The Awakening!

 

The big plan was to get the car up and running and Take it To Run to the Sun as in all the yrs I'd had the bug, something had come up preventing me from taking it.

This was looking like no exception.  It was October of 2001 and I'd taken the car for a few drives and then was set to take it for it's MOT.

Then the night before, I went to put the car in the garage and it made some horrible smashing grinding noise from the rear of the car and there was no longer any clutch.  I thought the clutch plate had given out.  What it transpired to be was the thrust bearing.

The 1200cc Gearbox and engine used a circular thrust bearing with a pressure plate having a circular pad on 3 prongs.

Later pressure plates had multi splines.  The 2000cc had this style, and it had not mated up correctly with the 1200cc Gearbox Thrust bearing and it had exploded the Bearing..

Annoyingly, you can get an early (Aka 1200cc) thrust bearing for later 'boxs, but not the other way round.  So the only way I was going to keep using the 2000cc engine, was to get a late gearbox!!

 

Here are the pictures of the car as it was then.  It shows the Empi 8spoke alloys I mentioned in the last page that came from the Mint Green Bug with the Type 4 engine.

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Finally I get this done and off to the MOT station again......

It turned out to not be the simple MOT and brush up job I was hoping for, but turned into a full rebuild!

To see the painstaking Money Sucking rebuild Click below.

 

*Enter The Rebuild*

 

 

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