After 3 years of sitting forlornly on my old driveway the 8 is now in my new garage ready to be worked on. So no excuses this winter! Gave the car a good going over today, removing some of the rusty panels and having a good poke around. I knew the car was solid when I bought it but was worried being outside may have taken its toll. Therefore I was pleasantly surprised to find nothing I didn't know about, underneath is completely rock solid with no rust anywhere. Front wings and bonnet were very rusty but I knew that and I have replacements. Under the bonnet there is a hole that will need plating - apparently a common place for them to rust but straightforward to repair
Stripped off wings and bonnets and removed interior, the interior floor looks rusty but its very light suface rust, nothing to worry about. So bodywork wise it looks like a pretty straightforward project.
Nice solid arches
Bonnet Off
Empty Interior
Originally the plan was to fit a high power Gordini Turbo engine but trying to get a gearbox that mated up to the original swing axle made that a non-starter - 200 ft/lbs being too much even for the strongest of 'boxes of this type - and they are silly money.
My new cunning plan is to transplant the engine from my Clio 172, complete with gearbox subframe and suspension into the back, so will be transverse rear engine. Also plan to do a budget supercharger conversion on the engine to run 5 or 6psi boost with an intercooler.
Fuel tank will move to the front and would like to get some turrets welded in the front and use the Clio uprights -maybe a Clio subframe up front too. Want to try and use as much of the Clio as possible although not sure how feasible this will be.
Alpines - GTA 3.0 Turbo, GTA 3.0 Inj (Project DD), GTA 6.2 V8 (500 bhp) , R32 Skyline GTR, BMW Alpina B10 635 Highline, Alpina B10 E39 5 Series, Jaguar 4.2 XKR, Laguna 205GT, BMW 120d.