Pretty much the whole middle of 2016 was a blur; the rush to finish the rolling chassis at least to a point it would roll on it’s own wheels, get the body at least sitting on it and, oh, yes, pack the house and move from Bracknell to Northampton.

 

So, no pressure.

 

But, with a lot of help from my Dad we managed it.  I finished up the rear end by painting the driveshafts, assembling them and hanging everything off the diff at least in a fashion where it wouldn’t fall apart.  Stuck brake discs on (but no brakes) and the build wheels, and ended up with something that looked like it might roll around.

Note the classy ‘door bench’.  Did I mention we were also fitting a new bathroom to the house prior to moving out?  Yeah, just for added pressure!

 

We temporarily mated the 390 FE and Tremec gearbox together. I say temporarily because the input shaft on the Tremec is too long so spacers were needed – that will need to be sorted out and it might well be that I end up just buying a newer, stronger Tremec rather than this one (which was out of an Aston Martin), but it worked well enough to hang the combination into the chassis – really, just to make it easier to move house with it!

Did I mention the spacers?

 

Still, seeing it back together like that actually gave me a boost – it started to feel achievable again.

 

We “dry assembled” the 428 FE as well at this point, although when I say “dry assembled” .. there aren’t even any bearing shells in there! The crank (which is scrap anyway) is just there to stop the pistons from falling out..

 

After that we dropped the body on.  Sounds so easy, doesn’t it?  Well, it turns out … with a small block it might well be possible to drop the body on after the engine but with a big block it really isn’t! We had to jack the footwells apart to get them to just about clear the exhaust ports on the FE. Whoops! Still, it looked good..

 

And no sooner had we managed that than it was time to load the whole thing into a trailer and take it to it’s new home..

 

 

And that’s where I’ll insert a little break into this story, I think! We’ve gone from some time in April, 2016 through to July, 2016 and covered some assembly and a house move.

 

Next came some measuring, some pontificating and a real, rolling chassis (sans engine)..