General Torino progress

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General Torino progress

Joined
Apr 14, 2006
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It's been a while since I last reported progress with the Torino so I thought I would give you all an update.

So far the tunnel is finished and all work on the back is done. The tank and exhaust took a while but they came out a lot better than I expected in the end. The tank worried me the most. It is mounted as close to the floor as possible. This means that the top of the tank is above the chassis rails. The breather has to duck down below the rail before going up to the filler. I was worried that the tank would not fill properly but a test run with water showed that it was not a problem - phew!. The tank is pretty small anyway and if it could only be filled half way I would have to stop at every fuel station:eek: .

Underneath it now looks very tidy with a nice coat of schutz (spray on underseal). Most of the panel work is galvanised but the underseal will protect it further and hopefully reduce noise as well.

The seat mounts are made for my nice Punto seats and most of the interior is back together. All the interior needs now are a few bits tidying up, seatbelts (punto rear) and some carpets. After re-reading the SVA updates, it appears that I may be able to get the car tested as a goods vehicle. This is a very good thing as the goods vehicle test is a walkover compared to the car version. One of the qualifications is that with the driver's seat in the fully rearward position, the distance from the back of the seat base to the front of the passenger compartment (the footwells) must be less than the distance from the back of the seat base to the back of the load area. At the moment they are exactly equal but a small stop on the tracks to restrict the seat movement will give me just enough to qualify :devil:

After discovering that the original engine was scrap I decided to go for plan B and take the engine out of the spare panda that came with the Torino. To simplify access we tipped the car on it's side. While working on the suspension I noticed something dripping from the crank pulley. An engine tipped on it's side a) shouldn't leak out of the crank pulley seal and b) if it does, it shouldn't leak a mixture of water and salad cream :bang: . This engine is toast. Several years spent parked up with water in the oil has made a horrible mess of the internals. On to plan C - I have an engine that was acquired among a whole lot of Panda bits. Strap that on to the Torino's gearbox and everything will be fine...

Er, no. Mk1 gearboxes don't fit Fire engines. Time for plan D - use the box that came out of the scrap panda. I didn't want to do this because I know the car was ragged round a field before it finally died. However the oil looks fairly clean and it isn't EP90 so the box may have survived unharmed. Unfortunately the aluminium plate that holds the CV boot got damaged while removing the engine (it was late and the the guy helping me was a bit too enthusiastic with his mini digger). No problem, raid the Mk1 gearbox. Nope, they are different. OK, raid the scrap gearbox I have. No, it's missing from that one :bang:. HELP - has anyone got a spare??

Today I got the new engine mounted in place and made up mounts for the Punto 60 radiator. It is nearly twice the size of the original rad so cooling should not be an issue :D. I had hoped to the the engine wired up and started today but rain put paid to that idea.
 
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