Progress on rebuild

The rebuild process is still plodding along, with a few bits and pieces making their way to the new shell. The car is now only missing a front lower control arm, so is basically rolling!

Upon closer inspection, there were a couple of further casualties. The turbo housing is cracked, and the impact has bent the impeller. The diff housing is also smashed, so I have two important decisions: what size turbo to replace the broken one with, and what sort of diff to run going forward.

The diff decision is pretty straightforward - get a limited slip one with a mechanical centre, if the budget will stretch.

The turbo decision is a little trickier, becuase there are a couple of affordable options in varying sizes. I want something that will still fit on a factory manifold, but am considering something with a larger compressor wheel. This has the potential for more boost and greater horsepower, but will also create more heat, put greater strain on the clutch and gearbox, etc etc.

Both decisions will probably be determined by budget, so i'll update when a decision has been made.

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Stripping the wreck

Greg from Autosport kindly opened up his workshop to us on the ANZAC day holiday, so only a week after the incident, we got to work stripping the crashed car. It was great to get the ball rolling and start to move on so quickly, as I was feeling pretty down about the whole thing for a few days.

Greg was an enormous help to Sean and I (or more accurately, Sean and I were a little bit of help to Greg), and within about 4 hours we had almost everything off the car excluding rear suspension and interior.

The following Thursday, my brother Sean donated his day off to get the remainder of the car stripped down and the engine out. With some more help from Greg, the car soon looked like this:


The shell will be wrecked and written off with the RTA in the coming week.

The good news is that there is a decent amount of stuff from the car to donate to the new shell. The engine, radiator, piping and exhaust are ok. The gearbox and tailshaft are fine, and most of the rear suspension arms are re-usable. The coilovers also appear to be ok.

There were also some casualties. A couple of the wheels are buckled, and the diff housing is badly cracked. The CV's have punched a big dent in the end of the driveshafts nearest the diff, and will need replacing (see pic).

On Thursday, we'll begin the process of transferring stuff to the new shell.