My STDT Project...

[Goose]

Another STDT project!

So following on from my post in the intro section I thought I better start a build thread for my 205 STDT project.  This is my second STDT - the first one was lovely, but I sold it to FarmerGlen on here and replaced it with a rotter.  

This one has actually belonged to several of my friends over the years. I don't know much about it's history but according to the STDT register (it's a thing) the car used to often be seen at various drag strips rolling coal up the quarter mile.  The previous owner put it up for sale after the car deteriorated to the point where it needed some serious fettling to get sorted. He knew I was looking for one so offered to me cheap as a project.

As bought:



Doesn't look toooo bad... but the engine sounded like a bag of nails and the brakes were beyond awful plus it had been used for doing horsey things so everything inside and out was plastered in horse shit. Great. Anyway, myself and FarmerGlen collected it and drove it on a merry 200 mile jaunt down to Somerset where it's going to get stored/rebuilt. It pulled well, but was literally the most rattly XUD i've ever heard (which is saying something).

Amazingly it made it without any drama and a couple of weeks later I ventured back down south to see just what I'd bought.

First step was to clean it.



Fortunately being on a farm we were able to break out some suitable agri kit in the form of a monster pressure washer.



After cleaning - actually looked quite good!



Wheeled into the shed and remove the front end to see what lurks beneath: (if you look carefully you can see the garden hose pipe that the previous owner had used for the boost compensator pipe...)



Arses. I've never seen paint from the reverse side before...



Time for some of this:





And a touch of this (thanks Glen - he can weld much better than me...   ):



Tada, just needs the welds grinding back.






Hmm, well the other side can't be too bad can it? It looks solid, but why is the inner wing covered in bathroom sealant?  Ah yes, silicon sealant. The ideal substance to hide rubbish repairs. It's solid enough, but not pretty. I'll leave it for now.




I then lifted the carpet in the boot and found the corners of the boot floor to be looking a little sorry for themselves, so they were cut out and some repair panels were folded up and welded into place. Forgot to get any photos, but it all happens in Glen's time lapse video HERE.

Once that was done it was almost time to go home to return to work and the real world. However, I looked again at that shitty repair on the right front inner wing, decided it annoyed me too much and got angry with the grinder.



The mismatch of awful looking paint was due to me slapping some paint on it to stop it rusting, and then promptly burning it all off with the grinder/plasma cutter. If you look closely in the background you'll see Glen's STDT (which was my original one...) in a similar state of undress, but in much better condition!   

At this point the weekend was over and I had to return to the real world of work and responsibility.   

I'll post more updates soon! 

[Nathan1305]

Really interesting project  look forward to seeing more

[Goose]

A bit more...

Fortunately whilst I was away the welding fairies visited and filled in all the holes I'd made with some nice fresh metal. Hooray!



With that and the boot floor finished the rot was taken care of. So, onto my next visit down south. Not much photos here, but there is another time lapse.

With the car solid it was time to start working out how the front end is going to go together. The car came with a gurt big forge intercooler which was held in by gravity and luck (honestly, I have no idea how it didn't fall off on the journey south). The boost pipes went over the top of the radiator, which had been clearanced with a hammer resulting in the radiator basically being scrap. Woohoo. Hopefully we can come up with something better.

We made a bracket up out of stainless to hold the (new) radiator a couple of inches lower and a touch further forwards to allow for the boost pipes to come over the top and to also allow for a bit more clearance for the bottom radiator hose which has to squeeze past the PAS pump which is in the low down 306 position, rather than driven off the cam in the 205 position. This bracket also holds the intercooler in position. Some clamps were made to engage the rubber mounts at the top of the radiator to hold it securely in position and some extra lengths of stainless bar were used to hold the top mounts of the intercooler in position.

The pipe work was then mocked up, and fortunately all seemed to fall into place fairly easily. The air filter will most likely end up on top of the drivers side inner wing.

With that done it was time for a bit of masking up...



A jiffy later:



Well it looks a damned sight better now it's all the same colour!

Gratuitous time lapse video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwVFiQm3OBE


More soon!


[Farmer-Glen]

Kracking fabrication and kwality paintwork there....you must have had an expert helping you.... 

[Poodle]

Yay another one! Some serious rust repairs going on there, good to see her being saved.

[Piggy]

nice work fella

nice music too...careful with copyright mind

[Mattcheese31]

Video is top funny, well done, good work all round