Project 2002
| by Adrian Burford / Pics: Ross van Schalkwyk
Home stretch
beckoning…
As some of our regular readers may have noticed, Project 2002
took a break, and skipped the July edition.
W
e’re blaming it on the weather,
which does all sorts of funny
things to people, not least of all
make them less enthusiastic about working.
Manual labour is a lot less appealing when
temperatures are hovering around the
zero mark, and when your hand flies off a
spanner (even a Jonnesway spanner) and
connects with an icy engine block, it’ll bring
tears to your eyes and an expletive to your
lips…
But we can report that the car is finally
back at Evolution2, and the recent saga
has revolved around the custom installation
of a BMW M44 fuel injected multivalve
engine and a steering rack. Suffice to
say that Spyker from APMachining at
Zwartkops Raceway started this aspect
of the project with little hair, and had even
less by the time he was done.
Project 2002
As a last resort, and the only way to get
the steering to work properly from lock to
lock, was to source a second hand BMW
E46 rack and fit that instead of the
VW Citigolf item we had intended
using, and which brought with it
various clearance issues. Only
time will tell whether we have a
car which is free of bumpsteer, or
strange behaviour under braking,
but certainly the standard of
workmanship looks good.
The next step is to confirm whether
we can continue with the original
brake boosters and at the time of
going to press, Gavin Ross from
stopping specialists, Norbrake,
was trying to find time to dash across to
Kyalami from his Benoni HQ. It looks like it
is going to be a tight fit over in the left front
corner of the engine bay, even with the
battery relocated to the boot.
➲ James Burford applies the panel with our
While the last two months have been
frustrating, there has been progress: lots
of the interior has been done, Cellsound
taking charge of re-upholstering the rear
sponsors’ branding. The branding itself is
from Bandit Signs, who will also provide the
final artwork and pin-striping on the car
pew (stock fronts will be replaced with a
pair of OMP style seats) and also creating
new door cards, ready for the Rockford
Fosgate sound system.
The entire front-end should go together
swiftly once the crossmember is
powdercoated, and all ball joints, wheel
bearings (courtesy of BMG), bushes,
brake components and Bilstein dampers
and H&R springs await assembly. We still
need to find a BMW E30 rear-end though,
and while I’ve resigned myself to the fact
that we’re probably looking at an October
completion date, we need to maintain
momentum – so if anyone out there can
assist in this regard, please let us know!
The most important lesson
we’ve learnt over the last
few months is the custom
car build rule of thumb:
quadruple the time taken
that you think it’ll take to
complete a task, and then
➲ All hands on deck…the team at Evolution 2 get ready for the next phase: whip out
the engine, tidy up and powdercoat the crossmember and then get it all back in ASAP,
along with brake boosters, and ABS pump
| words in action
50
august 2014
double the cost…