Kevin Abbott

Make a bid. Looks like an 1800 exclusive.

Sorry for the delay in updating. over the last year we have done the following. braced the axle boxes. Put an original tunnel back in after I had many years ago removed one that wa a perfect and replaced it with a Sierra one. Replacing it took more time than we thought as it was a lot of welding and dressing. small Areas of rot were cut out and replaced. The front panel was previously on the Mancona when I bought it as a 1800 hatch. The lady had spent £1500 on a new front end back in the day when they were available ( including fit and paint ) so when I cut the front off it to make a Mancona I kept it for the cossie. The spare wheel well always annoys me hanging down and I needed a place to put the battery so a boot floor was found and chopped up to make a mirror image of the boot floor. drain holes were welded up using 40mm diameter steel from eBay. Under side stripped back to bare metal, treated in phosphoric acid, then built hamber hydrate 80, then knocked back again and hit with a mannor zinfos primer. This is really just to stop it flash rusting whist we continue to work on it and tub the arches etc.. for the 400 kit. Once we have done a complete dry build of the car and made sure everything fits and works, and no other brackets etc... are required it will then be torn down again, primer flatted back to get a key for a couple of coats of 2k primer, then a good couple of coats of raptor liner in body colour. Hopefully it should protect it well enough. More pics that I added above but we’re not added

Glad to see you have got this and are doing some work on it. Manta rust. Chassis. You can cover it up but it will always come back to bite you. No point having nice paint if it’s fucked under it. Cut out the rot. It’s hard. Well worth it though and will out live your ownership. wing it and it will haunt you 😃

My brother and I restored and painted that years ago. I'd like to buy it back

It's a great way to make sure you crash your manta faster if you fit it😄

That looks nice, not to crusty

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.