Resurrection of an Ax; (Part 1: History Lesson)
Discussion
Hi there Piston Heads, It's been a while since I finally acquired this car, and since things are now in motion to get it back on the road after it's 7 year lay up, I thought it might be worth starting a thread about it on here. I confess I was in two minds as whether to post this, its a project that took up around 2 and a half years of my best mate, Mark's, time to build. He sadly passed away in 2007, aged just 24.
I'd been driving a year or so when I ended up buying a complete lemon of an Ax Gt, it wouldn't do because at the time, I was commuting 50 miles a day , the Ax had cost me a lot of money, but I knew I couldn't sell it for anywhere near what I'd paid. Long story short, I got a loan and a newer car, and I gave the Gt to my mate for the price of the alloys it stood on.
He spent a bit of cash on getting it a fresh MOT, and that started the ball rolling.
The one that started it all (shown right); Opv a tragically crap mk gt, Next to it, my mk2 gt that Mark would buy later.
After running around in the Gt for a bit and spending some time lurking the Ax Owners Club forum, Mark and I bought another gt between us, sight unseen for parts, we turned a good profit on the car and Mark would catalogue everything we sold and how much for.
Mark prepares to remove the tailgate from the gt (he's facing the car, his brother is to the left)
The white Gt was so rotten we ended up cutting the car up completely, we had a policy of not selling on anything that was as crap as the grey one had been.
Garage envy, I has it. Mark's workshop with the halfcar and hydrualic lift.
After the success of the white gt, we moved along to another Gt, this red one, we worked for around 6 months on de-chavving the car and making it saleable, after all the work, it was still basically crap, and we spent over an hour trying to explain this to the guy buying it, but he bought it anyway for £250.
Before and after, GMX, an ex-max power feature car.
Whilst the work on red shed took place, ebay and beers bought us this from 12 miles away. Our friend Chinese Gav towed us home in it at 60, not what you want in an engineless pile of rust!
Bought for £20.50, the darkness suited it, but the wheels were decent enough!
We bought and scrapped several others over the next year or so, but Mark had decided what he wanted, we set out to find a decent forte/mk2 gt/gti shell for him, which is where the story of BTW starts.
The ebay advert read: "Ax Forte, engine knackered, body knackered, wiring knackered. Spares or Repair, west Essex."
I dropped an email to the owner and found that she'd had the car from new and bought it from the garage that my company had just bought.
This was BTW as she was found:
The bodywork knackered related only to the pink paint, this was and still is the most rust free ax I've ever seen! I did a deal on Mark's behalf and secured the car for £50, it then cost around £200 to have it transported to Lincolnshire, and later in that month, I moved to Lincolnshire too.
When the car arrived at the farm, Mark wasted no time in getting to work with the sad looking forte. Initially the engine was pulled and replaced with that from an Ax Gti we broke, this for Mark was just an exercise to see if he could do it, needless to say, with what he'd learnt from the other cars, it worked fine.
Engine out, BTW looked this way twice, once after binning the original 1.1 unit and once after the trial fitment of the Gti engine.
By the time the Gti lump had been fitted, Chinese Gav had brought Mark a Saxo Vts engine, and it's new home would be BTW. This in turn meant that a brake and suspension upgrade would be necessary.
Halfway through a back axle replacement, a photoshy Mark hides behind his car
Axle replacement meant finding a lot of crap under the back seats
A shot of the original melted engine
I'll update some more later, Mark never took the car to any shows or told anyone about it, so nobody really knows about it.
The Car was such an achievement and I am proud of how well he finished the conversion. He learnt everything from messing about in the garage, but his eye for detail sets this one apart from most other conversions.
I'd been driving a year or so when I ended up buying a complete lemon of an Ax Gt, it wouldn't do because at the time, I was commuting 50 miles a day , the Ax had cost me a lot of money, but I knew I couldn't sell it for anywhere near what I'd paid. Long story short, I got a loan and a newer car, and I gave the Gt to my mate for the price of the alloys it stood on.
He spent a bit of cash on getting it a fresh MOT, and that started the ball rolling.
The one that started it all (shown right); Opv a tragically crap mk gt, Next to it, my mk2 gt that Mark would buy later.
After running around in the Gt for a bit and spending some time lurking the Ax Owners Club forum, Mark and I bought another gt between us, sight unseen for parts, we turned a good profit on the car and Mark would catalogue everything we sold and how much for.
Mark prepares to remove the tailgate from the gt (he's facing the car, his brother is to the left)
The white Gt was so rotten we ended up cutting the car up completely, we had a policy of not selling on anything that was as crap as the grey one had been.
Garage envy, I has it. Mark's workshop with the halfcar and hydrualic lift.
After the success of the white gt, we moved along to another Gt, this red one, we worked for around 6 months on de-chavving the car and making it saleable, after all the work, it was still basically crap, and we spent over an hour trying to explain this to the guy buying it, but he bought it anyway for £250.
Before and after, GMX, an ex-max power feature car.
Whilst the work on red shed took place, ebay and beers bought us this from 12 miles away. Our friend Chinese Gav towed us home in it at 60, not what you want in an engineless pile of rust!
Bought for £20.50, the darkness suited it, but the wheels were decent enough!
We bought and scrapped several others over the next year or so, but Mark had decided what he wanted, we set out to find a decent forte/mk2 gt/gti shell for him, which is where the story of BTW starts.
The ebay advert read: "Ax Forte, engine knackered, body knackered, wiring knackered. Spares or Repair, west Essex."
I dropped an email to the owner and found that she'd had the car from new and bought it from the garage that my company had just bought.
This was BTW as she was found:
The bodywork knackered related only to the pink paint, this was and still is the most rust free ax I've ever seen! I did a deal on Mark's behalf and secured the car for £50, it then cost around £200 to have it transported to Lincolnshire, and later in that month, I moved to Lincolnshire too.
When the car arrived at the farm, Mark wasted no time in getting to work with the sad looking forte. Initially the engine was pulled and replaced with that from an Ax Gti we broke, this for Mark was just an exercise to see if he could do it, needless to say, with what he'd learnt from the other cars, it worked fine.
Engine out, BTW looked this way twice, once after binning the original 1.1 unit and once after the trial fitment of the Gti engine.
By the time the Gti lump had been fitted, Chinese Gav had brought Mark a Saxo Vts engine, and it's new home would be BTW. This in turn meant that a brake and suspension upgrade would be necessary.
Halfway through a back axle replacement, a photoshy Mark hides behind his car
Axle replacement meant finding a lot of crap under the back seats
A shot of the original melted engine
I'll update some more later, Mark never took the car to any shows or told anyone about it, so nobody really knows about it.
The Car was such an achievement and I am proud of how well he finished the conversion. He learnt everything from messing about in the garage, but his eye for detail sets this one apart from most other conversions.
Thanks guys,
As an aside, the pictures of the red gt did really flatter it, it was a proper little halfords lickysticky job and I seem to recall that there were wooden blocks holding the car off of the rear bump stops.
The suspension that was fitted to BTW was a decent spec, the rear axle came from a Saxo Vts and I collected it from South Mimms services from a lad from Southampton called Sam, he was running a 205 with a 106 rallye lump on bike carbs- nice!
In any case the beam was delivered to Mark who stripped the callipers and rebuilt them before fitting them to the car.
The front brakes were different again, The struts and callipers were taken from another Saxo Vts, this time it was a complete car that I'd bought from a local scrapyard for £500 delivered. Mark bought the front suspension complete and rebuilt it all before fitting it.
The struts now contain Koni dampers and have Ax spring platforms and koni springs. The brakes are fitted with a Goat Developments 283mm disc kit. The discs are drilled/grooved items from a 306 gti-6 and the vts callipers are moved out using -well- spacers!
15" Tsw Razors were sourced to fit over the new braking setup, cheap and cheerful with a good set of yokohamas included.
By this time the installation of the engine was well underway, Mark modified a Saxo Vts catalytic converter to mate up to an Ax Scorpion exhaust system, with a nice subtle 3" exit.
Now sadly I've not got a picture of the vts engine installed in the car, but it was once this was done (including a very complex architect style drawing of the conversion loom he made) that Mark started work on BTW's body work.
That's 3, yes 3, bottles of t-cut colour fast all used up on BTW's paintwork
Its also worth noting just how much space has been lost in the garage at this point due to the amount of Axs being broken around the car.
Now the engine was running and the suspension was all settled, Mark set about rectifying the front arch scrub the new wheels caused, he did this by dismantling a spare steering rack. His dad machined up some collars to attach to the end of the rack to limit it's travel. Scrubbage sorted.
The car, with the freshened up paintwork and the new underpinnings looked like this:
Not bad when you compare it to how it was found:
Obviously the car needed it's stance correcting, Mark spent hours researching the job on the internet, the various methods of adjusting the torsion bars and the correct methods of setting the height.
These are the last pictures I have of the car when it was on the road, Mark lowered the rear so it was just higher than the front, and knocked up some rubber bump stops to fit the the Koni rear shocks to stop the rear wheels scrubbing the arches. With this sorted the car was put through a rigorous mot and Mark used it up until the clutch cable snapped in september 2007.
With the time gone by, the paintwork has started to fade back to it's original state. The car was never fixed and is still sat in the workshop until it's time came round again.
If you've any questions or comments, please feel free to post them, I just wanted to show what one guy achieved with only research and patience.
As an aside, the pictures of the red gt did really flatter it, it was a proper little halfords lickysticky job and I seem to recall that there were wooden blocks holding the car off of the rear bump stops.
The suspension that was fitted to BTW was a decent spec, the rear axle came from a Saxo Vts and I collected it from South Mimms services from a lad from Southampton called Sam, he was running a 205 with a 106 rallye lump on bike carbs- nice!
In any case the beam was delivered to Mark who stripped the callipers and rebuilt them before fitting them to the car.
The front brakes were different again, The struts and callipers were taken from another Saxo Vts, this time it was a complete car that I'd bought from a local scrapyard for £500 delivered. Mark bought the front suspension complete and rebuilt it all before fitting it.
The struts now contain Koni dampers and have Ax spring platforms and koni springs. The brakes are fitted with a Goat Developments 283mm disc kit. The discs are drilled/grooved items from a 306 gti-6 and the vts callipers are moved out using -well- spacers!
15" Tsw Razors were sourced to fit over the new braking setup, cheap and cheerful with a good set of yokohamas included.
By this time the installation of the engine was well underway, Mark modified a Saxo Vts catalytic converter to mate up to an Ax Scorpion exhaust system, with a nice subtle 3" exit.
Now sadly I've not got a picture of the vts engine installed in the car, but it was once this was done (including a very complex architect style drawing of the conversion loom he made) that Mark started work on BTW's body work.
That's 3, yes 3, bottles of t-cut colour fast all used up on BTW's paintwork
Its also worth noting just how much space has been lost in the garage at this point due to the amount of Axs being broken around the car.
Now the engine was running and the suspension was all settled, Mark set about rectifying the front arch scrub the new wheels caused, he did this by dismantling a spare steering rack. His dad machined up some collars to attach to the end of the rack to limit it's travel. Scrubbage sorted.
The car, with the freshened up paintwork and the new underpinnings looked like this:
Not bad when you compare it to how it was found:
Obviously the car needed it's stance correcting, Mark spent hours researching the job on the internet, the various methods of adjusting the torsion bars and the correct methods of setting the height.
These are the last pictures I have of the car when it was on the road, Mark lowered the rear so it was just higher than the front, and knocked up some rubber bump stops to fit the the Koni rear shocks to stop the rear wheels scrubbing the arches. With this sorted the car was put through a rigorous mot and Mark used it up until the clutch cable snapped in september 2007.
With the time gone by, the paintwork has started to fade back to it's original state. The car was never fixed and is still sat in the workshop until it's time came round again.
If you've any questions or comments, please feel free to post them, I just wanted to show what one guy achieved with only research and patience.
Looking forward to more updates, I had an AX in my youth, just a 1000cc 'Nightlife' that had the GT alloys on it.
The boot hinges snapped on it, that was fun trying to get new ones welded on, and the rod connecting the brake pedal to the master cylinder used to seize solid, meaning the car would sit in 1st gear, handbrake off, feet of the clutch and the brake pedals and wouldn't move!
The boot hinges snapped on it, that was fun trying to get new ones welded on, and the rod connecting the brake pedal to the master cylinder used to seize solid, meaning the car would sit in 1st gear, handbrake off, feet of the clutch and the brake pedals and wouldn't move!
Firstly, thanks for posting this OP, I had an AX GT myself back in the day, with tweaked-with carb. Cracking motor, and the one I learned most about driving in. I've got a real soft spot for these wee cars 
Sorry to hear about Mark's passing though, far too young and he sounded like a good guy.
Sorry to hear about Mark's passing though, far too young and he sounded like a good guy.
B'stard Child said:
Does the smurf feature in the story?
B'stard indeed, I got to that comment then scrolled all the way back through the thread to find the smurf I missed. I still can't find the smurf TheJimi said:
B'stard indeed, I got to that comment then scrolled all the way back through the thread to find the smurf I missed. I still can't find the smurf
I'm sorry I recognised the username from somewhere else and put two and two together - I'm sure it will feature at some pointGassing Station | Readers' Cars | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff