Now, as you know if you've been reading my blog of babble for long that my Carlton has failed it's MOT in spectacular fashion! After the MOT, the MOT inspector came out with a fistfull of failiure sheets, infact I've never seen so many for just one car! I contacted my friend Aunt Fanny who has a paint and bodywork emporium. I was told not to worry, bring it down and we'll have a look at it! So it was loaded onto my trailer and I headed off for Aunt Fannys workshop.
Once the Carlton was unloaded and put on the table at Aunt Fannys the first thing we did was have a good prod around, and the more we proded, the
less we had to prod! This was followed by my friend and I
sitting on the floor while I had a cry! It IS bad! Actually it's far worse than probably even the MOT
inspector thought! Infact, it probably hasn't been safe to drive for a very long time!
So it's currently perched on a table looking very sorry for its self! Actually,
in these two photos it doesn't look too bad, but underneath there
really is
next to nothing left! My friend said to me that he
would like to comfort me by saying not to worry, it's not too bad, but
unfortunately he couldn't as it was really REALLY bad!
But, I have to say
that I am quite lucky in a way, because my friend understands that
finding another one will be hard, and we might end up no better off, so
he said, what shall we do? What's the plan? So I said that I really
didn't have a clue, and asked him what he thought. He thought that what
we should do is go out and find a nice V6 Omega, like my previous
venture into Vauxhall estate car ownership, seen below not in it's
finest moment, broken down by the side of the autobahn!
Chop
the body off the Omega, chop the floor out of the Carlton, then glue
them back together with the hot sparkly stick! I sat there, letting his
words of wisdom penetrate my feeble brain, before saying, ok, lets have a
measure up! Before too long we had the measurements for the Carlton,
Starting with, what I consider to be the most important measurement, the
wheelbase which was about 105 inches. The car itself is about 182
inches long, and 68 inches wide. Good, now we have something to work
from we thought, right, go out and find an Omega to measure! It took a
while, but eventually after driving around all the carparks in town I
spotted an old guy filling up at the petrol station. I pulled in and
wandered up to the old fella and asked him if he would mind if I
measured his car up? He was a bit dumbfounded and my request, but he
said that it would be ok. Good, so, out with the tape measure. The all
important wheelbase was 107.5 inches, the length was about 193 inches,
and the width was about 70 inches! Good, so as expected the Omega is
slightly bigger everywhere. Back at base we looked long and hard at the
difference in measurements. It was decided that we could chop 2.5 inches
from the middle of the Omega to get the wheelbase right. With that
removed there would only be another 8.5 inches to lose from the over all
length of the floorpan, which should be easy enough, most of that would
probably be lost from the boot to be fair! This just leaves the
difference of 2 inches in width, and this, it was decided just meant
that the wheels would fill the arches better! So that was the plan. I thought
it was a good plan, it meant that it would have a V6 engine with plenty
of power, decent brakes, decent suspension, it was going to be just
epic! Then I had a thought, if we did this, would it not need a BIVA? We
discussed this at length over a bit of a brew, and after a bit of
research we thought that it probably would need a BIVA... Oh BOVVER!!
But worse than that, it seemed a sketchy area to chop the floor pan out
of one car, and weld it in place in another. I probably have this wrong,
but it looks like if
we weld the floorpan from an Omega into my Carlton, it may not even pass
a BIVA test? We thought some more, did a bit more research, and finally
my friend said, "But who would know? What MOT inspector is going to
look under there and go, no, thats not a Carlton floorpan, thats the
floorpan from an Omega?" I must say that he's got a point, I mean who
would know (apart from you guys obviously!), how would they find out? If
we did a good enough job, once it was all welded, seam sealed, and
painted under there nobody will know that it's not a Carlton will they?
But, the trouble was that by now I was starting to think that I didn't
want it to be an Omega underneath anymore, I wanted it to be a Carlton.
Something will be lost from the driving experience if it's too good! I
can't believe that I'm writing this, but I want it to be more of a
restoration, so it's as it left the factory... Well, more or less! So
after all that research and discussion we were back to where we started,
with a very rusty Carlton, and wondering where we go from here! A list
was made that looked more like a scroll of work we needed to do. We then
turned to the body, removed all the glass carefully. Then turned our
attention to the rusty body panels! I said to my friend that as we are
going down the resto route, I wanted it done properly, so any rust we
found was to be chopped out, and filled with fresh steel. Any panels
that were rusty would be replaced. Before too long it was apparent that I
was going to need a new bonnet, front wings, valence, doors, sills
(obviously), rear arches, the lower edge of the rear wings, and a new
tailgate might be good too. However the good news is that the roof looks to be
fine! Currently I have located most of the parts in either very good,
rust free condition, and in some cases, brand new! However, none of
these parts are in the UK, they are all spread across mainland Europe.
I'm thinking, roadtrip! Probably with a trailer, lets just hope it goes
better than my first attempt at towing a trailer across Europe!
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