Its a programmer's life for me - The Murtaya Years

Wow, what a difference a couple of weeks work can make. I've got the whole rear end back on with the brake lines in place. Handbrake is drilled and fitted. Fuel tank fixtures are all fitted. Rear lights are wired into the loom now. I've powered up the loom for the first time and some of it seems to work at least (door open switch, brake lights, stereo and nothing else ;) So, progress is being made!

It's been over two years since my last post. A lot has happened since. Marriage, separation, depression, a blown engine, a breakdown and cancer (not me).

I started work on the Murty again last Saturday after a 6 month break and I've worked on it every day since. After some fitting, electrics and drilling it finally dawned on me that the rear brake lines were in the wrong place. As a result, I've spent the last 2 days (8 hours of build time so far) completely dismantling the rear end to get the fuel tank out, put in the 20 p-clips that I had missed out and started sticking it all back together. Fuel tank and rear cross-member back in already. Rest goes back on tonight I hope, if I can find the missing rear diff nose washer. How can you lose a piece of metal that's almost the size of a CD?!

Photos available here

Thanks to the snow this week I've managed to get a fair bit of work done on the actual shell as well as a shed load of painting.

First off I've now undercoated all the rear suspension parts


And managed first pass main coat on them all too


Angie is getting fed up with the state of the house again, as our livingroom will atest to.


I finally got the inertia reels for the belts mounted so I'm clear at last to put the fuel tank in. And not before time too.


I've drilled my strut tops at the rear of the car.


And finally I started installing the wiring loom and electrics. Lots of it and its a fiddly job, but all the main looms are in generally the right place now. Now its the long job of fixing it down into place. This also required me to fit the fuse box in the engine bay...

... and I made up the brackets for the fog and reverse lights.


All in all its been a good week. I just hope the weekend goes as well. Going to try and do a second pass paint on all the rear suspension parts, fit the fuel tank + fuel lines + filler pipe, finish mounting the wiring loom and modify the loom to work with the new lights. Not much really ;)

Running Total: 120ish (painting is SLOOOOOOW)

It seems like an eternity since I last posted. Lots has happened in the mean time, but not much of it on the car. Illness, injury, paint and preperation.

Illness: Both Angie and I have had all sorts of things that make all sorts of things come out of all sorts of places :( Angie had it worse than me 5 seperate illnessess in about 9 weeks, but she likes to share.

Injury: Two of them actually. First of all I slipped using a rotary wire brush on a power drill in a really stupid way. The result was a two inch by half inch patch of missing skin on my right hand. The second was at my works christmas party on a bucking bronko. I managed to cut my right middle finger down to the bone. That was 3 weeks ago and its still not healed properly. It looks far worse in real life as what you can't see there is the fact you can lift up that flap of skin and it goes right down to the joint, tendon and bone.

It flapping hurts!

Paint: I never realised how much surface area of scooby there is. I started painting by hand, but it became apparent that if I carried on that way the finish would be crap and it would take me until after the wedding to even finish the paint. Today I bought me a compressor, sprayer and several other air tools. I've painted more in the last two hours than I have in the last two weeks and to a better quality too. Hopefully I should be able to paint the rest faster from here on out. Biggest issue is the prep work I'm having to do because whoever had it last put some kind of spray on pretty much everything underneath the car. Problem is that its coming off in places and needs to be wire brushed free before it can be painted over. I see this taking by far the longest of any of the next tasks.

Preparing: For the wedding. Venue, registrar, photographer, dress/suits, flowers, cake, invites, etc. The online wedding list is taking its time and has kept me busy for the last 2 weeks worth of spare time. It has to be finished this week though so time to pull my finger out.

Running total: 110 hours.

I know I havn't posted much lately, but I have been getting on. No, really...

The Scooby is now pretty much stripped. Just need to get the doors off it and get the winder motors out. Most of the stuff is now stored under the car...

or in the boot...

Because I'm running out of space...


I've been making things pretty. Lots of repainting and retouching. I'm currently working on the radiator and the rear suspension parts having finished the brake servo.


Some relatively minor alterations to the accelerator so the clip fits within the body shell.

Which allows you to mount the pedal box


I can also get on with fitting the fuel tank now as I finally have the roll bar fitted, though it still needs tightning down.


Running Total: 80ish

More stuff out tonight. Made some good progress at any rate. With luck I can get the whole strip down finished by Sunday. That will give me a week of evenings to clean and strip down before starting on the build proper the weekend after.


This is whats left in the engine bay. The lump and not much else...


The main drive shaft is out.


This is the wiring loom from under the dash.


Got the wheel out. That was an ordeal... Thanks for the tip Tom. Helps when you remove the bold holding it in ;)


The brake and LOUD pedal ;)


The Scooby radiator isn't small. I have to work in the fans though as the housing has corroded somewhat.


Oh noes! HOLES! Gonna have to either crack out the welder or just go stainless. Question is, do I have the moolah to replace 3 metres of pipe and a big old baffler in 3" pipe?

Right. Time for bed. I'm shattered. On the bright side, its only bloody Friday tomorrow :D

Its been a while since I posted. Lots of stuff going on, but little of it on the car unfortunately. Been generally busy visiting friends over from the States, going to Sundown and genreally being struck down by the lergy! Fortynatly my able assistant and I managed to make a good start stripping the Scooby down. Inside is half removed now, the engine is pretty much ready to drop and tonight I ripped out the main driveshaft, so I can start to pull the rear suspension off soon too.

Thats it really. Long way to go, short time to get there. Oh well, I didn't want evenings anyway.

So all the insurances are sorted now and we finally managed to move the cars round this evening. Both the AZ3 and the WRX are now in their final resting places (give or take a foot of shunting). Hopefully I should be able to start on the meat of the build now. I've had just about all the prep work I can do on the shell finished for a week now. I want to get on with it now!


In other news, we moved into the new office at work last week. I have used an alternative route home a couple of times (that I can only do if I drive myself in) that only takes 1h55 to get home and forces the Yaris into the realms of 60mpg. Yay for the shitty 50 limit on Suffolk strech of the A140. Still takes 15 mins more to get into the office though.

For those of you that know why my build has stalled...

I should take charge of the Yaris(OMGZBHP!) Wednesday and move all the cars into the right places by Saturday. I can finally trash, er, dismantle my donor ;)

P.S. Yes, I know that my grass is overgrown and my hedge is dead! Thats what a kit car does to you, don't you know!

Having cleaned up after the flood and taken some remedial action I havn't really done much on the car lately. This is mainly due to there being very little to do on it till we get the donor off the road. I have half built the rollbar bases now and I hope to finish them off this evening as Angie is now off again for another week.

Fortunately, we finally bought Angie a rather nice Celica 190 last night. As a result, I can have her Yaris and get the Scooby appart at long last. This couldn't have come at a better time either as the company office moves at the end of this week making it a 100 mile each way drive every day and 55/gal vs 30/gal is a prety fair daily saving.

Next jobs will be moving the cars round so the Scoob is closest to the garage, breaking up the AZ3 :'( (Selling off the alloys+tyres, shocks+springs and SS exhaust system and some of the electrics seperately) and getting the hell on with the build :D