Matt sent this further 2 or 3 paragraphs on his car build a couple of days ago which I could have posted yesterday (Saturday) except that Jane and I went to a wedding (Monika and Matthew) in a little town on the road to nowhere called Sedan. Well, come to think of it, it's on the road to Swan Reach. It is however, only about an hour's drive from Kapunda so that's a plus. Monika is Jane's second cousin and Matthew is a former banana bender (still drinks XXXX). XXXX has that name because Queenslanders had trouble spelling beer, I'm told. Anyway, there was a very large contingent of sunshine-staters over for the wedding and with no accommodation in Sedan, they all stayed in Tanunda. From there they hired a bus to go to the wedding and all at once this bus load of rabblers rolled into town. Anyway, we all had a great celebration in the Sedan pub and that's why there wasn't a blog post yesterday. Among the bananaeaters were Peter and Anna Kordic. Peter is a close friend of Reg James who is the partner of the groom's Mum, Margaret. Peter is desperately trying to get his Mark 7 completed for Easter (the same Mk.7 that's been mentioned lately as a forerunner to Matt Jenkins' wellbuilt chassis). Reg runs a red XU1 in historic events along with Nagari owner John Davies, including Speed-on-Tweed, Mt. Cotton, Leyburn Sprints etc. It was good to hear about the up-coming Mt. Coot-tha hillclimb and I wish I could be there. I would expect that the raising of the roof of Matt Jenkins' car was also inspired by Peter's Bolwell. Peter bought his from Richard Windham and I'm witness to that car not only having the roof raised, but the floor lowered as well, Richard being "six foot six in his socks". Richard and Deidre had been telling me about the work going into the Mark 7 by the new owner and here it is, we've even seen a couple of photos of the chassis now. With Peter using the V8, the Holden 6s have gone to Reg for the XU1s. We're a close-knit little bunch aren't we. Anyhow, I've digressed for long enough now........
From Matt comes:-
"The 2 pics of the chassis from Sam are of a different chassis that George modified for a customer about 18 months ago. That chassis is different to mine and the car is very nice, but George and I learnt a lot from it and based the design of my chassis around the problems encountered with the one in those pictures. Luckily, we started building my chassis the week before the other left, so it was a great reference point to build mine next to. For example, the chassis needed to be cut away to allow for the rear sparkplugs. I think the engine also needs to be jacked up to remove plugs. Also,the engine must come out to get the gearbox out. (notice the removable underbelly of my chassis using rivnuts to allow the box to drop out the bottom). My engine and box are mounted by 3 bolts only. Also my chassis rails have extra bends to go around the heads and allow easy access to plugs and then the the rails hug the T5 to give the driver an extra 50mm of leg room width (tunnel is now 100mm narrower). This as you would know, makes a huge difference to the very small leg room allowance. This allowed me to cut the seats and widen them 40mm (they looked lost in the now spacious interior!)
We also took the opportunity to set up the coilover Jag rear with 6 different positions of adjustment. This combined with the coilover height and firm adjustment to get the rear geometry just right for the driving conditions (I like to visit Queensland Raceway with George and I plan to take the Mk7 at any opportunity!)"
Click on this last picture of the tyre to blow it up. It looks great.
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