The Darling 200 rally was on, so no car progress was made on Saturday.

Sunday was finishing off the cage bars, and the plan was to get the floor done.

The cage is now done, but as usual I found another bunch of things that I should finish before the floor goes back in, so I decided to leave it out for now.  No floor makes access to inside the car and under the dash a lot easier, at least that is my excuse.

All of these other things that I found involved burning myself with the MIG welder and then the grinder, so I figured I might as well get side tracked and go and do something else that sounded more fun.

I got the inserts for the suspension arms machined.

And with that now done, and the suspension arm jig done I figured why not make the replacement arm…  It’s not procrastination if you are achieving things, right?

After I weld on the ball joint mount, its ready for paint and then that task is done.  If time permits I want to make a set of spare front arms, we’ll see how things go.

What other excuses do I have?

Oh, the radiator need to be modified, that is a good excuse.

I cut off the stock shroud mounts, made a new bottom outlet and cut off the filler neck/cap.  The bottom outlet was replaced by a slightly bigger one, the same size as the water pump inlet as its much easier to find hoses with the same size on both ends.  Welded up the old mounts, and sealed off the radiator cap opening as I run a separate coolant header tank.

Added the air bleed and the return lines to it, and made some threaded inserts to mount the fan and and welded those into the rad.  Now all I need is a fan that has blades on it….

Finished off a bunch of other odd jobs in a desperate attempt to not have to do any more overhead MIG welding.  After those were complete, I had to man up and fire up the welder ready for the joys of showering yourself with red hot metal.  There were a number of places up under the dash area, and in the foot well that needed to be welded from the inside, to join the original car to the donor parts, so I got all of these places welded back together, with a touch of seam welding to ensure its all stronger than is was before.

Sadly it was now getting too late on Sunday night to fire up the angle grinder for an hour to clean everything up ready for paint, so that will have to wait – shame…..