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Manta restoration - South Africa


Moomin007
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Hi all,

Here are some pics of the Manta that I'm busy restoring. Fortunately there is minimal rust (thus far, thumbs crossed) so it should be a relatively straightforward job. It is still in process of having the paint removed so I'm hoping I'm not getting any nasty surprises!

Here the fenders have been removed to check what's going on underneath - not too bad

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Fenders are still in good shape. Slight rust around the mounting hole for the bumper but easy to fix

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Engine bay looks alright, just very dirty due to years of not going anywhere!

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Crossmember/subframe looks to be in good condition but I'm going to remove that anyway to clean/spray all the parts. Will probably get that done over the weekend.

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Engine is (as is to be expected) very very dirty. Started cleaning that last weekend and will continue with that this weekend. The motor turns but is very tight, so i'm hoping there isn't rust on the inside. Oil was never drained but it looked to be in OK-ish condition when I drained it. I'll open the engine up to check the condition of the inside. I'm going to be taking the oil pan and rocker cover anyway, so might as well remove the head and ancillaries to check condition. I'm trying to avoid an engine rebuild on this one so hoping all is well. Engine number shows this to be a 19S

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I'll be putting on the Minilite rims that came off my Scirocco race car. It's a perfect fit - will just need to find 13" tyres that are wide enough...which could be a costly exercise. Might just go to a nice set of aftermarket 14 or 15 rims if the 13" tyre set proves to be too costly

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So far so good. There are a couple of nasty rust spots where I'm going to have to cut panels out and weld new panels in but the general conditon of the car is ok. The seats and dashboard have already been sent in for refurbishment. Now just continue on the way I'm going now and get the car ready for prep.

Joblist for this weekend:

  • Keep sanding and stripping paint!
  • Strip engine to check condition
  • Remove subframe if time allows
  • Cut out rusted panels (might wait until all paint is removed first though...)

i'll be keeping you all posted on the progress...

cheers,

Derik

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13 minutes ago, Julian said:

This should be another interesting project to watch the progress on Derik. How old is the car?  where in S A  are you? I have some MANTA badges but they are off "B"

Hi Julian. I'm based in Johannesburg. I'm quite excited about this car. I've always wanted a Manta (more than the GT, which is the one everyone wants. Well in SA they do, anyway) so with owning this car, I would've owned and driven all my childhood heroes. (The other being Volvo 850R, VW Scirocco Mk 1 and Audi S2)

I'm not sure how old it is but I think it's a 1971 model. I'll have to check the papers for that, but I'm thinking of seeing 1971 somewhere on the documentation.

EDIT: Could you show the badges you have that are from a "B" Manta?

Edited by Moomin007
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33 minutes ago, ®evo03 said:

Sorry, dont see any rust, rust needs to have gaping holes! :P

Looks a nice solid project, enjoy

PHEW! Then I'm safe! :thumbup

22 minutes ago, IanMc said:

It looks great up top doesn't it?, whats it like underneath?

I like the colour too.

The only rust I've found underneath was an exhaust that is past it's sell by date. The undercarriage has got years of much stuck to it though...so once that's cleaned off a proper assessment will be made. It looks good though, so I'm sure it's fine to be honest.

I'm sticking with the colour...the closest three period correct GM colours I could find (so it seems) are Horizon blue, Strato blue and Signal blue. Once I'm ready I'll get samples of each to see what each one looks like.

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44 minutes ago, Moomin007 said:

 

The only rust I've found underneath was an exhaust that is past it's sell by date. The undercarriage has got years of much stuck to it though...so once that's cleaned off a proper assessment will be made. It looks good though, so I'm sure it's fine to be honest.

Lucky guy!, good luck with the rest of the project.

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  • 2 weeks later...

hi guys,

Sorry I've been really quiet the past couple of weeks...been really busy. Fortunately I have no work related activities to hold me down so I want to get a lot of work done.

I've mostly been cleaning engine parts on this car over the past couple of weeks. The car has been standing for years so there is massive amounts of grime and dust everywhere. So this is what I've been doing over the past couple weeks. Slow progress, I know, but I'm also busy with other projects so the Manta isn't getting the attention it deserves. So I've:

  1. Removed the rocker cover to remove the paint and rust. The rockers had rust on them so I had to remove those to get them cleaned. Need to reinstall them
  2. Removed the oil pan to do the same - remove paint and rust and repair small dents.
  3. Stripped paint off the engine block, head and timing cover. Still need to finish this but most of the paint has been removed thus far. Apparently the original head on the 19E/N/S engines were painted gray. Can anyone verify this?
  4. Cleaned gasket residue from the engine block for the oil pan. Will clean off the same on the part where the rocker cover goes.
  5. Engine turns nicely so I'm quite sure the inside is in pretty good nick. Visual inspection confirms all this. LOL

I found some rust on the sills but not major. Will need to cut and weld a couple of sheetmetal panels to fix that - but that is the only amount found so far. I'm quite fortunate (Fingers crossed) that there isn't huge rot on the metal. I haven't got pics of that but will take some when I'm at the car on Tuesday.

·

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So i haven'd made the progress I would've liked to but it's coming along nonetheless. I'll keep you all updated as we go along! 

Cheers,

Derik

 

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So today I removed the lifters to get them cleaned and will be reinstalling them with the rockers soon.

Just continued cleaning some stuff today, including the engine and got bored and painted it as well.

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in the process of removing paint and rust from various parts:

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I'll continue cleaning and removing rust from parts. The car is standing at a panel shop which is closing down soon for Christmas break so I'll only be able to really start doing bodywork after Christmas so in the mean time I'm getting the engine ready!

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6 minutes ago, ®evo03 said:

Any tips on how you cleaned engine, alloy and cast iron, well done,  good job! 

Thanks for the compliment!

The whole engine was painted to I did about three or four rounds of paint remover to get everything cleaned. Then I use my pressure cleaner filled with engine degreaser and pressure cleaned it with that, then for the cast iron parts I used a wire brush and scrubbed the hell out of it and blasted it again with degreaser and washed it off.

For the timing cover I washed it with pressure cleaner and degreaser and brushed it all off with a paint brush and rinsed with pressure. Then I did some blasting with soda to clean the remaining dirt and grime and paint. I'm going to soda blast it again because there is slight overspray and a couple of spots I missed where old paint is still stuck

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  • 3 weeks later...

So I removed the timing cover to clean it properly - this is what the engine looks like. Not too bad to be honest

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Had the dashboard redone...

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Cleaning a whole bunch of plastic parts...

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I've got about three different cluster binacles so I took the best of each to make up a new cluster that looks the business!

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And here the fun begins - bodywork! I started grinding the various rust spots I could see to see the extent of the damage. The initial welder (not me) did an absolute crap job and stretched a whole bunch of panels which had to be shrunk again by another more competent individual. Unfortunately I don't have a lot of pics of the process but you get the gist of it. All rust was cut out and new panels bent and welded in (crap job, as I said which had to be rectified but came out quite nice as the pics will show). I bent most of the new metal myself to the shape of the car...only for it to be ruined by a man trying to set my car alight!🤣

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Put in some rust protector/converter before the new metal was welded in

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I'm pretty sure this guy intended to kill my car! 🤣 Just kidding. After the first couple of hours of welding he realised the nozzle wasn't up to the task and it was replaced with another one, whereafter the welding got MUCH better.

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Massively botched job with new and metal stretched like hell...

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Started clearing out the wheel well. I wanted to put in a heat gun and remove all the old stone chip type paint but time did not allow this unfortunately.

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Welding started to get fixed and metal crimping applied

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This rear section was completely destroyed and some previous panel shop went in with glassfibre - this is the new plate welded in

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I removed the entire front suspension to give it a good cleaning. Once again, I'm cash strapped and didn't have loads of time but ideally I would've liked to remove the control arms, anti roll bar etc and clean and paint them individually. I do however have another car so I'm going to strip that front suspension out and clean and paint it properly to transfer it to this vehicle

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Here are some shots of the car during the process of getting it prep'd for spraypainting

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This nose section was a headache. The entire section was warped and bent out of shape so the guys beat the crap out of it and did some heat/cold crimping to get it back into shape

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Some more shots...

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Didn't turn out too bad where the messed up plates were welded in...

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I decided to with L224 - Signal Blue as the colour for the car. Doesn't match the old paint exactly (I'm thinking the other colour was closer to "Horizon Blue"). It looks much better in person than on the picture so I'm quite happy with my choice on colour. In general I don't like blue cars but i reckoned I'd be "bold" with this one...

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And then finally...some REAL progress on the car...

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This entire post was work done in the past two weeks (bar Christmas day) so we've really been working hard on this one. And it shows. I can't wait to have this car rolling! Another exciting discovery I made is when removing the front suspension I noticed the brake calipers are identical to ATE calipers found on the Alfa Romeo GT Junior 1600 so I went down to my local Alfaholic and got two calipers (this car only had one for some reason...) for free. They need some TLC but at least I've got a matching set now which I'll be refurbishing and painting soon.

EDIT: Wanted to add - the underside of the car is a bit rotten as well. I'll need to tend to that as well but it'll have to wait for now. I noticed a couple of spots where glass fibre had been inserted so that'll need to be removed and fresh metal welded in

Edited by Moomin007
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And the colour is on...L224 - Signal Blue. Turned out quite nice to be honest...now the hard work of getting everything assembled begins!

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At the moment the guys are busy doing a flat and polish on the entire car to do the finishing on it. I'm quite happy with the way the colour came out. It's something a bit different, which I like

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On 05/01/2019 at 17:58, Moomin007 said:

EDIT: Wanted to add - the underside of the car is a bit rotten as well. I'll need to tend to that as well but it'll have to wait for now. I noticed a couple of spots where glass fibre had been inserted so that'll need to be removed and fresh metal welded in

The car is looking really nice, great job.

Surely it is the time to tackle the rot underneath though?

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