EP91 Glanza build project

[AlexHB11]

Hi all,

I was persuaded that keeping a build thread would be a good idea, to keep track and log my progress on the build. Some of you may find it to be of some interest! I'll start with a bit of a back story of the project so far.

In all honesty, before I bought the car, I barely knew these little motors even existed, having heard of the Starlet. I also didn't have any distinct plan on buying a new project, already having a Mk2 Polo in the garage. A mate sent me an ad for a Glanza shell with the typical caption of 'you should buy this', to which I didn't give a lot of thought at the time. A week or so later, the price dropped and I thought it couldn't hurt to show an interest. Another week passed and I woke up on a Sunday morning to a message from the seller- 'You can have it for £200 if its gone today'. The next hour was spent scouring everyone I could think of who had a trailer and were willing to do the 4 hour round trip for me on a Sunday. After almost losing hope, a mate came through and we got up there. While getting the car onto the trailer was easy enough (the car still had the seller's suspension and wheels on it which were not included), getting it off when home was a struggle, bolting some old steel wheels on and rolling the car off the trailer with the rear axle bottomed out and the fronts held only by the bottom arms.




Having got the car off the trailer, it then started to dawn on me the size of the task I'd set myself. The polo went up for sale and was gone in a couple of weeks, giving me a proper space for the build to live and some extra funding to kick off the build.

First up, a set of second hand MeisterR coilovers in half decent nick, to get the car mobile. In future these will probably be sold on to make way for a set of brand new coilovers. A tailgate, rear bumper, skirts and wings all followed shortly after and the car moved into the garage at home. More parts, in the form of rear lights, an ECU and gear shifter were also bought.



A few weeks went by with little progress being made other than starting to remove all the nasty sound deadening from the floor pans.



After a couple of failed attempts at making deals on engines, one came up with a gearbox and driveshafts included for a reasonable price. So a road trip was made, bringing home a big piece of the puzzle.



Over the last couple of weeks, I've been stripping bits and pieces off, cleaning them up and painting parts. The engine block has been painted, as has the gearbox and the reassembly process has now started, with the belt driven ancillaries and oil filter housing being bolted back on.






With some half decent weather over the weekend, I decided to get the engine and box bolted together and dropped in as I had a few hours spare. In hindsight it probably would've been easier to stick the engine on a pallet on the ground and lift the front of the car over and drop the car over the engine. Now to sort out all the niggly little bits and pieces that I didn't really realise I was missing!




That's about everything so far, I'll try to keep this blog updated regularly, any pointers, advice etc are very welcome!

[Dr G]

Your photo links are URLs to the pages containing them, rather than the images themselves.

I don't know if Flickr lets you hotlink but you need an address ending with ".JPG" for them to appear on here.

You can also upload directly to the forum if you have them stored locally.

[AlexHB11]

Dr G said:

Your photo links are URLs to the pages containing them, rather than the images themselves.

I don't know if Flickr lets you hotlink but you need an address ending with ".JPG" for them to appear on here.

You can also upload directly to the forum if you have them stored locally.

Cheers for that, I’ll have a look into it when I get a chance

[Cookeh]

With flickr, hover over bottom right of image, should see three symbols - one is an arrow that means share. Click that, then use the relevant link from there. The one I use and tends to work best on all forums is the BBCode.

Edited by Cookeh on Wednesday 20th March 13:52

[Cookeh]

AlexHB11 said:

Hi all,

I was persuaded that keeping a build thread would be a good idea, to keep track and log my progress on the build. Some of you may find it to be of some interest! I'll start with a bit of a back story of the project so far.

In all honesty, before I bought the car, I barely knew these little motors even existed, having heard of the Starlet. I also didn't have any distinct plan on buying a new project, already having a Mk2 Polo in the garage. A mate sent me an ad for a Glanza shell with the typical caption of 'you should buy this', to which I didn't give a lot of thought at the time. A week or so later, the price dropped and I thought it couldn't hurt to show an interest. Another week passed and I woke up on a Sunday morning to a message from the seller- 'You can have it for £200 if its gone today'. The next hour was spent scouring everyone I could think of who had a trailer and were willing to do the 4 hour round trip for me on a Sunday. After almost losing hope, a mate came through and we got up there. While getting the car onto the trailer was easy enough (the car still had the seller's suspension and wheels on it which were not included), getting it off when home was a struggle, bolting some old steel wheels on and rolling the car off the trailer with the rear axle bottomed out and the fronts held only by the bottom arms.
Glanza build pics by Alex Harper-Bourne, on Flickr
Glanza build pics by Alex Harper-Bourne, on Flickr


Having got the car off the trailer, it then started to dawn on me the size of the task I'd set myself. The polo went up for sale and was gone in a couple of weeks, giving me a proper space for the build to live and some extra funding to kick off the build.

First up, a set of second hand MeisterR coilovers in half decent nick, to get the car mobile. In future these will probably be sold on to make way for a set of brand new coilovers. A tailgate, rear bumper, skirts and wings all followed shortly after and the car moved into the garage at home. More parts, in the form of rear lights, an ECU and gear shifter were also bought.

Glanza build pics by Alex Harper-Bourne, on Flickr

A few weeks went by with little progress being made other than starting to remove all the nasty sound deadening from the floor pans.

Glanza build pics by Alex Harper-Bourne, on Flickr

After a couple of failed attempts at making deals on engines, one came up with a gearbox and driveshafts included for a reasonable price. So a road trip was made, bringing home a big piece of the puzzle.

Glanza build pics by Alex Harper-Bourne, on Flickr

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been stripping bits and pieces off, cleaning them up and painting parts. The engine block has been painted, as has the gearbox and the reassembly process has now started, with the belt driven ancillaries and oil filter housing being bolted back on.

Glanza build pics by Alex Harper-Bourne, on Flickr
Untitled by Alex Harper-Bourne, on Flickr
Untitled by Alex Harper-Bourne, on Flickr


With some half decent weather over the weekend, I decided to get the engine and box bolted together and dropped in as I had a few hours spare. In hindsight it probably would've been easier to stick the engine on a pallet on the ground and lift the front of the car over and drop the car over the engine. Now to sort out all the niggly little bits and pieces that I didn't really realise I was missing!

Untitled by Alex Harper-Bourne, on Flickr
Untitled by Alex Harper-Bourne, on Flickr
Untitled by Alex Harper-Bourne, on Flickr

That's about everything so far, I'll try to keep this blog updated regularly, any pointers, advice etc are very welcome!

[aaron_2000]

This is gonna be a fun one. Following

[AlexHB11]

So it's been a bit longer than I'd intended to leave between updates but at least there's more to say!

Since the last update, various parts have arrived and been collected, with a big bunch of parts coming home with me today, including a pair of Corbeau buckets, a full set of Powerflex engine mount bushes, clocks, ABS delete kit and other little bits and pieces.

Today, the ABS delete brake hoses were plumbed in, and with that done, I started tackling the old rubber engine and gearbox bushes. With a bit of brute force and faffing, the old bushes were out and the new ones fitted and mounted back on the car. With that done, I can now start to turn my attention to areas higher up in that part of the bay, although I still need to source a knock sensor and fit it before it becomes too much of a mission with everything in the way! A few pics of progress are attached below. I'll try to update this thread a bit more regularly!