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Tortrons's 1981 Mitsi L200 Clubsport


tortron

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  • tortron

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The roof line is at least pretty good on this side. Big step where the roof is attached to the a pillar, same as the other side, I assumed standard Todd motors fitment, but now I'm wondering if it's had the roof replaced, and it's warped to hell, maybe a roll over is why it was dereg in the 90s

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I can get the whole roof to oil can in. I can also get about 4 seperate areas to do it, so a bit of shrinking is necessary. Some old pitting and a small area that's resulted in pin holes. There's a bit of surface rust on the interior roof, Il need to strip it down. Potentially it's a big patch as the other area of pitting is about hand size. Possibly sat for a while with a caved in roof.

Note the dark patches, looks to me like some attempts at shrinking it with a torch.

Currently painted satin black, and it's about 20degrees hotter inside. After sitting in the sun one of the canning areas stiffened up, so Il stretch that one

IMG_20180108_164107.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...

Cleaned the LSD up with new paint, spring hardware, cylinders, and oil. It can go in when the paint hardens off.

 

Had a bald front tyre so got a couple of desert duelers put on, only 15*215s available today. Swapped the best one to use as the spare. Forgot how crusty the spare rim was, should have grabbed a good one from the shed. Came home and polished it up abit. Will remember for next time.

So far so good, they might be a little less balloony so haven't rubbed yet, and no squeeling like the old baldies

IMG_20180117_121035044.jpg

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Ok, into that patch

 

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how do these cabs rust out here idk, still have a feeling this thing has been either on its roof or had a new roof, theres some weird seams and double brackets

 

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at least it wasn't bog over rust this time eh

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not much left of this bracket. cant see this one on any of the body diagrams, fortunately the one on the otherside was complete so I had a rough idea of how it should look. It was spot welded in crooked at the factory. Nice.

 

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cad it up

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if you don't have one of these, get one. so handy for around door frames and inside panels

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lucky the back of the cab needs repatching because I needed to make some more access for the welder because this section had rusted out where it joins the drip rail area

 

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two brackets to go in

 

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WFKERb2.jpg

 

Right, that's good enough for now. Obviously will need some further work before paint, which wont happen until I shrink all the roof down.

With a bit of panel beating I should get it pretty much spot on, I would like to get away with just a coat of primer filler. I might need a smear of filler on the top weld, I couldn't get the roof and patch to sit quite right, so I have a little bit of a valley. I did however just make up a panel spoon to get up in that corner and edge and got it 90% in a few minutes, so theres still hope. Not sure if that line along the inside of the drip rail is supposed to be there, its not there at all on the other side. Might be a seam from where the gutter joins the drip rail. I suppose il replicate it with a little filler. You don't really see it when the gutter trim is on (yes it still fits, I tried. not the drivers side tho, I need to remove a hair of thickness on my new inner A pillar)

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Ever onwards. I'm over fixing rust, dents, and generally making things right for now. So on to probably the first actual modification/upgrade I've done to the ute.

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Standard 1st gen 3.88 open diff out

 

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2nd gen 4.22 LSD in

So far so good. I noticed the 2nd gen handbrake cables have square ends, 1st gen ones are round. Don't think it will be an issue. Other than that I just need a brake hose C-clip thing to mount the soft line to the diff.

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Quite nice to drive. 100kph rpm has barely increased but seems smoother over the whole range?

While the spare was out of the way I cleaned and wirebrushed the underneath of the tray. There was some rust just on the edge of needing attention before it got bad. So everything got doused in blackguard and then I sprayed black zinc over everything I could reach. That will be the extent of my efforts on the 2nd gen tray.

 

Had a wizz over the roof with a shrinking disk. Have now got 3 large dents instead of the whole roof. It's going to be a big job.

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Spent about 3 hours on the cab roof this afternoon 

 

 

 

 

Mainly beating the shit out of it from inside with a dolly to over crown the roof and give it some rigidity and then going over it with a vixen file to show the creases and brows. Which I then hit with the shrinking disk. Hard to convey on video but it's a major improvement, I need to do more than barely look at it to get it to spring back now

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