so when the car was back from being caged i sent it away to a family friend to paint, along with my acid dipped gaurds, bonnet and doors. when i got it back my eyes hurt for a while, its a very bright yellow!
i got it back and pretty quickly it went back together, made lexan windows all round except the windscreen, new door panelling, modified the steel dash by cutting the bottom half of it off, and rewired the whole car. at this point all it needed was running gear.
So i dismantled the supposedly "rebuilt" engine to check it over and found it was pretty well fucked and needed new rings, a hone, new big ends, gudgeon bushes,main bearings and thrust washers. all 8 exhaust valve guides were well over their limit too so these were replaced.
i got the engine back and re assembeld it myself to the point where i had to fit the oil pump, which also drives the dizzy. The original gears in it were so worn that they had to be replaced, problem was no new parts are available for these oil pumps and new pumps are also no longer available. so i spent around 5 months searching all over the world to find a new pump, nobody had one at any price. so i ended up pulling a second hand pump out of very late 8v 1.7 ie 33 which has the same high flow oil pump as the 16vs. and getting that as good as i could get it with out making new gears. it still wasnt the best but i wanted the car to go.
as luck would have it a brand new pump that had only done 10 laps of taupo came up for sale at a rediculusly cheap price, so thats sitting on the shelf waiting to be fitted. The motor was then fully assembeld and fitted to the car
And started after i replaced the seized fuel pump. Gearbox is the oringinal Sprint veloce close ratio box with 3.9 FD which was rebuilt not long before i bought the car.