With a trip to the UK Looming, not too much has been happening to the Ghia of late. My search for the missing part for the gearbox has not been fruitfull as none seem to be available here in Aus. Without the 'missing link' I cannot progress any further with the installation of the engine and box unless I want to temporarily reassemble the gearbox until I can find another part.
I managed to sort out a fan shroud. Originally I looked at the Sharpbuilt units made here in Australia, the problem with these is that my case had been machined differently to accept the Porsche fan. The Sharpbuilt units place the fan a lot higher up and so the fan shroud would probably not fit correctly. If anyone is considering a Type 4 conversion, the Sharpbuilt units look very good, the have an intermediate mounting to fit the fan onto, the case still needs to be machined to accept the intermediate mount but the whole setup looks to mount the fan a lot better.
After deciding to get a fan shroud from Stateside Tuning in the UK to be sure that it would fit (Jim originally built the engine) I placed and order which duly arrived. The shroud needed a little amount of trimming as it looks like it might be designed to fit both Type 1 and Type 4 units, the shroud was already marked out where it needed to be cut and was pretty easy to cut with a coping saw.
One of the other things that I have been working on since my last post are the door and dash cappings. A short while ago I removed the trim strips from the door cappings and door cards and had them polished, before refitting them I cleaned up the cappings to remove the grime and applied some protective sealer. I used a stiff brush along with some cleaning solution to remove the ground in grime and then applied a coating of vinyl protector before buffing the cappings to a nice dull shine. I did the same for the dash pads too.
Refitting the trim was the reverse of removing it - simply slide the retaining strip back into the centre of the trim. Once in place, carefully thread the tangs of the retaining strip through the holes in the cappings and then gently bend the tangs back to hold the trim in place.I got the glass in the rearview and drivers door mirrors remade. The original mirroring was stained and in the case of the drivers mirror the glass was also broken. I took the original glass to a local glazier who specialises in mirrors. They perfectly reproduced the curved shapes and ground the edge to the same rounded profile. I refitted the rearview mirror up, the side mirror is currently at the chromers being rechromed and polished.
