fbekholden.com

And after much grinding and cutting to try and shed some weight - and make it look a little less agricultural - here it is, with mock battery in place.
Two locating pins at the top accept the wheel as you tip it over, and the sliding tilting base flips up against to back of the rim. Install 2 bolts to fix the rim to the base. Then brute force to slide it up and drop the bottom bolt in and tighten to lock everything in place.
Do we have clearance Clarence? Just - roughly 10mm all round. And what about with the boot closed? Well that’s even less. Ended up wth the most space under the tyre. Was not expecting the fit to be that tight, and happy to get away with it. Mind you, it has taken me a good part of a week to get it sorted, with lots of unexpected tweaks along the way. If I didn’t have the time I would have definitely just welded a few lugs to the floor for some straps and bolt the old battery box down.

Damn dude, your CDO is next level !!!!! Nice work

Thats some Tetris level space usage - looks good.

Cheers,
Harv

Good work,

Would be fun to see how many revolutions the old tyre can do before it lets go !!!

Greg

EK283 wrote: Sat Sep 27, 2025 7:23 am Good work,

Would be fun to see how many revolutions the old tyre can do before it lets go !!!

Greg

Ha yeah that thing is as hard as a rock - last put air in it 25 years ago and still holding.

Not sure what size the tyre is - its stamped BR178/13R (replaces 175/13). Going to try for a 165/60/13 so should give it a bit of extra space.

Playing with an idea to remotely lock the bonnet. As I have a spare remote door lock, thought I’d have a go at shoehorning it in behind the bonnet latch brace while I had it off. Grabbed some scrap and mocked up this.
Only requires a couple holes to mount.
Will need a bit of electronic trickery to implement if I end up going ahead with it. Need to pulse the solenoid to move it and have a spring to hold it in place. Not sure if a door lock solenoid will enjoy working in the heat of an engine bay. I won’t worry about it for now - will probably be a future project once the car is on the road.

Reassembled bonnet and gave it a coat of KBS underbody. This is not a show car, and I figure the temperature and chemical resistance of the KBS will do the job in the engine bay. Stupidly applied it on a day that ended up in the mid 30’s by 11am. First coat went on at 8 am and was fine, but was not expecting it to heat up so early, and you have to put the second coat on within 3-6 hours of the first, so second coat did not even out as well as the first as you can see in the pictures.

Finished off the Fuel tank as well.
Made a rubber strip for around the edge of the tank to help seal the boot area. Folded some thin rubber sheet in half and tacked it together with superglue.
Butt welded the corners with some more superglue. The ‘seal’ is sandwiched between the tank and the frame. Final job - weld the stainless nuts to the steel frame. Could have used steel nuts, but why make life easy. Requires 309 LSi wire which allows you to mig stainless to steel.

Why stainless nuts mate ? Using stainless bolts as well ? I used stainless fasteners on my Monaro , need to never seize everything or the bastards gall up and seize

Ha, used stainless so they wouldn't rust! I'll dab a bit of never seize on in final fitment. Only other reason to go stainless was stainless tank, stainless bolts, so stainless nuts. Didn't really consider compatibility with welding stainless to steel at the time I bought the nuts and bolts. Figured I'd try the 309 instead of changing bolts/nuts to steel as a bit of a learning exercise as well.

Nice work as ever mate. Regarding welding stainless, I’ve been using the same wire I use on steel to weld mild rod to stainless exhaust with no apparent issue.


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funkyscooter wrote: Thu Oct 23, 2025 11:30 am Ha, used stainless so they wouldn't rust! I'll dab a bit of never seize on in final fitment.

It's frightening how unforgiving stainless can be. We got turbo piping done for Number One Son's VL a few months back (suspect it is 304), and have been slowly piecing it together. Got them to put a few spare tappings into the piping as there is some stuff that still has plumbing options (like the heater control vacuum lines). Went to temporarily put a 1/8-NPT plug into one of the spare tapping points, not much beyond finger tight, and it galled solid. Said bad words, was grateful there are some more spare tappings. Antisieze-in-a-stick is a great thing.

Cheers,
Harv

Errol62 wrote: Thu Oct 23, 2025 2:39 pm Nice work as ever mate. Regarding welding stainless, I’ve been using the same wire I use on steel to weld mild rod to stainless exhaust with no apparent issue.

I did some tests welding mild steel to stainless initially and yes it sticks. It was only on the day I was going to weld the nuts on that I thought I better ask the question to my sometimes hallucinogenic, always ready to help online assistant, google Gemini. I asked if it is possible to weld mild steel to stainless with regular wire - answer is yes, but it is prone to rust and the weld is brittle.

BTW - Gemini in a Google search (AI overview - at the top of the search result) is not as helpful or detailed as using gemini.google.com
In Gemini there are no ads, just information. Sometimes it gets it wrong, but it is a good starting point for further research. And you can ask follow up questions like a conversation without having to enter all the information of the first question along with the new information you require.

While I’m dumping pictures off my phone, here is a new repair (to a very old repair) I recently finished on the bottom of the rear window. Kept the edge of the frame as there was no rust and it’s a good guide. Shrink a curve into a new bit of angle, kept the bottom over length to grind off later. Final test fit after cut/grind/powerfile to fit. Tape was there as a guide to help maintain the slight curve I stretched into the vertical angle. Weld/grind. Mark and cut out the rest. Plan A was to make this in one go, after 2 failed attempts I decided to do it in two pieces. It was hard enough to get this subtle reverse curve to flow into the existing panel. Even the simple flat top was not straight forward as I was trying to get the metal to roll over the edge rather than filling it with weld and grinding a radius on to it. Much welding and grinding and sanding later

Stainless Grill refresh.
Picked up a set of FB stainless grill bars from Brett a while back. These are in pretty good condition but most tabs that hold them on to the vertical supports are missing. Anyway these 3 and in a better state than mine. Only one major issue of the 3 is this mark which after a quick sand, looks like a grinder has gone through it. Out with the 316 mig wire for a quick repair. Note this was before I got the 309 which might have been a better match. The internet tells me that the original is most likely 430 stainless. Should have probably done my research before this. Much grinding and filing and sanding later, it looks okay from most angles, and a bit like a water stain from others like in this picture. Next got some 4mm 316 stainless steel screws, cut slots in the heads and ground most of the rest off. 18 of those was not fun. Held the screw in place with a bit of flat bar to keep everything ‘square’. Welded both sides. Drilled out the slots in the vertical supports for the 4mm bolts. Used nyloc nuts to hold them on. Had to bend the bolts to get it lined up better, but and as you can see, the bottom bar is not up flush with vertical grill pieces. Close enough, and hardly visible when look at it from a normal angle. Now I can remove the grill more easily if I want to replace/modify the vertical grill pieces in the future.

Very thorough and top quality work as always, I gotta ask , whats with the dust collector looking bizzo mounted on the office chair base ???