VGJONO's 1976 GD Galant Daily

[VGJONO]

haha that is a roll of Duct tape hanging off of a bunch of zip ties haha

[VGJONO]

Decided to do some tooling around this afternoon with my turbo gear i have collected so far, all of it on the cheap but in what looks to be working condition.

Let the fun begin






I did have plans of making a plate to twist the turbo to face the correct way, however i think i might have a stab at making it all work with the gear i already have and in its current orientation. ive seen Much MUCH worse setups so cant be all that bad

[VGJONO]

Bolted it up to one of the other galants i have out the back to see if it would fit, turns out almost, just one small problem with the dipstick tube/dipstick clearing the dump pipe. This will be fixed by cutting the dipstick tube down, then cutting down a dipstick to match and re-marking it.





Cheers
VGJONO

[VGJONO]

So did my first long distance trip in the old girl on Friday, I am really proud of this car, I drove it from Brisbane to Coffs harbour and back, drove the 336klm to Coffs on 27L of fuel, and i wasnt cruising, i went via the Lions road which is a really sketchy, windy and nasty piece of road that goes across the border, and spent my time on the highway overtaking whoever wasnt doing the speed limit, and the old girl just hummed along all the way down and back.

This is the route i drove
http://goo.gl/maps/JFDcj

Once i made it down i stopped for lunch and sat watching a seagull picking bugs off of the front bar and had a laugh, sadly the little bugger flew of before i could grab a picture


By the time i got back the car was a full blown crime scene, bugs covering everywhere and the foul smell of kangaroo meat burning after i hit one that had already been hit and obviously dragged the exhaust along it, car stank the rest of the way home.


The point of this trip? well i now have a set of Galant Wagon springs for the old girl, should be a good upgrade once i sand blast them, get them reset and paint them.

Sadly though i think my plans need to go on hold, the rust is getting to this car something shocking, there are 5 or 6 patches of bad rust in the back end, and seems 1 or 2 of the doors have started to bubble. so i think its finally windows out time, i will repair the rust, respray the areas to the best of my abilities (more or less so they arent as noticable as a primer patch to get me through until i get a full respray) and then put it all back together.

anyways thats all for now
Cheers
VGJONO

[VGJONO]

Still been cruising the old girl around


Went to Matsuri and camped on the side of the track, ended up sleeping in the Galant as i couldnt be bothered setting up my bed


Cruised around the other night with Oddlyshaded in her GA.


And just the other day i picked up some Recaro SR3 copies for cheap to replace my standard seats that were falling apart. end results are good, still on the lookout for a set of proper recaro's, maybe an older style to look a little less out of place.


Sadly the old girls rust is getting worse and worse and over the past few weeks she has developed a violent knocking from i assume the rear end while accelerating hard, it is especially bad when turning left or right, im stumped as to what it could be, my father reckons it is a stuffed uni joint in the driveshaft. while under the car investigating i have found that the R/H axle seal is leaking badly so she is parked until i can get a bottle of diff oil and a new seal. rear brakes will need doing as well when the funds permit.

[Scorpma82]

Is the rust repairable?????

and my 1st guess for a rear end knock would be a broken axle.....but thats just a guess

[VGJONO]

all rust is repairable given the right amount of effort is applied

Turns out my knock was not in the rear end but was a flogged out gearbox mount allowing the gearbox to move around and hit things




chucked a new one in (lancer 5sp mount) and was good as new.

Cheers
VGJONO

(P.S ive noticed alot of my photo's in this thread that are hosted on facebook are broken if it doesnt come good soon i will compile all of my photo's into an album on another image hosting website and post the link)

[VGJONO]

Photo dump off all the missing images in this album, if the edit fuction ever comes back i might spend the time to go through and fix all the images.

http://s397.photobucket.com/user/Jonomo ... i%20Galant

Also have a photo


Cheers
VGJONO

[VGJONO]

More adventures of the GD sedan, split a hose and puked all her coolant out in the carpark at my Fathers shop,


Then the old girl's alternator kicked the bucket last Tuesday night, went and got a new replacement that was incorrect, currently waiting on them to get the correct one into stock. Meaning she is stuck parked on the patio along with my sisters GA Galant hiding from the storms.


Also went down to a small carpark meet and a videographer put my car in his video of the meet which i thought was pretty cool
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU1fzH0wh8I#t=49

Other random shenanigans and pictures




Cheers
VGJONO

[VGJONO]

seen i havent updated this for a couple of months, nothing more than a photo dump is going to go on and nothing is really new, Had a brush with the law (Officer ended up letting me off with the one major flaw with my car) and Got a quote for my rust repairs and respray to be carried out by a professional panel shop. I had plans of me and my father fixing the rust but at the end of the day my father is too busy with his Business to help me a tackle a project as large as this, and i dont have the welding skills to be able to do it, and i dont want to turn this car into welding practice. So now ive been given a quote of what its going to cost roughly and i plan so wait till i have saved up enough for that worn and then some to get other things done. in the mean time im still daily driving her and hoping i dont get pulled over again.

Anyways heres a few photo's that have been snapped of the old girl over the last couple months





Family cruise night, tried to go to the drive in movies, didnt work out so well as half of Brisbane had the same idea, the drive was fun though.



Went to All Jap Classic day followed by Downshift Feb meet. All jap day was pretty uneventful but getting into downshift we ran the gauntlet, Downshift is notoriuos for having police post up outside their meets and use peoples rear ends as their playground, luckily they for some reason let our convoy consisting of my Galant, TA22 Celica, Datsun Fairlady 2000, GC8 WRX, Nissan Tida and a turbo Daihatsu Mira roll straight through without any problems lol.



Cheers
VGJONO

[VGJONO]

Still saving up to get rust repairs and a respray, But the other day I took some more current photo's of the rust and thought I should probably share them here.









So to top off all the rust there were some other issues that had arose over the last few months, My rear wheel bearings were making noise after I replaced the axle seal that was leaking. So two new rear wheel bearings were fitted, then not even two days later I started noticing there was still a noise there, My first thought was my front bearings, but I had only replaced them 12 months ago, it couldn't be, and for another 2-3 weeks I put it down as my wheel alignment was the issue as on top of the noise I could feel a vibration through the steering. After 2-3 weeks I decided, no I need to service the bearings anyways, ill take them out and check them, and re grease them and put them back in. As always, the car demanded I spend more money and presented me with this....



New set of front wheel Bearings later and She is back to being comfortable to drive, Kind of

[VGJONO]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVo4mFiAYN4

[VGJONO]

So its been a while since I updated this at all, things seemed quiet and 90% of my photo links breaking kinda got me down, but anyhow a few things have happened since I was last on here.

In August I finally got around to organising to get the panel work done, In the end i opted to get all of the rust repaired and a closed door bare metal respray.

During disassembling the car lots more rust was discovered. really looking back, re-shelling the car would have cost me less in the long run, but whatever, its only money.

[VGJONO]

Continued.

The galant spent a few months at the panel shop getting all its issues sorted.












When it came to the colour i couldn't stray far from its previous colour combo, it just worked so well

[VGJONO]

Continued again.

Now this is pretty much caught up until last week when the car was finished off at the panel shop and I went down to pick it up, and wow does it look good.

While I was waiting for the call to say i could pick up the car I started on tidying up the hotwires for it. Paint stripper and a pressure washer and the centres were ready for coat of black wheel paint.





Then for the difficult part, i attempted to mask each spoke but after 5 minutes i got impatient and figured i would sand the paint off the edges, then it was suggested that i try some thinners on a rag to get rid of the excess paintm and that method proved to work extremely well. I got one wheel finished and ready for polishing and another painted before i got the call from the panel shop to pick up the galant.






The drive home was tortute, the whole way some nasty black clouds were overhead and as i got home the winds were picking up, I rushed to get it off the trailer and under cover and as you would expect with Queensland summer weather, the moment the car was under cover the sun come back out. Since then ive gotten a few things polished up and put them back onto the car, but between work and family commitments I havent had much time at all. I also fitted my Personalised plates that I got for my 21st birthday last year.




Anyways more soon
Cheers
Jon

[Scorpma82]

Wow, 1st of all...that bloody tin worm looked like it had a big appetite!!!!

And 2ndly, the car looks great with its new paint......I think redoing the black trims and the chrome work and she'll be complete.......well done with the progress

Also, good to see some activity from u again.....hope friends and family are all ok

[VGJONO]

Wow, 1st of all...that bloody tin worm looked like it had a big appetite!!!!

And 2ndly, the car looks great with its new paint......I think redoing the black trims and the chrome work and she'll be complete.......well done with the progress

Also, good to see some activity from u again.....hope friends and family are all ok

1st, Yeah it bloody did, turns out my wallet was on the menu

2ndly, Cheers dude, I am stoked with how it looks and cant wait to finish it up.

Cheers dude, things are going good on this end, how about yourself?


Not much progress on the car but I spent today on the wheels, I finished painting and removing excess paint today which took me forever, roughly worked out at 2 hours a wheel. Then I got stuck into polishing them. Im using Autosol and some microfiber cloths so I dont expect perfection but the difference is like night and day between the polished and unpolished wheel.



With any luck I will finish up polishing the wheels tomorrow and get them onto the car along with the wheel arch trims tomorrow.

Cheers
Jon

[mstrrab1992]

Those wheels look absolute mint dude. Can't wait to see the car when your done

[VGJONO]

Those wheels look absolute mint dude. Can't wait to see the car when your done

Cheers dude, neither can I, get more and more excited with each piece of the puzzle that is put back in its place haha.

Little more done on the car today, Wheels and wheel arch trims are on and I managed to get the bonnet trim sorted out and fitted up. Starting to really look like its old self now, just shinier and with less rust haha



Before I go any further now I'm going to invest some time and a bit of money into rust prevention. I was told when I picked up the car to try and get a hold of something called cavity wax, and family all suggested the usuals like fish oil and lanolin. Turns out there is a product called Knockout rust proofing or KO-66 that is pretty much all three of those rolled together that was brought to my attention by a friend and has been getting great reviews so figuring I might as well give it a try. Also sold by Supercheap so shouldn't be hard at all to get a hold of.

More to come soon
Cheers
VGJONO

[75wagon]

Looking good VGJONO

I'm glad to see you put the effort in and got this done. It looks fantastic.

I'm also looking forward for when you get it back together again, your pics of how is was looked great, looking forward to see what you churn out in future.

Dave...

[VGJONO]

Cheers Dave, I am glad I have too, it looks so much better now.

Feel like im posting everytime I do something small thats not at all a big deal, But im going to go ahead and post anyway. Ended up buying some of that KO-66 and using it today, I didn't go crazy with it in the doors just doing the lower sections and where the trim holes had been welded up, however in the boot I may have gone a bit overboard. Absolutely drenched the lower quarters and wheel arches and then continued right up the insides of each guard, then doing the bottom of the rear window on the inside doing underneath the parcel shelf and finally I did the spare wheel well as it has had water sit in it in the past. This stuff is really good to use and not at all expensive. $17-$18 a can, and I only used 2 and a half so now I have some left for later.






Also forgot I had this centre console lying around, Not sure if I want to keep it there or take it back out, time will tell.



Cheers
VGJONO

[VGJONO]

Got a decent amount of assembly done the last week, My parents decided we are hosting Christmas for both sides of our family here, and that meant all of the car parts I had on the pool table in the house needed to go. Well what better place for them to go than on the car :p So almost everything to do with the doors has been fitted, From trim and glass through to interior door cards. Also you will notice that the doors don't look too flash in the jams, this is because I only got a closed door respray, hopefully at a later date I can address this but for now I just have to deal with what I've got, and besides this isn't a show car, its a tidy street car that is basically driven for daily duties.

Another really neat thing I done during this process was I replaced all of the Bailey channel rubbers for the windows, meaning next time I wash the car I should get alot more water on the outside of it rather than in it :p
Cost me $11 a metre and was available at my local clark rubber, think I ended up using 8 metres of the stuff, probably could have done with 10 but I made do and left a few of the better condition older strips in the out of sight areas.







Now all I need to sort out is my Audio and put the back seat back in. Then it will be a matter of when I can afford to get the front and rear windscreen seals and get them fitted, Im hoping i dont have to stretch this process out past the end of the first month of next year, and ideally I will have it sorted within the first week or two of the new year as my younger sister has gotten herself a job and i can no longer rely on being able to borrow her car to get to and from work.

Anyhow hopefully more soon
Cheers
Jon

[VGJONO]

Little Bit more done on the Galant, im now at the point where im Finding things to do more than anything, The car really only needs the Windscreens back in and it can be driven, which hopefully wont be much longer now. But in the mean time I got the few last things done.

Firstly with the help of a mate I got my Audio all sorted out, Once I got the car back I went to fire up my head unit and it was dead, not surprising to me, it was $80 like 3 years ago and had been rattling around in my glove box unsecured all that time. Which really wasn't a problem because I had been planning to swap that head unit out for something with Bluetooth so I could do away with the ugly aux cord giving away the hidden install. So I picked up a second hand Bluetooth head unit off of another mate, thanks to previously mentioned mate who organised it. Also while the Head unit was out I sorted out a new glove box door as mine was broken previously. So after an after noon/night of mighty modding the whole audio system had been reconfigured and was sounding better than ever and looks super neat.
After that whole deal was done I neatened up some under dash wires and put the rear seats in. (note they look dirty in the photo's but they aren't, my phone camera had an issue)








Cheers
VGJONO

[brichman]

This build makes me want an old mitsy so badly my GN sigma wagon is way too new

[VGJONO]

This build makes me want an old mitsy so badly my GN sigma wagon is way too new

Do it, come to the dark side

Anyhow some of the reasons I've been broke since Christmas have arrived

Firstly something I need to continue the assembly of my car, New windscreen rubbers, now I just need to scrape a little money together to get them fitted.


Secondly something that is going to be awesome but in a few weeks will probably seem like somewhat of a waste of money, whatever, it'll be fun


More to come soon, hopefully
Cheers
Jon

[VGJONO]

Well, It finally left the driveway. Got the windscreens fitted Thursday morning, then ran around on Friday morning like a chook without a head trying to get the last few things buttoned up so i could drive it to work. luckily got it together and gave it a wash. First drive wasnt too eventful, Old girl still runs as well as it did 6 months ago when I took it off the road, I did however encounter a problem with the brakes at the first set of traffic lights i saw, Went to stop and my foot went to the floor, luckily there wasnt any traffic around and i pulled over and checked my fluid, which was mostly full so there must be a leak somewhere letting air in. Drove it to work and gravity bled the brakes in the car park, problem solved, Only other notable thing was I had gotten used to driving my sisters GA galant which is extremely slow in comparison, First proper mash of the loud pedal did catch me off guard I will admit. End of the day I am extremely happy to have the old girl back on the road.



Cheers
Jon

[mstrrab1992]

gimme wheels. nuf said.


Looks awesome! good work man!

[mstrrab1992]

TYRE SHINE PLEASE.

[llgc]

Nice job mate, can't wait to see it in person

[71GA]

Looks great.