Home

Well today i went out and bought all the stuff needed to get the car ready to lay on the colour, I've booked a couple of weeks off starting in a fortnight so I intend to get the car painted. There's still al small amount of welding left to do so I'm going to get this out of the way this week, there's a small patch needed to one of the 'A' pillars and also the boot lock mechanism needs to be sorted out. the drivers door was not welded when the rest of the car was done so I'm hoping it doesn't hold any surprises when I take the paint off. I ordered some repro quarter-light rubbers which turned up the other week, I fitted these last weekend - the first part of the car to actually be re-assembled - WOW - a piece has actually been put back together. There's some photos on the pictures page of the finished articles. If you're in need of replacing these items then I can recommend these rubbers, they're manufactured buy a guy in Thailand, he also manufactures screen rubbers and some other stuff too such as turn signal rubbers. The price is very reasonable too - a lot cheaper than NOS items.

I spoke to the guy who's assembling the engine for me, it looks like it should be ready in about a month, so hopefully with all going well the car should start coming together. the only major stuff left after that is the header system and interior.

I sourced a NOS ashtray from a registry member who was selling all his stuff due to a new arrival (of the human kind) - this is good as the one I had was not brilliant - even after having it re-chromed, ideally it could have done with having the pull re-chromed again as this did not come out brilliant (it still has one or two pits in it), I'll probably sell it on as it is though.

I'm still on the lookout for one or two parts, namely headlamp trim rings, these are unique parts and whilst I have some similar ones I'd like to get the correct items if possible as they really show up as being different to the spot lamps, I still have a lot of the rubber trim items to source, but thankfully some help is available here as the Lee Hedges of the registry has compiled a list of alternative trim sources, if you're not already a member of the registry and you have a type 34 Ghia I would strongly recommend joining as it's information like this that is of invaluable help.

I've found some more parts that need to be re-chromed or polished so a trip back down the chromer's may well be in order soon - these include some of the seat parts and the rear window catches - I forgot these before as they were tucked away up in the loft.

Hopefully next time you read this I will be a lot further on with the paint, if not with some luck completely finished, but having painted a couple of cars in the past I'm under no disillusion on how long it takes, fingers crossed I will get it done.