Hi Guys,
Long time no updates.....I hope you all have been well and have had good luck keeping your beautiful Capris on the roads.
Since the good moderators here were kind enough to move my build thread to the snazzy new forum, I thought that the least I could do would be to update it!
The build is still on (and ongoing) but there have been a number of changes. First and foremost, my lovely neice had her open-heart surgery, survived it and her heart has apparently healed almost completely so thanks very much to all those who sent good thoughts her way. Your good vibes were MUCH appreciated.
Secondly, I've changed cars. I came out of the grocery store one day and a guy was walking around my Kelmark. He said, "I've got one of these! But it's a bit different than this one..."
After much conversation, I concluded he did not have Kelmark (like mine), he had a much rarer "Karma GT."
He also told me that after 20+ years of storage, he'd like to sell it. We went to his house, spent 1/2 an hour digging the car out and this is the first view I got of it :
We struck a deal and the next day my old dad showed up with his trusty tow dolly and :
Believe it or not, the Karma was less than 2 miles from my house. I'll bet I passed by that car 100 or more times over the years and never even knew it was there!
The Karma was in need of a total redo. The engine was seized, brake master cylinder was completely empty (it had 4 wheel drum brakes anyway) and he told me that he'd slid under the back of a transport one time, cracked the front fender and had it repaired. They did a decent job repairing the damage but there's a lot more work left to do to fix the accident damage.
I quickly concluded that the Karma was the PERFECT candidate for my in-progress frame so I decided to ditch ripping my Kelmark apart and focus on the Karma instead. When the Karma's finished, I'll sell the Kelmark.
Here's how it looked the day I brought it home :
I had to winch it into the garage :
Time to get to work.
I pulled the doors and hatches off in an effort to decrease the body's weight as much as possible:
After I gutted the interior, I made up these steel braces to tie the "A" pillars to the "B" pillars :
I reinforced the garage ceiling and set up a pulley system with steel cables and a 12 volt powered electric winch :
Undo a zillion bolts and separate the body from the chassis :
Old Chassis :
Bare body on the lift :
Here's the rear subframe I'd already made (with the XR-2 drive train in place)
I had to do some cutting to make room for the XR-2 drive train :
This is the piece I cut out:
I lowered the body :
And here's how it all sits in the Karma :
Kind of messy but for a first time fit, it'll do!
I got some snazzy new wheels and popped them into place to see how they'd look :
From there I started building my new rear control arms using the Cougar / T-Bird knuckles but those pix have to wait 'cause I have to get myself to work!
Obviously,there's still a ton of work to do but I just wanted to update everybody on what's going on. These pix bring us up to July of 2013. I'll post more pictures of what I've done since then.
I just didn't want you to think I'd given up!
Thanks again for moving my build thread to the new forum.
Dave