Our 1975 GC Hardtop (pic heavy and epic read!)

[Sparkington]

Awesome car and it great when you find people that make new old parts from scratch Cars and rain never mix :/ Mine hates heavy down pours and the engine cuts out lol But all cars when the sun is shiny and the car is running great life is awesome. Sucks about the screw in the tyre lease it can be fix as it not on the side wall

[Tj.]

Shit news.

Naomi's been in an accident. Someone pulled out in front of her and she couldn't pull up in time. The car is still moving under its own power and all the damage is in the guards, bonnet and radiator support panel. I was able to stick my head under it briefly and the chassis rails and the strut towers and inner guards all seem straight.
Her insurance has a salvage option.

Full up date soon.

[A112H]

WOW, that is terrible news TJ
Hope Naomi is okay and you can repair the car

[Tj.]

More when I can

[Tj.]

One more. It's at an insurance assessor now.

Heartbroken doesn't even come close to describing the situation.

[jvflash]

That's terrible news Tj, the images are saddening as you say,
All the best with the insurance company.
As per Jason's post, I hope Naomi is okay too.
Cheers, Flashy

[75wagon]

Sorry to learn of what's happened.

It's also particularly difficult to see something like this happen to something that has obviously had so much of your time and effort go into it. I'd had this happen to me in the past, and I dread this happening to my wagon (that's why I drive it less and less these days).

Make sure you let us all here on forum know if there are any parts you need to restore the hardtop to it's former glory.

Dave...

[A112H]

Very, very sad day indeed.
As Dave said if there is anything we can do to help. I have a set of wheel arch chrome, a chrome bonnet trim and a front bumper with light's I won't use. You pay the post and they are yours.
I will have a look around at what else I can rustle up.

[IncorpoRatedX]

Terrible news, i've loved this car.

please tell me you will be fixing it?

[Decrepit]

[Tj.]

Thanks for all the support and offers guys. Naomi's fine, just a little stiff and sore but mostly upset about the car.

It's still at the assessors and we're sweating on a decision even though I'm fairly confident that it'll be a repairable write off (we have a recovery clause so thats far from the worst outcome). I could be wrong but I reckon most insurers couldn't be bothered with something like this. Having said that she is with Shannons and they had the value at $5K which isn't close to what we've spent but it's a realistic shot at what its market value would be. Plus we get choice of repairer which means we can send it to someone that deals with classic cars rather than some knock shop that just wants to get it out the door asap.

I'm going to do a stocktake of parts at mum and dad's and see what I've got left.

Not quite sure what the plan of attack will be but I'm thinking we'll patch it up and keep using it as a daily while we continue to save to give the body a proper restoration, something we've been wanting to do for a while. We can't quite afford a no holds barred rebuild just yet and we don't currently have anywhere to do it. Our place doesn't have a garage yet and dad has spread himself out quite nicely in the space we left in the garage when we moved. He's been waiting a long time for that and he ain't gonna give it up in a hurry

More news as I hear it.

[A112H]

Glad to hear she is fine mate and not all bad news about the hardtop but still a sad time
Mine is with Shannon's too and I also have salvage right's, will be good to see how they handle an older car really.
As before mentioned, if there is anything we can do we are only a PM away.

[geezer101]

Oh dude, that is terrible news. Glad that nobody got hurt and the coupe isn't a write off as such. Normally the cost is nominal to buy stuff - it's the finding of the parts that insurance companies don't want to know about. With a bit of luck you have a stockpile of most of the gear you're gonna need to get it back on the road. Keep us posted as always with how this unfolds...

[Superscan811]

Tj, if you need a place to "store" the car for a little while, let me know.
Still have a little room over at Blacktown..

Cheers.

[BIG26L]

Thats a shame for such a nice car........ My partner had a similiar issue last friday with our calais. Its a major pain in the arse! I hope everyone is ok?

Now for the bad news....... There is no such thing as a repairable write off in NSW anymore. Once it has been written off anywhere in Australia it can no longer be re-registered in NSW full stop! I'd be doing some in depth checking and serious talking with the assessor and insurance company before they make a decision on whether or not its a write-off or not, if you want to re-rego it in NSW again.

[C_Fernance]

Those new laws don't apply to cars older then a certain age. Galants are well and truly older so no issues with that.

[orangelancer]

SHIT. cant believe i just saw this. this is heart breaking but thankfully Naomi is alright. im hoping that for your sake the car is repairable

[crystalmeths]

Glad to hear that Naomi is ok , very sad to see your car in that condition , mate all the best with the repair

[webby]

Hopefully insurance doesn't write it off on you, that would be a sad end for a very cool car
Good to hear the mrs is ok, in the end that's what matters. Cars can be replaced, people can't.

[Tj.]

Ok so I finally have confirmation on the cars fate and it's not all bad. It's still not great though.

The car has been deemed a "total loss" by the insurers as the cost of repairs was greater than the insured value as quoted by our repairer (we got to choose our own) and fortunately the insurers own assessor deemed it repairable, re-registerable and re-insurable.

What we end up with is a payout and the unrepaired car back. What I need to find out is whether or not the rego gets cancelled and how that affects the engineers certificate.

We should be picking it up tomorrow and I should get some photos up on Sunday.


The hunt for panels begins

[77GDWAGON]

This is good news that at least you get the car back and it doesnt get scraped or crushed.

[Tj.]

We we're always going to get it back. Shannons may not be the cheapest insurer around but they're the only ones that I know of that would give us a recovery option in the policy.
Had it gone the other way it would have broken my heart to have to part it out but I would have made sure it was all going to people trying to get their coupes back on the road.

But alas it didn't turn out that bad. Just can't kill the little bastard

[A112H]

[lchilds82]

Just seen this. Bloody sux, this car and glants pink beast have been all of my inspiration, was such an excellent build to follow and beautiful car, all the best for the future

[gaz914]

We we're always going to get it back. Shannons may not be the cheapest insurer around but they're the only ones that I know of that would give us a recovery option in the policy.
Had it gone the other way it would have broken my heart to have to part it out but I would have made sure it was all going to people trying to get their coupes back on the road.

But alas it didn't turn out that bad. Just can't kill the little bastard

Bugger TJ

Why is nothing like that ever happens to old shitboxes...

Good luck with round 2!

cheers
Gaz

[Tj.]

I managed to pick the old warbird up from the panel shop on thursday night. It was the first time I'd seen the car since the accident. Gotta admit, it was a bit emotional towing it home. I guess seeing it (and driving it out the shop and on the trailer) just drove it home

I had a good talk with the bloke that runs the panel shop and he says it's definitely repairable but it's going to take some realigning. The hit has obviously pushed the radiator support panel in but its pulled in the "wings" (bits that the strut towers are part of) too, but not too badly.

We weighed up a rough estimate of just straightening out the body and hanging some bodgy spare panels and finishing it in primer with a rough ball park of stripping the whole thing back and starting again and I'm a little excited to say that the old duck is getting the body resto we've always wanted to do.
Penny pinching commence!


In other news and a little OT, we picked up a new daily yesterday



Has go fast bits!
Adjustable coilovers, Chassis bracing, CAMS spec roll bar, Axis OG wheels with a fair amount of offset, some exhaust work and a gnarly looking cold air intake with a pretty meaty induction noise. It's a pretty fun little thing to drive plus it has AC and a functioning heater which Naomi's pretty chuffed about.

Best thing is, she picked it

I'll try and get some photos of the Galant up soon, Progress isn't going to happen in a hurry I will admit.

[7thsin]

omg
sydney roads for you TJ ,thats why when i evently do get my car on the road
it will only been driven on sundays for this exact reason, to many fuk wits out there
sad seeing that car in that state hope she fixes up nicely also
hope you did more damage to the other car

[orangelancer]

congratulations on the new purchase i look forward to seeing the gal back on the road better than ever before (Y)

[Tj.]

If there's one thing any of you are going to take away from any of my posts it's that when I say I'm going to post an update soon I actually mean I'll get around to it, probably four months down the track

Anyway, there's a reason for such a belated post. The fact is, I haven't touched the car since I unloaded it off the trailer the night I brought it home
There's a combination of reasons actually. Laziness ranking high among them, a temperamental Datsun of my own to contend with, the silly season and it's yearly consumption of about six weeks of your time plus a bit of overseas travel (holy shit you guys New Zealand has THE best roads and some of the most amazing craft beers)

Anyway, the whole time the poor old crate has been lamenting under my carport. I still don't have a garage of my own. It's remained untouched save for being occasionally started and moved forward to make a bit of room under the carport to do other work.
Anyway, we had a bitchin' storm here in Sydney's west yesterday and as I'm standing at the back door watching my backyard fill with water I realised that said storm was blowing well under the carport and on to the poor Galant
Crap. Can't let that go on for too long. That said, it's usually out of the weather but this was one hell of a storm we had.
Now I do have a car cover for it (a cheap nasty Superchump Autos jobbie) but with the front of the drivers side guard and what's left of the grille/lights arrangement it wouldn't last a day before being torn to shreds.

So I set out to pull a few bits off and make it a little more car cover friendly and I ended up removing most of the damaged panel work.
I'm going to apologise for the shitty photos now, I did it with my phone which usually works well but the light wasn't much chop and I was kinda rushing as the battery was going flat.



As you can see, not a happy camper. In fact there's an embarrassing amount of surface rust going on here



You can see where the end of the chassis rail punched clean through the bumper bar here. Not a promising sign.



Sorry for the shit photo, but here you can see the radiator support panel pushed right in, the fan buy the way is completely destroyed. If you've been reading through the build you'll recall I used the original Hyundai fan that had a rather large motor housing on the back of it. I was quite concerned that it had punched though the timing cover causing who knows how much damage to the motor.



Not much room left. Plus its bent the top tank on the radiator. So much for getting it re-cored



Again, awful photo but here you can see the marks left by the bolt head on the guard as it was pushed back towards the A-pilar. You can thank the crappy paint work that went over EVERYTHING for this. It's been kind of useful actually, wherever anything is bent or seams have been opened there's huge shards of crappy acrylic paint flaking off. Surprisingly there's not as much of it as I thought.



It felt a bit cruel to use a lump hammer and a crowbar to get the front guard off but it's scrap metal now anyway. It's just hard to take such brutish tools to what I once wrapped in cotton wool.
Anyway, after getting the guard off you can see there's a slight kink where the end of the webbing on the strut tower ends. The very end of it where it meets the front panel is a bit rat-arsed but all in all, not too bad.
I can't see any damage around any seams or any suspension components. The strut top bolts were painted over ( ) and there's no unpainted steel showing up anywhere so I'm assuming that all's good.
This will receive a much more thorough inspection from someone who knows what they're doing in the future, mind you.



Might need a new bar, although it might buff out. What do you reckon?



This shot is an important one. So accordingly I took a shithouse photo of it
Anyway, what you're looking at is the front end of the chassis rail (painted black covered in paint chips) on the drivers side with the outer edge to the top of the photo. Apart from some light corrosion from a lightly leaking battery (woops, ) it appears straight. This is a good thing.
There is a little deformity if you follow the seam to around about where that hole is drilled but aside from that all good.



Here's the end of that rail front on. The smooshed up section of it is the small section of rail that sits forward of the front panel. That's what went through the front bar.
The front lower valance between the rails is a bit bent and will need work however.



The headlight braket is completely rooted



But the front panel isn't quite as bad as I assumed. I mean, it's far from great but I had imagined much worse.
That said, I'm going to talk to my panel beater about just chopping that panel out of a wreck and replacing it all in one hit. Would save a lot of fiddly straightening work, what do you guys reckon?
The upshot of today's work however was that the motor wasn't damaged at all Save for a hose running from the throttle body to the thermostat housing getting pinched there wasn't a mark on it. I do think I've broken an engine mount though, I'm sure it's not sitting straight.

On a final note, the grille is destroyed. But almost the whole passenger's side half is still intact. I have a replacement grille (that'll need some work) but rather than just throw this away, I'm willing to give it away to someone who thinks they can cut and shut it with another grille for their own project. It's a long shot but if it's any use to anyone they can have it (I'm keeping the centre badge though, that survived ) Throw me a PM.

Same goes for the... uhh, front bit under the bumper bar. I've always called it a Beaver panel for some stupid reason. Anyway, driver's side is fucked but the passenger's side is actually nice and clean with no bog or dents or anything. If you want it to cut and shut with another one you're welcome to it.

It's not going to progress from here in much of a hurry but you'll all be the first to hear when it does.

[A112H]

Very sad to see TJ
When you are ready or the panel beater is looking for parts give me a yell. I have in my stash for you;
Mint condition
Straight front bar and lights
Guard indicators, sorry no chrome
Stainless trim for bonnet
Valiant or Chrysler bonnet badge
Beaver panel / front valance.
Good, usable condition
Bonnet

Might have a few more bits, just let me know when you are ready.

NOTE: These parts are not for sale people, so please do not ask. They are put aside to help a fallen soldier only.