SR ROLLA

The GTO is getting its stripes put back on today, pretty keen to see how that comes out.

Once I finished painting the car I decided to build an oldschool BMX as a companion piece. I got a cheap frame off TradeMe and set about collecting all the various bits and pieces from all over the internet. The frame was in pretty good nick, no damage, just some scrapes and scratches in the paint. A quick strip back and respray in GTO blue and it was looking all good. A few minor hiccups at assembly time but came together mostly pretty easily. Here she is:

I have been driving this around a bunch and got it tuned up by some people who know what they are doing (possibly).

Pretty happy with that. 110hp is up 10hp on the old set up. With a bit of welly it pulls noticeably harder than before and sounds absolutely glorious. When going for a bit of a zoom it feels like it really wants to go and go, love it.

However, it is hard to start and when sitting still it runs like it is a gnat's dick away from stalling. If you give it a little blip on the gas it will splutter and almost die as it comes back down. It's nearly impossible to pull away gently, the throttle response is quite all-or-nothing. It's easy to stall when manoeuvring and a couple of times when pulling out in traffic it has given a big lurch and then died right away, resulting in a panicked flooring and big rev-up to get out of the way of oncoming traffic. When I took it to the tuner I told him it was running rough and rich (my YouTube tune) and I wanted it easy to start and smooth through the range, for daily driving. He seems to have gone for max power performance at the higher end.

I expected a bit of a trade-off when going to a more race-oriented carb but this seems a bit much. No vacuum advance doesn't help either I guess. Is it just tough cookies? or have I got a bad tune for my needs and it could be tweaked to better suit round town driving? I have no other experience of owning a car with a set up like this, so don't really know exactly what is possible.

Any carb gurus out there have insight?
The specs are:
32mm venturi
Main Jet #130
Air Corrector #200
Idel Jet #50F9
Emulsion Tube F16

Here's some non-boring images

Fluids and filters changed, tank of gas, air in the tyres and off it went for a warrant. I was expecting there to be at least a few minor bugs. But nope.

I'm all legal and good to go.

So, I've been busy with lots of little jobs during the reassembly.

Refurbing badges

and fitting them, along with a fair few NOS ones too

Lots of NOS lenses and lights

Had to make up seals for some of them

I found a really good plastic restoration product for pieces like the louvers

And fitted them up

While de-orange peeling I managed to sand through the clearcoat on the passenger door, was fuming. So I had to repaint that.

Then it was time to get everything running nicely again so I can get back to driving it! I've been starting the engine up pretty regularly, so it's still running quite well. However I was having a problem with the throttle sticking, which seemed to be caused by one of the carb mechanisms being quite gunked up. When I tried to clean it all up the bloody things fell off.

Luckily I had these things lying around the garage and wouldn't you know it, they fit pretty well.

So I got them on with the help of a mechanic friend and managed to learn enough about carbs to roughly tune them myself via YouTube tutorials. They sound awesome. Far from optimal but smooth enough to drive around the neighbourhood for the first time in a couple of years. Was feeling pretty fucking chuffed with myself, I don't mind telling you.

So, WOF tomorrow, fix any issues that come up there, then a proper dyno tune. I'm interested to see how much difference there is compared to the factory set up.

Then drive the shit out of it.

Also need to clean it properly before I take some decent photos of the new paintjob in the sun…

After all manner of little set backs (and, to be honest, cock ups due to me not really knowing what I'm doing) I was starting to feel like this job was never going to be done and then all of a sudden, here we are. I have a blue car again.

Managed to surprise myself by getting around the whole car with no major issues. The colour looks crazy different in bright light versus shade, it's very cool, I like it. The finish is a bit orange peely but I prefer fixing that to runs and there should be plenty of clear for me to cut that back and remove dust specks and whatnot to end up with a fairly nice, shiney, garage paint job.

It's far from perfect but heaps better than it was beforehand, so for a first ever attempt I'm going to take that as a win. Once it has had a little time to fully harden I will cut it back, buff and polish it up and then reassemble with the many restored and NOS parts I have been working away on gathering for the last couple of years.

So, I have had some time here and there to work on this lately. Did a couple of small jobs I had been worried about. Drilled out two snapped-off bolts in the front valance. I've never had much success with screw extraction but i managed to drill these out with no real damage. The thread of both holes is still good enough to hold their bolts so I'll take that as a win.

The next thing was to roll the rear guards. This was something the body shop was supposed to do but didn't, so I thought I'd give it a go myself. Better to do it now rather than paint everything and wish I'd done it later when I need 5mm extra to fit wide wheels or something. Got some technique advice from @sheepers and got to it slowly with tiny tap tap taps. Took a while and I was bricking it the whole time, but managed to get the lips all rolled up nicely without fucking anything up. Hooray! GTO arches are double walled so probably harder to muck up than on a lot of cars. I gained about 12mm extra space, which is better than nothing. I pinched the previously done front guards up a bit more too for max space possible, without flares.

I also got some paint matched up and finally started getting colour back on the car. I've started with the underside of the bonnet, inside the petrol flap and the top parts of the engine bay etc (not doing the full bay for now, maybe one day if the engine has to come out for anything) to test out the colour and my technique. Looking good so far I think. The colour does not match the original that well but looks really cool. Deep, dark blue inside but more purpleish and grey outside in the bright sun. Quite hard to capture in photos.

I have finally managed to get most of the shaping/repairs done, a few wavy bits and a couple of dings here and there, sorted now. I was also having some problems with leftovers from the old respray reacting with the primer and wrinkling on the roof. I solved the problem by bare metalling the whole roof and starting again, to be sure there was nothing underneath. All good now.

So now it's all painted up in filler primer, ready for blocking. It's looking quite good already, pretty crisp and straight. Bonnet and guards not attached properly here, which is why the alignment of the front end is all off.

Not bad for a noob effort, I think.

There's a tiny bit of fine tuning needed, shapewise, a couple of things which weren't easily visible until it was all light grey. But in general looking pretty good, will block it back and get it as straight as poss, then time for colour, at long last.

Well, hallelujah, real progress that actually looks like something, for once!

The car is so small that the actual painting takes very little time. So, after months of slow stripping and prepping, all of a sudden it's starting to feel like it might actually be done one day.

Next up is a coat or two of filler primer to sand back and get everything as straight and sharp as poss, then colour.

So, still chugging away on this, finding all sorts under the paint. Nothing major, just annoying. All in all, very straight and rust free. I have been getting some spray gun tips from a friend, so far so good. A few patches of paint from one of the old resprays reacted weirdly, so had to re-strip back further in those areas. Front guards and both sides of the bonnet are primed and looking good. The rest of the car is all masked up, hoping to get it primed this week. Not very exciting really, but will be a big milestone for me to have it all covered and one colour again. Starting to feel like the end is in sight.

Also I figured that while it's still a garage queen for a wee bit longer I might go ahead and get some of these.

Will get the paint done, everything back together and warranted. Then, when that's done, fit these and sort out the new suspension.

Looks like i-force has pooped itself and all my images are gone. Bummer.

Anyway, drove out of the garage for the first time in who knows how long to give it a bit of a rinse and rearrange the garage. Got a real ratrod vibe going on here.

Out and about 1 by Thomas Addison, on Flickr

Out and about 2 by Thomas Addison, on Flickr

Pretty much done with stripping now, just finishing up the underside of the bonnet. This is the first thing I will paint, get some practice in with the paint gun on a big area that doesn't matter much.

I've also been buying things. Found a single NOS fender mirror. These are usually astronomically priced for a pair, on the rare occasion they turn up at all. This one was surprisingly cheap and is super mint. There's one slight scuff on the side which I think will probably polish off completely. Nice.

NOS mirror by Thomas Addison, on Flickr

Got a cool gear knob to match my kitty cat headlights.

Gear stick by Thomas Addison, on Flickr

And lastly some 70s galant hubcaps. Really tidy and shiney. One has some curb scuffage, but no big deal. They came up on TM pretty cheap and I thought they make for another nice nanna spec wheel option. My current thinking is to have these, widen some steel wheels with the little centre caps and trim rings I have now and get a set of 14 inch japanese, period appropriate mags, as wide as poss without flaring the guards

hubcaps by Thomas Addison, on Flickr

Also, I managed to get a NOS set of tail lights that didn't cost absolute moonbeams (just a small number of moonbeams). Pretty stoked with that, should look real nice.