CUL8R

Thats what Im hoping for, Need to do some rust repairs too - nothing major. No I didnt keep the guards as someone had pulled the lip round 180deg and made awful flares - they were covered in bog too.

So, I sold this along with a couple other cars I had (later regretted both decisions) to buy my first house. New owner gave it a respray with quite poor prep work, purple tints, and gay steering wheel. Removed steelies. He had it in a workshop when it was stolen, and crashed in the centre of town. Bought it back through turners auctions for a little more than I had hoped - but at least I have it back. Brother towed it home with his girlfriend whilst I was at work, said it was the worst drive - upon getting home discovered the wheels had wrong sized centrebores on the front so werent fitting properly, and the rear had the wrong offset and were rubbing on the inner guards! Basically the car needs a drivers door, new front clip. Before I sold the gemini in the first place I had originally intended on converting the front to early model - by chance a TX Coupe was rear ended in chch, so I took the whole front off it and removed the diff & engine for them. Front guards were full of bog so I had decided to leave them - hindsight I probably should've taken them. Unfortunately the car is deregistered by insurance, so will have to re-vin, not too much of a drama really though. Previous owner sold the Dellorto's & inlet manifold after I told him I'd buy them off him - so will have to sort something else out. I have 2x bumpers, slam panel, grill, radiator support panel (need to drill out all the original spot welds), bonnet, indicators, lights etc etc. I also bought one very rusty Twincam Piazza - mainly for the motor as a spare for my Chevette, but for the front brake upgrade for the gemini, and decided I'd give the disc brake rear end swap a go as well. Firstly the Panhard mounts are on the wrong side for a gemini, so chopped that off and rewelded on. Secondly the trailing arm mounts are 17mm spaced further out, so plasma cut those off, and after alot of measuring, remeasuring I rewelded them on. Ive also used the original Gemini Torque tube, bolts straight up to the Piazza Diff (interesting given these are Borg Warner items). Has the same bolt pattern, same splines as the gemini diff, same seal diameter everything! Unfortunately the diff was missing the brake lines as well as the calipers & discs. However as luck would have it, I kept all those bits apart from the lines from the blown twincam diff for the chevette. Also bought some Wat's ex Japan, 14" not very wide, but with the increased track width from the diff they will fit fine. Still need to get them blasted and painted. - These will also be the wheels I will use for cert on the Chevette... Discussion: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=15434

Love the build man, quite excited you're running with one of those motors, very under-rated but very very strong motors! Look forward to seeing the build progress!

Well impressed with the roof! Suits it extremely well, breaks up the paint of the rest of the car! Looks great man, long time following it, always too slack to comment!

Really enjoying this build, been too slack to post anything yet. But as mentioned, nice to see one done faithfully rather than the usual 'Tang treatment! Looks really rather sweet indeed!

Nice work man, looking pretty good, just slowly ironing all the glitches out! g200z should go pretty well, what'd you manage down the 1/4?

Nice score man, have missed you last few updates so was nice catching up on your progress again!

The guy I crew for is going up for the Nz Stockcar Grand Prix. Did a little more tonight, flipped it upside down and welded the underside of everything..

Managed to sneak a bit of work in between.. Completed one side today, will flip it upside down or onto its other side and do some more progress whilst the girlfriend is away. Ive got all the plate cut out, just light grinding for each piece before welding in fully. And Whilst its on is respective sides the box sections are all being welded. Will see how I get on Mon, Tues, but would like to get a little more done before we take off to Wanganui..

Fuck me thats brilliant! Look forward to seeing what you do Cletus! Wait till simpson sees this...

Theres two Triumph 2.5's parked on a lawn about 2mins away from my place Pete..

^ Website doesn't look like much, but flick John a email or give him a ring. Superior service to anyone else, very high quality work too. http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/suspensiondevelopments/

^ They've fixed some tacho's before for me, Gal dropped them off, were pretty reasonable in their pricing for that. Bart will also attest

Send your springs away to get tested. Its not uncommon to have uneven rated springs even when they're meant to be the same.. Some aren't even the rating they should be from factory and other sagg badly. Eibach however you can basically guarantee are correct. +1 for L Series Dort's, come a long way, should be proud man!

Why not chevette or Piazza front end? Similar setup... Double wishbone

2 Door Sedan, Nice man. Did you check out the Gm/T Forum? King Springs by far handle the nicest out of the lot, Cobra's will bring them down the same but are quite a firm ride - still better than cutting them Though. When its lower you really need to put shorter shocks in the rear to keep them captive- the simplist way is to put new 'front' shocks into the rear. Bolt straight in. Gemini/Piazza Will do. For the Fronts I Put some Fiat ones in, although its been awhile and I cant quite remember exactly which model they're from. If you want to do it properly I can supply springs, Shocks through work, whether you want to fit them or want a hand to fit them as well. Otherwise for the Cheap cut the coils 1&1/2 will get it sitting above the guard with stock tyres. On that note I can see you've got some old ass Dunlops on there, I would put money on them being the original tyres for the car, will handle like plastic in the wet - probably best to put some new tyres on. Are you in Chch? Like I said I've got a Chevette Sedan, and Gemini wagon, been mucking around with them for awhile now.

Hey actually, I'll have a Piazza in a couple of weeks... I could possibly lend a hand to install them if you wanted (read: cut them) . Whats wrong with yours?

Not a huge amount, although I have both a Chevette and gemini in my garage lol... http://nzgem.proboards.com/index.cgi Join up here, Im sure someone will have some standard height springs.

Gemini lowering springs should work - as in they will fit in. However Im not sure how much the front will come down by... 1600 gemini 1300 chevette, although the chevette's is a full cast iron block the gemini motor & box is about half as big again.. What area are you?

Well done, been a long time coming, back to basic's to sort the problems and you got her running! I remember how ecstatic I was when we first fired the chevette up, you'll be fizzing! You'll have any excuse to fire it up now!

Yes I will be, I already have a stainless battery box I scored off trademe for one!

You can actually run a dry cell battery thats half the size. Scroll down till you see the black part that kyle fraser is advertising. I'll have to double check, but I priced these recently ish, and I should be able to do one for around $110 incl from memory. http://speedwayads.co.nz/Parts/PartsSell.html Brother was running one in his car last year without problem apart from when he couldn't get the car going and it ran out of power.

Craig @ proparts napier, Afco's cost a bit more, but for the ease of them, and they're set up - ie lift up and tiedown. Reasoning being, if Im away and blow one I can scoot down to the local performance store - the edge, proparts, cardwells etc etc and they're on the shelf. The Coilover kit itself was the cheapest and nicest quality I've seen yet.. At craigs advice I put Eibach springs in - apparently the Qa1 springs are prone to sagging, and having the wrong rates. The Eibach are much much higher quality german spring steel.. @ Felixx far from dead, just tapped for time between work, stockcar, house and girlfriend - in that order lol

@ Shizzel, yea thats me, and yes been crewing for Colin & Michael/Stu, helped build the current car Colin has, and help along Stu. Things have been a little slow of late with The power outtage, had the flu and prepping the other two cars for Practise/start of season. Ordered the body from a guy called Mark in auckland - hardest part was sorting shipping which I had a stroke of luck on - guy I used to work for was bringing a LWB Transit down...

Oh I almost forgot, couldn't resist doing this;