Ford Capri Mk3 Track/Race Car Project

[Will01]

So not made too much progress today but at least I have done something on the Capri this weekend. First off I removed the petrol tank which was somewhat a little bit of a pig to remove as the tank strap bolts had rusted up. In the end I managed to cut off with a hacksaw. At which point I noticed the tank was heavier than I was expecting as it still had fuel in it. Probably only good enough for the lawnmower but good bonus.
The area under the tank does look scabby, but at least it is solid. Eventually once the sills and quarter panels are fixed I will mount the car on a spit and give the underneath a good clean to bare metal.
The lower rear valence looks a bit bent so that will also need a little straightening.

After being under the car today I did notice that there is not enough room to mount the planned watts linkage setup. This means I will have to re-think ideas for tank. I reckon the best thing to do is to get a aluminium tank made for the boot. If I can make a very low profile one I may be able to fit in the boot, then put a firewall across the boot floor. I may also then be able to fill the tank with the original filler with a bit of tweaking?
I may look into getting myself on a TIG course just so I can build my own tank.

On another note I also had a look at my spare pedal box today, someone has supplied me some ideas of how to convert the oe box to a bias pedal box setup. This should help with adjustment of the brakes front and rear whilst on the move.

The only last thing I managed to get done this weekend was to get my welder up and running, only to find out my gas is empty. So I will need to find someone local who can supply refills for a sealey 1kg bottle.
I will add some pictures during the week.

[Will01]

Few pictures

[Will01]

Few pictures of inside boot floor area.
To help with ideas as previously mentioned, i will look at fitting a new fuel tank in the boot which sits under the boot floor line. This will then be fire-walled off from the rest of the cabin. I will try and look at making the fuel tank as low profile as possible. Before fitment however this area of the boot will need to be sealed from the rest of the cabin. The fuel pumps etc will also be fitted under the firewall to keep a neat clean and easy to access install.

Also have added some pictures to show the standard Pedal box and steering column assembly.
I will add pictures of the planned changes when i get agreement from the other party, but basically i wish to convert this pedal box to be a complete bias pedal box assembly that can be adjusted whilst driving.

[CobraElite]

Always had a soft spot for Capri's. Looks great, keep up the good work!

[Will01]

Thanks Cobra. I never used to like them until I bought my first one. Ever since I have loved them.
Good news I have some second hand single leaf springs off a 2.8 capri coming in the post. This should definitely help reduce a bit of weight.
They should work well with upgraded arb's. I have something special planned for the rear axle. I will leave details for now however.

[Will01]

So i have been waiting on gas still so i can make a start with the welding, however in the meantime i decided to start stripping down the 2.0 Atlas axle ready for cleaning up and modifying.
I have never done this before and decided to see how it was put together. Really it came apart very easily and i was amazed at simple engineering. It can definitely be improved, time and funds permitting will see how much work will be carried out.
I would love to be able to convert so that camber adjustment is possible and i have a few ideas, i just not sure whether it will be too successful or not. As said time will tell, but for now i am just practicing with the spare axle.

The backing plates for the rear drums were in very bad condition and have completely rusted up, which is a shame as the rear brakes used to work perfectly on the white Capri before it was laid up off the road.
Thankfully the bolts holding the backing plates to the diff hubs came apart very easily and had not corroded up.
The half shafts complete with bearings drifted out nice and easily, i didn't mark these up as i was just playing and the half shafts were replaced after removal and draining of the oil.
Unfortunately one of the reasons why i pulled the diff apart was to check how many teeth were on the splines, i will have to re-check when i strip it down again.
The diff cover was removed and given a good clean(internally) as well as the rest of the oil drained. Funnily enough i found no gasket, but the cover didn't seem to be leaking which is very strange.
When i do finally get my hands on a blasting cabinet the differential will be completely stripped down ready for blasting. The arb mounts will change position (when i work out new arb size and position). New mounts will be made up for the rear disc conversion also. I do have a set of calipers and discs planned already, however this may change anyway.
I also need to get hold of a Watts linkage housing so i can mock up linkage towers under the car, whilst it is stripped back.
A few of my planned upgrades are starting to be let out, however all will be clear in time.

Due to things being quiet at the moment i have also started researching TIG welding courses locally. They already understand what i hope to achieve from the training as there are quite a few parts that i wish to fabricate out of aluminium e.g. catch tanks and new petrol tank. After all this will be our car so i really want to put our own parts on it.

[Will01]

So i managed to get hold of some second hand single leaf springs off a 2.8 Capri.
As you can see from the pictures they look alot better and are in much better condition than the standard multipack leaf springs (you see) you find on small engined Capri's.
The single leafs are also much lighter than the standard multipacks.
I weighed these roughly using luggage scales and the standard multipacks were 11kg's per side (22kg in total), the single leafs were 6kg's per side (12kg in total). This is quite a weight, which is going the right direction.

Whilst i had some scales i also thought i would try and get a rough idea of weights of doors and boot. I was amazed at how bulky these items are.
The boot complete weighs 23kg's! Since i have a spare badly corroded tailgate i will cut the inner structure out and fit perspex rear window.
I then weighed the doors and these are ~24.5kg each without any interior door card! Again since i have some bad condition doors i will look at taking out some of this weight.
Since my welding gas has still not arrived i will have plenty of time to get stuck into these.

Going back to the single leaf springs, since the rubber bushes were still installed i decided to get stuck in removing them. At first i used the hydraulic press, unfortunately i did not have the correct size socket or piece of metal so all i could do was push out the rubber. Then i cut the metal sleeves and hammered them out with a chisel.
Unfortunately this landed me in the A&E department as i managed to full on smack the s..t out of the back of my hand......ouch!
I decided to try and put on a front as my wife was at home and i was home alone, but when she got back from work i was dragged down to A&E for X-rays, probably quite rightly so as i was and still am in pain. Luckily i haven't broken anything but it still hurts like alot, it is just bruised. So i must have strong bones, probably as a result of having my wheatabix every morning with lots of milk.

[fingers99]

Ouch!

But for the negative camber, I'm pretty sure that RallySport make adjustable top mounts to suit most Fords (and they're cheap as chips).

[Will01]

Thanks for that Fingers.
I have also found that GAZ produce some camber adjusters to fit their coilovers on the front, so when i do finally get these i will also buy a set.
I still need to source some compression struts for the front end and trying to find someone who can make me an adjustable thicker custom anti roll bar which i can use alongside compression struts.

But my comments on camber adjustment were really for the rear live axle. I know most people will say it can't be done, but it can. Just needs a little engineering, it really is dependent on whether or not my local engineer can modify half shafts to allow slight miss alignment. This would then allow for a taper shim to allow camber to be added on the rear wheels. At the moment it is just an idea, for the near future it will not find itself on the car as funds are still very tight.

The front suspension as standard has the anti roll bar connect into the track control arms, but when fitting compression struts these mounts as utilised by the compression strut and if you still want to keep the antiroll bar you have to modify to connect with droplinks. I just would like to have some adjustment on the length of the antiroll bar aswell.

Good news, my hand has started to not hurt anymore which means i can get cracking again so not much time lost.
Welding gas also arrives today so i can start practising again how to weld, ready to tackle attaching some of the panels i have made and repaired.

Found a guy on line who also makes pot blasters not far away, so i may be investing in one to try out in order to strip the paint/rust back on large areas of the shell. Does anyone have experience of these??

[fingers99]

I've only ever used cabinets, but I'm mulling over getting a pot type blaster for soda.

If you've not fallen over it already, the "mig welding forum" (enter that in Google) is bound to have people who've done it that way.

[Will01]

This weekend didn't go to plan as i have had many other cars to try and repair etc etc. However luckily i did manage to get started with some welding.
I defintely need some more practice mind. Much of the welding is very poor and will have to be ground back and re-done, but some of it looks pretty damn good.
This maybe be down to poor preparation so next time i will make sure it is even better cleaned back.

Heres hoping next weekend goes more to plan, i may even find some evenings that i can get cracking a little more. I really do hope i can get the drivers side sill on asap. I am going to be very tight on my self now, but i really want to try and get all the panels and repair panels welded in situ or at least tacked in place for end of September. To finish the job off properly i will ask my local friend to do a good job if i haven't got the knack of it back by then.

[Will01]

Since it was raining this weekend i managed to spend a bit more time on the Capri.
I started to tackle a few of the small parts that required welding in order to allow the sill to be fitted.
As soon as this was done i also managed to reinforce the drivers side inner wing drip rail as i will be converting to allow the wings to bolt on/off.
Whilst i was in the process of mixing up primer/paint i also took the opportunity to clean back my spare steering rack and re-paint. I will upload pictures eventually but it looks really good now. All this rack needs is a pair of new ball joints and a set of polybush rack mounts. I will treat the spare crossmember to the same treatment once i get a blast cabinet. I have a large stock of bits waiting to be cleaned up and painted for when i need a break from the hard graft shell repairs.
If i get some good luck this week i may be able to get the sill fitted this week finally!

[Will01]

As promised some pictures of the spare steering rack all nicely painted, ready waiting for some polybush mounts and new track rod ends.

[Will01]

I spoke to Bilt Hamber the other day and spoke to Pete Hamber, after taking his advice i will not be trying to clean all the rust out of the sills. Actually what he did tell me was that i should use their Dynax S50 wax.
Looking through the product sheets and taking his advice all i need to do is inject this into the hard to reach areas and the wax has a rust inhibitive formula that can be sprayed directly onto a rusted surface.
Maybe it would be better to remove the sill, strip back paint and replace, but this is going to take too much time and the sill itself is in a good solid condition.
I will also treat many other hard to reach areas in this way to help keep the rust at bay.

As far as the welding goes, unfortunately i ran out of CO2 gas. I was pretty surprised and pretty annoyed as it hadn't lasted that long. It is a 1kg bottle that i use currently. Unfortunately on closer inspection of the regulator, it appears there may have been a tiny hole in the hose that was letting the gas escape. Doh!
I have however made up my mind that since we have lots of welding ahead of us with this and some other cars, we are just going to invest in a large CO2 bottle.
Nix and a few others have already given me a few ideas of suppliers so i will be tracking this down in the next few weeks.
In the mean time i have also converted our current welder to run the larger 5kg reels rather than the 0.7kg reels. So this should last a bit longer too. I also changed from 0.8mm down to 0.6mm in order to make it easier not burning through thin body panels.
The most annoying thing about running out of gas on the weekend was i just got the setup on the machine bang on, and was able to lay down some good clean welds.

Still got quite a bit of welding to do, so once a new bottle arrives we will be back in action. Still thinking a roll over spit would be a worthwhile investment, but we will see.
The next plans for welding involve trying to get hold of a Watts linkage kit for a Mk2 Escort and convert it to fit on the old Capri.

[Simon]

Hi Will,

The best move I ever made with regard to welding was to swap to BOC Argoshield in the tall industrial cylinders with the appropriate regulator. There was an immediate improvement in weld quality (using my ancient SIP Migmate 120) and it lasts for a very long time, just remember to isolate the bottle after use to avoid any loss due to small leaks. There's cost involved initially but it's much more economical in the long run. It looks like Solway Gas Ltd is the BOC stockist in Dumfries.

Simon.