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.
