Midas Cars Forum - www.midascarsforum.com

I've done the fabled 100 with the old engine, haven't tried with the more powerful rebuilt engine which has a longer legged diff....

It gets a bit shaky at 135....(mph)

David I need to have a country lane blast in your car so I can see the difference between standard an mean machine

Not a problem baz but it will have to be in the new year as I am currently doing some work on them both over winter.

What are you doing on them if you don't mind me asking

I've a few things on the go a the moment but I'm doing it slowly.

Need to rethread the rose joints on the rear radius arms up to 5/8" thread rose joints from 1/2" plus a bit of beefing up in the cross parts of the tubing. So both sets of axles are off. Given that 5/8" is a quarter increase in diameter over 1/2" that's quite a bit up in strength. The problem I had was stress fractures running down the v in the threads of the rose joints. Not what you want on your axle! Rolled threads would have been better....

I'm fabricating a new bonnet for the new KAD head as the pulleys are more central than the old head. Same profile as before but with a smaller cam pulley bump. I see the mk4 also has a bonnet bump so I'm ok with that. Plenty of cars seem to have them when I look around. I also need to put the grp bonnet gutter in the body I trimmed off for the old head....so I will copy it off the coupe.

I seem to be doing a lot of moulding and grp work at the moment, having just duplicated a pair of rudder blades for a yacht so quite a mission critical part (easy as chips to do though). Hot glue gun, cartridge paper, parcel tape and plasticene are your friend here. The rudders used stainless inner stiffeners with closed cell foam section to fill out (and create buoyancy). Bonded together with a flexible bonding adhesive called crestomer. (Which I use for the inner panels of the Midas bonnet to avoid sagging). They use it to bond yachts hulls to decks so I know it's up to the job.

Major Tip number 1 for GRP moulding. Been there, got the t-shirt and tears. Don't bother with wax. Unless your doing loads of something just use PVA release and cut back with standard farecla 3G. You get same finish...just a guaranteed release. Just more polishing elbow grease. You can get release in matt and smooth finish.

I need to plumb in a return line to the tank for the fuel line for the throttle bodies and i need to swap over the 7 port head engine for the Kad engine which has been back on the bench too long.

The coupe needs a touch of freshening up as the obligatory micro blisters are back (quite the norm on painted grp objects subjected to our wonderful uk weather). Trim is needing a do over too as I want to make a nicer dash to suit the dididash.

Lots to do .

Today's silly theory.

Putting my GRP boat building hat on. May be the blisters are osmotic blistering caused by the amount of water that we find inside our cars !!

One of the theories with osmotic blisters is that boats affected do not have enough adequate breathing on the inside. Ie venting as the laminates are completely porous. This has been proved by a GRP tank being filled with water and hen sealed. 6 months later it was opened up and was completely dry. Also some boats have blisters that had never even been in the water.

Alternative theories suggest that a GRP product should be tempered or baked after being layed up to thoroughly dry it out. Some suggest that this can be done up to 2 years after layup. Then there's the issue of not having a barrier tissue layer between the gelcoat and the chopped strand matting layup, which could cause wicking of moisture through the gelcoat to set the process off quicker.

I certainly think the rear wings on my car have osmosis blisters due to condensation from inside the car so its not such a silly theory. The moisture finding a way out and the only way is through the paint. door seals is another area where moisture can be trapped. GRP panels on a car are not as thick as a decent size boat so it's all possible.

It's no big deal though. Just a little annoyance.

On a boat, the emulsion filled blisters stink of vinegar coming from the water/resin emulsion which blows the gelcoat.

All interesting stuff.