Well holy snapping s**t!!!!
When I put it all back together today I slipped the old second hand belt off the Grey Ghia I wrecked out to see if everything lined up. The belt is pretty flogged out and nasty but it did the job.
It has been bugging me all evening that , yes that belt fitted but it was second hand and stretched , would a brand new non stretched belt fit up with the changes made?
This could end up being a pain in the a***.
I grabbed a spare brand new AU 5.0 belt I had in the spare room (don't ask ) and popped out the back to check it.
Fits like a glove!
It turns out that my combination of E series bottom pulley and relocated air con pump , has made the belt exactly standard AU 5.0 length!
WINNING!

I would love to tell you all it was due to my engineering smarts and by planning ahead , but f**k not even I can s**t that much. Just have to call it what it is.
Gotta love dumb luck!

This is just another classic example of your extreme engineering skills

Good on you. I usually have dumb bad luck.

Another afternoon , another couple of hours closer to being back on the road.............
A well known common problem with GQ/Mavericks is the rear spring towers cracking and punching up through the floor.
The problem is made worse if the vehicle has more power then standard , gets driven hard on and off road and is used to tow heavy weight.
Since I do all 3 (I have been known to do them all together at the same time also) I figured Id better sort the situation out.
Good thing I decided to as mine had started to bend up. Luckily they hadn't yet cracked and tore out of the chassis.
There is a bolt in plate available to brace the towers , but being a jewish C*** I am too tight to pay $120 for a piece of bent steel plate , so I decided to make my own up.

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The angles are welded to each spring tower , so if one wants to pull up it has to take the other one with it. Then if they both decided to bend up , they are pulled in towards each other which stops the movement.
I just have to fit a couple of pieces of 50x25 box channel in the centre to tie the 2 angles together which I will do tomorrow arvo.
Total cost? Zero. It is done with pieces of scrap steel I had kicking around from other past projects.

Another job ticked off the list!

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Only about another million to go!

Pretty much everything is dropped off so the gearbox can come out tomorrow afternoon. Then it will be motor out and onto the stand.
Fun times ahead!

A few pictures of the minister's Beast from last Saturday night.

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Not too bad at all for the daily!

Been chugging away slowly and dodging Murphys spanners.
Bought a set of GT40 heads from a Cobra GT Mustang.
Best bit about them is they flow pretty much the same as a GT40P , have porting potential , are cast iron so they will survive when its gets covered in swamp water and most likely the radiator filled from a puddle , run the E7 plug angle and they fitted my Jewish budget.
I can also reuse my Ford Racing alloy rocker covers and keep my 1.7 Roller Rockers.
Daz was going to modify my extractors to fit the GT40P's properly so I could actually change the plugs but it wasn't going to fix my leads being so close to the pipes , and it still wasn't going to allow me to use the Earls Pressure Master Exhaust gaskets again , which I want to do as they are the only set that hasn't leaked.
The heads were real cheap so it was a no brainer. Give it a few weeks and I will be ordering the new valve springs from the states and sorting the heads out.
Whilst it would of been the best to go to trickflows , I have to be honest and admit that the Mav is never going to be a race car. Also whilst it doesn't have a body and is sucking money left right and centre , at this point in time I could neither afford or justify the Trickflows.

The paint for the chassis and suspension/driveline has been decided on and bought.
Gloss black LIC-40 for the chassis and the suspension and driveline.................well a picture tells a better story.

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Pretty rude hey!

Started sandblasting today and run into some issues. Somehow the garnet had absorbed moisture so was clogging and pumping out real gummy. Also my current compressor isn't keeping up with the sandblaster.
So Don took me shopping this afternoon and bought me the biggest single phase compressor available! Pumps over 310L per minute , has a 90L storage tank , twin airlines and built in reg and water trap. Its an awesome piece of kit and is actually a trade compressor not a home one.
Weights about 90kg and is too big to fit in the ute , so its a trailer job.
It comes in Tuesday , cant wait to have a play with it!
Even with the sandblasting issues I got this far today.

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Will wait until Tuesday when the bad boy comes home to do any more. The sandblaster is great. When it hasn't clogged and has a good head of air pressure , it just tears through the paint , unfortunately it makes a huge mess.

So getting there and have a lot of work planned out and setup to be done.
Before too long I reckon there will be a resemblance between me and this picture.

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Nice work Matt, you are progressing well. New compressor should do some damage.

Not sure about the pastel green though..............

Sandblaster doing an awesome job mate! What a good girl Donnie is! Buying you big toys like that.... what does she want in return?
Go the green on the driveline and springs etc. Gonna look like a monster truck!!

Sandblasting.
A very slow , long , dirty , labour intensive job that sometimes makes you wonder what the f**k you were thinking when you started doing it.
But it has its rewards.

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Very nearly finished it. Just have the rear section , a couple of crossmembers and underneath the channel to do along with various brackets etc.
Progress has been nowhere near as great as I hoped but a couple of wet days , waiting for the new compressor and setting that up and then overtime at work every afternoon last week slowed progress to an agonising crawl.
Was hoping to start painting the chassis next week , but now they are forecasting a week of f**k rain! Oh well take it as it comes.
Epicness gets picked up next Thursday night. Somewhat expensive , yet the right price at the same time and I wont be in the position to require it for a bit , but I just couldn't say no.............................

Why are you doing this you ask? Coz you said you would do a real job of it this time!
Will look epic when done!

All this progress is exciting!

Nice progress man! Keep at it!

Cheers

ToranaGuy

Cheers guys.
Off to buy some more paint tomorrow in another bizarre colour.
I figured out the best way to attack it is to paint up all the suspension arms and mounting points to have it all assembled when I paint the chassis.
The suspension mounting points on the chassis need the arms all removed to get into them to blast them properly and Im not keen on accidently blasting the new chassis paint.
So I will remove all the arms and blast them and the mounts , paint them all up and reassemble and then paint the chassis in one hit while it on its wheels. Obviously I will mask all the freshly painted arms up.
Better access and moveability will make a better job.

I like the plan. I wish I had the space to do the same to my panel van.

Cheers

ToranaGuy

Is that an auto model brake pedal sitting on the cross member?
Can I have it, or have you thrown it out? ?

Keep at it, you're doing great......

Cheers

Daz

Thanks Daz.
It is an auto brake pedal mate , but unfortunately its one for an AU.
As has been typical lately the auto Maverick one I had was chucked out as no one had a use for it at the time and I have no space...................