Kevin Abbott

Dave may have beat the club to the finish line on these?

I have a NOS rear panel complete for a manta coupe. £700

A series ones were smaller. Same as chevette. Make sure you don’t downgrade your brakes mate.

There are pics and an explanation in the manta cosworth topic on how I did my 265.

I forgot to update this with the work I have done on the axle. 4HA axle had the original mounts cut off it and I made a new set using some laser cut steel supplied by Andy Rutts. Bottom bush is the original carlton one that’s going to be changed for poly flex. Top and bottom arms made to the same length as curts Ascona with measurements supplied by Nat at RP. Bottom pans are commodore and have rose joints at the end. Upper ones are cut down scimitar ones with rose joints at the axle end. Axle positioned under the car and levelled with the car. Side to side and up and down levels were set with plumb bobs, levels and angle levels and rack of the eye. The top and bottom arms were set to make the top one slightly pointing toward a fictional centre point forward where the two axis would intercept around the engine. The pinion angle is around 3 degrees up at ride height. But with the rose joints on opposite ends of the axle this can be adjusted. Finding the centre of the car inside was quite difficult as we found the sides were not identical. The centre was found and a laser used to set the cut guide. Slots cut out and group 4 boxes set into place, ish. I wanted to retain a standard looking interior with a back seat as I don’t like the look of no back seat and I’ve a blitz interior to go into this. So the box top height was set so a seat just fits ( foam removed to allow boxes to fit ) Car turned over and there’s a lot of box to trim off. I possibly could of made the boxes myself as most of the box has been cut away. Next is to remove some brackets from and old axle to put the billys on. Then look at the pan hard rod or using the watts linkage. then it’s all off again and sent to the axle builder to pit in the jag lsd and cwp of choice as I have a few ratios to choose from.

Brake res fitting were off a Citroen many years ago when having a walk around a scrap yard and I can't remember what it was 😀

It looks ok, i'd say making it shine more would be too much of a pain to keep it that way

Floors now in. Both fronts and one rear and 1/2 a rear on the other side. we had the rear floors in our parts stash and never seen them before. Never will now as they are welded in 🤣 A post on the drivers side fully welded in now. A post to inner wheel arches looked ok but I’ve ordered a pair of replacements made to order from Matt Belshaw. “ let’s have a look at the passenger A post and take off the outer “ said Andrew. oh boy. The inner on that side needs replacing too. scuttle panel needed a small repair so we chose to replace the entire thing and do a small repair on the replacement. Good job we cut the old one off as it was already two pieces and rusty. The passenger a post underneath the scuttle had been repaired by the previous owner with silicone and a pan scrubber 🤣 Some new items ordered too. A full set of poly bushes including the anti roll bar drop link and a coolex 70 mm core aluminium rad with fan and thermostatic switch. The frontera also arrived that’s donating its 40 thousand mile engine and the rest will be turned into bean cans 😃

Floor panels and A post covers only available from Leidinger in Germany.

Job of the day was to start and get some strength back into it so it can go onto the turner. A little poke with the screwdriver of death and all was not as good as it seemed. The drivers A post outer skin Was always going to be replaced as I’ve new ones coming in from Germany. Bit what we wasn’t ready for was the terrible state of the inner. It was barely there and what was left is very badly corroded. Replacing an inner A post isn’t a job we have done before, so what did we do? Yep. Jumped straight in 😃 The inner A post has the door hinges on it and that more of less hangs in space once the outer is removed and especially if the sills are gone too. some measuring and a few spacers required. Inner of the inner also needed some surgery as the rot had travelled. All parts not cut out were ground as much as possible to remove surface rust and a liberal coating of bilt applied. A piece of the screen a post was removed to gain access to the inner of the inner of the a post inner of the upper inner part 😃

This is the build of your car

About time

Interior looks grubby for a low mileage car.

Great find Andy. Looking forward to seeing it. Remember though, you can’t keep them all

I think finding all the specific bits bolts washers spacers and then finding the plastic bits to cover up all the bits we spent hours fitting is the hardest bit. Welding is the easy part of restorations. I’m enjoying the build again though.