I hope lockdown was kind to everyone and with any luck it might be our last! The factory has been a busy place since the roller down was opened once more with solid progress made on some of our long term projects. Bruce has been chipping away at Will’s Lancia Stratos with the cooling system being completed, large amounts of the remaining fibreglass panels finding their home and being fitted up for the final time – this was a bit of a challenge as we have no instructions or anyone to ask what they are and where they go, there was a good while where we thought a part of the rear inner guards were helmet holders in the boot but alas no! The fuel system has been planned out and all the parts have arrived and are ready for installation, the battery has been mounted and the handbrake system is almost finished so it has been good to focus on this car as it has been stagnant in our shop for quite some time.
The Factory Five 33 hot rod I featured in last months newsletter is sitting under a cover waiting for the painters to call me a say they can take the car, a few small jobs have been done to get it finally ready for paint like sorting out the bonnet, which if allowed to open too far would smash into the front grill so we have fitted a gas strut system to limit the amount of travel and stop some soul (aka Me) from damaging it in the future. We have taken this for a couple of blasts up and down the driveway and it certainly has some boogie – 650hp from a fairly angry LS3 V8 and to my surprise it felt like the handling could be promising too but I won’t commit to that comment just yet!
Andy’s Lotus Elan S2 has also been back in the shop for a full dashboard restoration. We imported a new walnut dash out of the UK, had all the gauges and switches restored locally and fixed a myriad of dodgy wiring. Now that it is all back in the car and working it is off to our trimmer Scotty for a good once over of the interior. It has been retrimmed at some time in the past but not to a very nice standard so we know Scotty will make a nice job of it.
We have some good news, our online workshop – The Fraser Pit is back up and running, we have two new Frasers to build over the new little while so we will be documenting them and our other projects on this and we encourage you all to log on, follow our updates and build your own garage. It is an awesome resource that we are lucky to have a part of.
I don’t normally write about Scott’s certification jobs but he has a pretty cool one at the moment. It’s a Superformance GT40 replica in Gulf livery a very tidy engine bay and I thought you all might appreciate a bit of pure unadulterated car p*rn so here are some photos.
