it was mine.

The following week I picked up a car trailer and headed North with an old mate to bring it back. With it finally sitting in the driveway I couldn’t believe what I’d found, sometimes you just get lucky.

When I finally got the jack out and had a good look at the lower rear section of Rigamortice’s shell the panic started to set in. There was no denying  how bent she was as a result of the L300’s untimely demise but my early teenage attempts at  rust repairs, (galv sheet brazed with an overlap) had created a corrosive time bomb; after too long in the back yard the lower part old girl’s rear end had simply dissolved.

My initial brainstorm was why not reincarnate Rigamortice as the world’s first 1947 J14 Vauxhall ute? Problem was I didn’t need a ute and if I did it would have to be certified which would involve Rigamortice and I feeling obliged to attempt to be nice again to the “angry certification men”. Despite having experience with certifying a number of tarmac rally cars, (in Targa we drive on public roads in the touring stages) having to compromise a restoration project would have been as pointless as the rules and regulations the “angry certification men” would have been trying to make us adhere to.

Sitting in Rigamortice in the back yard at 2:30 am in the morning after a ¼ bottle of Wild turkey (I’m a cheap drunk) the solution was as drastic as it was obvious, I needed to find a donor shell.

The next year was spent visiting smash palace, following up false leads, finding cars in dilapidated conditions, falling in love with complete cars that were crying out for original restoration and after almost giving up I was finally  given a lead to a car that was for sale up North.

Que the dramatic background music...

"In an ordinary garage, on an ordinary suburban street, in an ordinary town, I found...... this….."

Sometimes you just get lucky………..

My initial impression was that I’d found yet another original car in need of restoration until I looked closer. Although appearing to be in good condition the body panels didn’t line up properly and it was confirmed when I was told that the car had been rebuilt (obviously by an enthusiastic amateur) from a rust heap some 15-20 years ago.

Sometimes you just get lucky, I’d just found Rigamortice’s donor shell and unbelievably it was even the original color.  (To be honest it was more than too good to be true, it was downright bloody scary!).

Suddenly our son is 19 years old; the latest race car (135I BMW) doesn’t need me working on it every night and Sharon’s dropping none too subtle hints about cleaning up the back yard. Could it be time for a Rigamortice resurrection!

With some trepidation I pulled off the obligatory blue Warehouse tarpaulin and surveyed the remains of a car that I’d bought 43 years ago….

 It was obvious that the ravages of time and damage from the last accident had reduced my old ride Rigamortice to the stage where she needed one big resto job…….

Another six years passed quickly. My beautiful long suffering Sharon, (these days Mrs sr2) and I bought the flat we were renting in Milford, (many thanks to Peter Thomas, RIP mate). My music career was going strong, we were all getting into dirt bikes and Rigamortice was still hauling arse as my daily driver. What can I say, life was good.
  To be honest she was starting to look a little scruffy, (my early teenage attempts at panel repair were biting me in the arse badly), the little X2 rattled a bit on startup but she still as always did her best for me and pulled strong.

Even old cars need a little hug now and then…..

In 1992 a collection of overly enthusiastic volunteers from various assorted hot-rod and car clubs formed a committee  and came to the conclusion that despite having travelled safely for over half a million miles in various states of mechanical modification Rigamortice posed a real and present danger to the voting public and needed to be subjected to things called “regulations and certification”.  I didn’t have a clue what they were talking about but “rules and certifications” sounded very important so Rigamortice and I humoured them by trying to look interested.

To their credit they were obviously very clever & determined people who had far too much time on their hands and knew heaps about politics, using impressively long words, inventing regulations and certifications and forming committees to invent even more regulations and certifications! Both Rigamortice and I were overawed by their self-sacrificing tenacity and their astonishingly concise use of mind numbingly self-contradictory terminology - in desperation and under increasing duress we consented to filling out a “Vehicle Modification Declaration” form.

At this stage we couldn’t help but be reminded of Officer Opie from Allices Restaurant;

(listen from 6:30 to 7:40 or just sit back and relive the full 18 minutes of beautifully, innocent, delicious anarchy).

We soon discovered that the “sad little man that the very clever hot-rod and car club committee members had given the task of confirming the above modifications” was in denial that Rigamortice was in fact fitted with a “Starship Enterprise Warp Factor V Hyper Drive” and was not happy with the “structural modifications prior to 1991” being described as “oxidization”. 

After a vigorous negotiation process where I hid behind Rigamortice while the “sad little man that the very clever hot-rod and car club committee members had given the task of confirming the above modifications” hurled a multitude of thinly vieled insults at me about my car and the marital status of my parent at the time of my birth, we eventually (with a small amount of violence on my part) reached a compromise and I was given paperwork!

Eight months or so later a rather confused lady in a L300 courier van crossed the center line on a corner and T boned Rigamortice very, very, hard. Luckily although written off, the van hit with the left front and when we extracted her from the wreckage the hysterical and bruised lady van driver  was thankfully unhurt.

Sometimes you just get lucky....

Modern cars have an effective crumple zone; designed in 1935 Rigamortice just took it on the chin like an old boxer. I drove home in a daze with a very sore neck and a bleeding thick lip while Rigamortice sported a wobbly rear wheel and a rear chassis/sub-frame that had been seriously pushed sideways.

A short time later Sharon and I had a baby on the way, we'd bought the house next door and Rigamortice  ended up parked in the back yard……

The body was looking a little sad so some panel work was called for and a coat of burgundy paint.

Near this time I was ignominiously excommunicated from the Auckland chapter of the Vauxhall Enthusiasts Society for the then unforgivable transgression of “automotive blasphemy”; (i.e. modifying an “already perfect” Vauxhall).

Rigamortice loved doing skids with her new motor but the Vanguard diff ratio was far too low and the stud pattern was different to the HQ pattern on the front. When the novelty of doing one wheel burnouts on 15” skinny cross-ply tyres finaly wore off I found a 3.3 HD Holden rear end, fitted it with the larger HQ drum brakes and changed the stud pattern by welding up the old stud holes in the axel flanges and re-drilling them.

The old girl was starting lift her skirts and haul arse well (for 30 years ago) and it became obvious the 1930’s style lever action rear shocks were struggling with the additional power and traction so out came the rear end again so I could convert it to  telescopic shocks. With a little tweaking of the new suspension I had a car that was happy to be pushed hard and was comfortable with 3 times the original 48 BHP.

The only issue was that the standard under floor single circuit 1” master cylinder was having difficulty with the HQ disc/drum combination. I was running a dual Hydrovac booster system with a VH40EL on the front and a VH44D on the rear and despite fitting both boosters with matching “complex” (dual acting) control valves the combination still felt clunky and lacked feel.

When late one night I caught myself designing an external control valve system that could operate two boosters simultaneously I knew that drastic action was required and in desperation the following morning, I attacked the driver’s side firewall with an angle grinder……

I mounted an XA Falcon pendant style pedal box and rebuilt the firewall to accommodate an XB Mastervac and dual circuit master cylinder. At the same time I converted to a hydraulic master/slave cylinder clutch combo. Finally the car felt balanced and a joy to drive- problem solved!

After a series of small but interesting and exciting fires Rigamortice had to be completely re-wired and I ditched the generator in favour of a ‘modern” alternator.

A good mate turned up with a rare (at the time) Yella Terra head he’d procured from his neighbour and it proved to be the ideal combination with the X2 cam, the pacemakers and the DCD Weber (I tried a 350 Holley but it just used more gas and never idled properly).

With a little tuning Rigamortice was starting to get a reputation for being a lot quicker than the old tart looked………

love those "one wheeler peelers!"........

One month (and a number of instances of unintended, deliberate, sustained loss of traction) later the Nissan gearbox shat it’s self into shrapnel.

I found a W40 Steel case 4 speed Celica box (very sexy in its day) and modified the Holden bell housing to accept it, problem was the main cross member sat where the new gearbox needed to be. I jacked the old girl up, put her on axel stands to keep the chassis straight, pulled the front seats out and cut the whole floor out from the B pillar to the fire wall to expose the chassis. I welded in a piece of 4” RHS to form a new cross member, cut a section out of the original cross member to accommodate the new box and extended the original inside chassis rails. A new floor made from 16 gauge Zintex was welded in and a pair of Triumph 2000 front seats were fitted.

Rigamortice had yet another new lease on life.

In the summer 1986 I removed all the front bodywork and scrapped the engine, box and front end. I was left with 2 chassis rails and a big hole with a head in it!

Soon I was crawling under cars in public carparks with a tape measure and haunting the local car wreckers in search of a suitable front end. I finally settled on a HR Holden wishbone setup that I fitted with reversed HQ stubs and discs. A shortened Austin Kimberly R&P was mounted behind the cross member and connected to a Triumph 2000 steering column.

All I needed was a motor and box…..

Sometimes you just get lucky, a guy I worked with had a mate with an X2 186 motor hooked up to a Datsun 4 speed and he needed money. $60 later I was poking it into the old girls engine bay.

After a few weeks spent fabricating mounts, throttle and clutch linkages, a drive-shaft, etc. Rigamortice’s new donk was starting to look like it was where it belonged. I ditched the X2 twin carb setup in favor of a downdraft DCD Weber and scraped together enough money to buy a set of pacemaker headers.

A decade passed and Rigamortice was still going strong as my daily driver. She’d been parked up for a few years while I lived in Australia, she’d been driven by all and sundry, stolen twice and even hauled Band gear around both islands (with the back seat removed) while I was starting my music career.

What can I say; my friends and I grew up in that car.

Jump forward to the mid 80’s ; the old girl’s still running strong but I’m over being passed on hills and the bump steer is getting hard to ignore; (the future Mrs sr2 spun out in Milford’s main drag while attempting an emergency manoeuvre, guess who’s fault it was!).
The time had come for lots more power, good handling and more importantly brakes!

(Get a load of the posers in the 1st 2 pic’s, oh the follies of youth).

My name's Simon and In hindsight I should have labelled this thread "sometimes you just get lucky".

1973 in little old NZ was a good year. Colour telly had finally arrived (not that any of us could afford one), Pink Floyd released Dark Side of the Moon, petrol was 10 cents a litre, and I was 15 years old and needed my first car real bad! I spotted an old 47 6 cyl Vauxhall parked up in Hastings rd. Mirangi Bay with a faded 4 Sale sign in the window and grass growing through the wheels. After a round of fierce negotiation with the owner the paltry sum of $15 was settled on. With only $10 to my name I borrowed the remaining $5 from my long suffering father, (not sure if I ever repaid him) and the deal was done. After a triumphant arrival at home in my “new car “on the end of a towrope behind Dad’s 6/99 Worsley we discovered the motor was seized rock solid, within days the family was calling the car “Rigamortice” and the name just stuck.

The only three early pictures I have was one taken by my mother (thanks mum) while I was bolting the bodywork back in place after Dad helped me with a “rings ‘n bearing” job - all done with the engine block still in place,…..

……and a second of my little sister and my eldest sisters’ daughter (big family) posing proudly beside Simons “new” car.

…..and a third from when I found another J14 Vauxhall to park beside (Rigamortice is the green one).
 

Within a few years the old girl had had been fitted with an LIP motor & box complete with Impala shifter, the “knee action” front suspension had been ditched in favor of EIP wishbones, I’d fitted a Vanguard diff and the interior looked like either a cheap massage parlor or Bishop Brian Tamaki’s living room, (the 70’s were a little weird!).

Discussion Thread   //oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/49843-sr2%E2%80%99s-1947-vauxhall-%E2%80%9Crigamortice%E2%80%9D-discussion-thread/