Update time.
So heres some pics that I didnt get until after I'd picked the 78 up from the panel shop, as the guy didnt want to spoil the surprise for me. But they need to go first to keep everything in order.
So heres the 78 in the spray booth.
I got to the panel shop as planned, Friday afternoon and finally got to see the 78 in paint!
We loaded some of the panels and a door in the back of my Astra that I was driving, loaded the bonnet and one of the front guard into the back of the 78 and pushed it outside.
I couldnt fit everything in with out risk of damaging some of it, so I arranged to pick up this guard.
This door and the radiator support panel the next morning.
The tilt truck soon arrived and the guy got the 78 loaded.
I followed him home and for the first time in over 3 weeks it started raining.
Luckily not heavily as the 78 had no glass in it.
The panel shop is only 15 minutes from my house so we were soon home and unloading the 78
The driver helped me push it into the garage.
It was by this point only 3:30pm, but I had to get to a bank appointment and then we were going out for dinner with my in-laws, so no time to play cars for me!
The next morning I was up again at 3am and by 3:30am I was in the garage.
Now.......
Time to assess the job the panel shop have done.
They havent done a bad job, its pretty bloody good really. I'd say I'm 90% happy with what they've done.
But they did let themselves down with a few little bits.
Firstly they didnt bother to clean off the old adhesive on the front passenger door, where weather shields were once fitted.
For this there is no excuse, it would have taken 30 seconds with a razer blade to scrape that shit off.
It looks f****** terrible!
I spoke to the guy about it and hes just like "Oh your weather shields will cover that when they go back on"
Well thats not the point, its not right and its one of the areas he is going to have to put right for me when it goes back in a month or 2!
Moving on to the other issues.............
When I dropped it off I told the guy who was there at the panel shop a few things I wanted/needed doing on the 78.
I actually walked him round the car and showed him a few areas and things I wanted doing and he some how managed to forget all of them and certainly didnt tell his boss or the other guys, supposedly.
I wanted them to seam seal the passenger rear door where I had scraped out the old seam sealer to do the rust repair.
So they painted it and didnt bother seam sealing it first.
The other area I wanted seam sealing was inside the passenger rear arch where I had done the rust repair, as there is a tiny gap.
And the other thing the guy forgot was the one thing on the whole car I wanted him to mask and save for me, the Araco sticker on the drivers door.
The bastards removed it.
But apart from those issues, it looks great and I'm very happy with the colour and how its come up.
I will buy some seam sealer and do the seam sealing myself before it goes back to them to paint and I will order a replacement Araco sticker as I want to keep the car looking as original as possible.
So...................
Saturday morning and I unloaded all the panels and door out of the Astra and where else to put them than the Queen suite, our last remaining, usable spare room that my wife had been busy filling with baby stuff in preparation for our first born.
To be fair I didnt have much choice as the rest of our house is all tiled apart from the lounge which has laminate flooring and I didnt want to put the freshly painted panels down on anything that might chip the paint.
With the Astra empty I finally made a start putting it back together!
Doors first.
Dug out all the door parts.
Fitted the little rubber door stops first.
Followed by the striker plates that needed a clean up with some steel wool first.
Front door seals next and it was so nice fitting brand new ones!
Thankfully I labelled everything really well, especially the seals as theres a lot of them.
Passenger side Rear went in next.
Followed by the drivers side rear.
I found the drivers and passenger side rear door seals, but they needed a clean, like everything else they were covered in paint.
I decided to come back to those and do something else.
I fitted the mirrors.
Fuel cap and lock.
And spotted they had painted over my Diesel sticker.
Rear lights next.
Interior light, door switches next.
Fitted the front 2.
But the other 2 needed cleaning as they were covered in paint.
So I decided to give a few things a good scrub with some hot soapy water.
One of the major benefits of having a partner who sleeps like a normal person is that they invariably arnt around when you want to do things you know they wouldnt approve of.
Like cleaning car parts in the kitchen sink.
All of the plastic trims off the handles needed the blue primer and matt black paint beneath that layer, cleaning off before I could fit any handles.
They were awkward and slow to clean but it had to be done.
Once clean.
They could be pushed into position on the handles.
And the handle bolted in position (along with the lock above it)
Starting to look good with the clean and shiny chrome mirrors and handles.
It was by this point 7am and Lexi and I went off to collect the rest of the panels and door from the panel shop.
All carefully wrapped up to protect that nice shiny new paintwork.
They all went into the queen suite with the others.
And all the blankets, duvet/duna covers and bed sheets, that I'd carefully smuggled out of the house the previous morning while the Mrs was asleep, could be folded up and put away.
I woke the Mrs up and got her to come and give me a hand to fit the rear rear doors.
All with nice shiny new bolts.
*At this point I was blissfully unaware of the horrors that lay ahead with the rear door.
I mean I knew there was a slight bit of paint damage from when I picked it up and it was stuck to their panel stand, but a tiny bit of paint damage like that can be put right when they fix the other bits.
No, what I soon discovered was that even though they look identical and most people would think they are the same, the rear doors on the 3 door 70/71 are in fact very different to the doors on the 5 door 78/79.
The 78/79 slopes forwards 40mm further than on the shorty.
Meaning if you fit a door off an LJ70 onto a 78 you end up with a dirty big gap like this!
The reason I didnt use the original door is because its got a huge dent where someone has reversed into something and pushed the spare wheel into the door.
At this point I decided to distract myself with other work on the 78 and try not to think about my monumental cock up!
So back to the exhaust.................
And another of my cock ups.
I didnt have a proper look at the EGT probe or the boss it needed to fit it into my down pipe. I googled VDO EGT size and got a thread dimension of 1/8th so found and ordered a stainless steel boss that size off ebay.
Only when I came to use it I found it was completely the wrong size.
When the probe originally came it had a threaded steel boss that I welded into my exhaust, then that double threaded adapter screwed into that and finally the probe screwed onto that.
So while I tried in vain to find a suitable stainless steel bung locally I had some good fortune while I was looking around in Supercheap Auto.
I discovered exactly what thread the EGT probe is.
And in a huge stroke of luck, the second bolt shop I tried had some stainless steel M12 1.25 bolts in stock.
It was complete chance he had them and he only had 4. He said he would never normally stock stainless steel bolts that size as they are too expensive so nobody wants them.
Now I thought about going to work and using the lathe to make a perfect boss, but decided that would waste too much time and I should just crack on and do it at home.
The first step was to cut it to length.
Luckily for me the bolts were continuse thread meaning I could actually keep the head on, which will be good if the probe ever becomes seized as it wont damage the exhaust pipe if I can get a spanner on the boss to grip it.
Cut it to length.
Marked across all the corners to give me the center.
Then after center punching it it was into the vice on the drill press for the pilot hole to be drilled through.
Followed by a 6.5mm bit.
I gave both sides of the hole a quick clean up with a countersink bit and then it was finished.
Drilled a hole in the down pipe with a step drill.
Used an M6 bolt to clamp it in position.
And TIG'd it in position.
Fitted the EGT probe.
I could then finally get the exhaust fitted, which would mean I could then fit the entire front end of panels.
Radiator support and inner arches went on next!
Next I assembled my latest tool/toy.
Definitely the best $30 I've spent in a long time, dont know how I managed without one for so long, they are incredibly handy.
So now I had some where safe and soft to lay the passenger side front guard while I fitted some bits to it.
These clips had to go on next, these are the M8 nuts that the inner arch bolts to.
First guard on.
Drivers side next,.
I needed to fit the new aerial next.
So the end un-screws like this.
That then gets pushed through the hole in the guard.
And bolted on with a bracket at the bottom.
I taped the new cable to the old one to pull it through the bulkhead.
Fed the cable through and got the drivers guard on.
Radiator went on next.
Followed by the little top panel.
The bonnet catch and the support bracket for the bottom panel.
Fitted the scuttle panel next.
Found and fitted all the bits back into the radiator support panel next.
And fitted the bottom panel complete with those sexy new clear lights.
Fitted that iconic badge on the passenger guard next.
I think its a real shame that Toyota stopped these badges with the 70, the 40, 60 and 70 all got them, then they stopped!
And that was day one of the reassembly.
I was pretty exhausted by this point (3pm) but if I hadnt wanted to spend time with my Mrs I think I'd have kept going until midnight as I was loving seeing the truck come back to life with every part bolted back on.
*Edit, had to split the update due to a 200 pic limit per post.
. Great work on that exhaust..........don't suppose you could pop over to Ireland when your going to the UK next time and build one for me
