zep's Gemini Coupe

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Went out to the panel shop to drop off some bits and was met with a nice surprise today:

Not long now!

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Alright, it's been a couple of months so it's probably time for an update. This is going to be super high level. I wish I was engaged enough to show every minute thing I was up to, but tbh I wasn't even taking photos.

The paint was finished up around early may. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Here's a bunch of pictures of it at the shop and back at my place.

There are a few bits that I want to have touched up, but otherwise it's pretty damn good.

Once I got it back, I didn't really know where to start. I still had a bunch of stuff that needed to be powdercoated, mostly suspension bits, so I decided to get on with the sound deadening. I don't have any great pictures of it, but it's not really that exciting. Here's a progress pic somewhere near the beginning.

Got the powdercoated parts back: diff, crossmember, springs, 4-link bars and bunch of other brackets and stuff.

I needed to replace the steering column rubber that mounts up against the firewall, but you can't get them, so I CADed one up and printed it from TPU.

Hopefully it holds! I got the crossmember in, which was a massive pain in the arse - hopefully I never have to remove it! Then I threw the front suspension in with the FabHouse upper arms, stock lowers, slotted ball joints and the ShockWorks dampers.

Then I got the rear end in. Took a bit of futzing as I've never put the 4-link arms in myself, but wasn't too bad. I did end up seizing the thread of my panhard rod, so had to have that remade. Thankfully the team at Suspension Developments were super easy to work with and it was pretty cheap (a lot cheaper than the original unit that was made, potentially out of the wrong material). Rear brakes are in too. Excuse these awful pictures.

Next I put the front brakes on and things are starting to look pretty good.

And the booster/master:

And that's about where things are at with putting it all back together. I've got a few things I want to do before I put it back on the ground and send it off to have the brake and fuel lines made. But I'm happy with the progress

On the engine side of things, the head has been at the head shop for a long time. I ended up finding out that the head I had was too soft, which was a bummer. You can get aftermarket heads but they all have these tiny ports that are okay but not the best. However, through some stroke of luck I found a NOS head from AMC which are an old Spanish manufacturer. It was from the 90s I think. So anyway, we got some blank valves and machined them down to suit and now I'm just waiting on a flow test and to figure out what I'm going to do about the cam.

The other news is I have been working on a billet intake manifold for about 2 years now. A mate over in Aus does cut and shut OEM ones, but wanted to make his own, so I decided to use my little CAD skills and draw one up. Yesterday he let me know that it had arrived. He'll be welding it to a cast plenum he bought. If it all works out, I'll grab one too.

I'm also working on a master cylinder brace, at the whole braking system - spacer, booster, master - are only held to the firewall with 2 bolts and there is definitely some flex. Hoping to have this machined soon.

Otherwise, that's it for now. Hopefully on it's wheels in a week or so! But still heaps to do.

 

 

 

 

 

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What is this? Two updates in two weeks?

How good is it to be able to 3D print parts at home? I needed a way to mount my clutch reservoir and after toying with a few designs and some professional advice from @slacker.cam ended up with this:

Printed from ASA and clamps together around the cup with some embedded nuts:

Mounted up I reckon it looks not half bad:

Then last night with the help of my long time friend and OS co-founder @Jerm we waterjet cut out the trigger wheels for the front and rear WSS pickups:

Once these are painted up and on the car, I will be very close to getting it back on four wheels.