After finding the car through Portugeuse classifieds, a mission in itself as i don't speak portugeuse, i phoned the seller, and again the language barrier caused serious problems, as he spoke no English.
Sometimes, things just seem to come together, and the following day, a customer of ours put us in touch with his sister who lives in Portugal, and through her translation, i felt sort of confident enough to book flights and start the challenge to get it back to the UK....
We flew ryan air to Porto, caught the afternoon train to Valenca, all seemed good. The owner was at the station to pick us up, and it all seemed rosy! Until we got to see the car....
The car was in good condition, but hadn't been driven for a year, had no portugeuse MOT, and had a brake pedal harder than mahogany! Somewhere in the translation this had all been omitted, as i was going on the understanding that it was good to drive, as we planned to drive accross Spain to Santander to get the ferry back to Plymouth.
We were determined to still drive it back, so a trip to the drive through Portugeuse MOT, many hours at a mechanics getting the brakes sorted and we were finally on our way... hearts in our mouths, as we had no idea how far we might get...
To keep it simple, the drive to Santander was awesome, beautiful scenery, good food, and the car didn't give any trouble. A really good road trip.
So an overnight ferry ride back, and the short trip from Plymouth to Cornwall, and we were ready for the work to begin.
With the Volksworld show as my deadline, there's a lot to do... and not much time to do it, but so far....
Stripped, then arches cut out...
then ball joint beam ditched and framehead modified to fit a link pin unit...
Some reinforcement TIG'd in...
arches removed at the back for some tubbing...
16 inch fuchs offered up... different, and bigger rims actually being fitted though!!!!!
oh yeah, nearly forgot, 2 inch gearbox raise thrown into the mix too!, Switched the nose cone to a bus unit, that way the linkage runs through the tunnel as normal....
Got the wheels this week, just waiting on the tyres.
The body is coming off the pan, and then work can start on the air ride system, and all the prep for paint....
I'll try keep updating as i go, or check out my blog for updates on all our projects....
http://www.autostyl.blogspot.com
