78 Gemini Sedan

Go Baby Go · **Posted:** Thu May 06, 2010 5:51 am

F3ared wrote:

And the nanna blanket..

F3ared · **Posted:** Mon Apr 11, 2011 10:16 pm

The last time the old girl turned a wheel in anger on the street, it looked like this.

This was around august last year, and its sat in the driveway ever since. It developed a nasty rattle between 2500-3800rpm which i suspected was the timing chain, along with pouring oil out of every orrifice availible. About 2weeks ago i decided it might be time to blow the dust off and get it into the garage to start the tear down.

Even after 6months of sitting idle it fired right up without a drama [once a jumpstarter was connected ofcourse].

Alot of people will tell you cast pistons cant handle boost.

These were 10,000km old and had 17psi jammed into them. As you can see, they are ******* immac considering.

Cause of the rattle...

Hrm..

opelboy76 · **Posted:** Sun Apr 17, 2011 9:55 pm

not only worn out, but BROKEN!??? :shock:

would that be that 17 pounds of boost beating away at them?
not sure I've ever seen bearings actually break. that's wild!

F3ared · **Posted:** Wed Apr 20, 2011 2:21 pm

Nah mate, its not the boost causing it.

These engines are pretty stoutly designed - 5 main bearings, decent bearing journal diameter, forged crank and rods from factory etc. Oil flow [or lack thereof] is not an issue either, and i know a few people "in the know" that are pushing over 400rwhp on the standard crank/bearing, with the standard oil pump...

Im putting it down to it being poorly built by the previous owner. Not all the rod caps felt torqued to the same level, and i have the sneaking suspicion that the bearing-to-journal clearance on the rods was wrong. The crank mains were brand new/unmarked.

Anyway, if you thought 17psi was bad, the setup im currently screwing together should be able to be run on 20+ psi. Im aiming for 200rwkw [270rwhp], and hopefully it gets there before i run out of duty cycle in the injectors and/or head flow.

F3ared · **Posted:** Tue May 10, 2011 6:45 pm

Lil bit of progress.

New rust free gaurd

Bit of beating

All smooth now

As she sits atm.

Ill admit i was abit nervous taking the front gaurds off - anyone that knows the t-car well knows that if theres rust in the front quarters, the a pillar section is usually fucked. Nicely suprised at that - gaurds off [they had a few small bubbles] and underneath all the mud and crap, metal is brand new.

More to come.

opelboy76 · **Posted:** Tue May 10, 2011 8:38 pm

you're only making me want one of these more and more. you do know that, don't you?

F3ared · **Posted:** Tue May 10, 2011 9:27 pm

Nothing wrong with that :wink:

This is when it had the DOHC in it making just under 120rwhp...

F3ared · **Posted:** Wed Feb 01, 2012 4:18 pm

So its been a long time between updates...

The crack in the quarter was one of the catalysts [the second being the bearings going] for the rebuild

Youd imagine there was rust under there...

...And youd be wrong. What was there instead, was poorly repaired accident damage - the whole car was 10mm shorter on the passenger side then the drivers side.

Digging around the rear beaver panel also revealed this

The only other spot of rust on the car was the front quarter [more on that later] and a door [recentish thing].

The aforementioned quarter panel had the rust plated up..

Which soon taught me a valuable lesson - ALWAYS weld patch panels to the quarters while its bolted to the car. Lower half twisted and distorted requiring bog. Alot of it.

That said, its no where near as thick as it looks

Looking better now.

Car was thrown on a jig to get the rear end square again, came back looking like so.

Present day, still struggling to get the car finalized for painting. Cant catch a f*cking break with this car. In the meantime ive been collecting bits and pieces.

Turbo setup is gone, being replaced by this.

Aim is to have 120rwkw naturally aspirated - coil on plug, big cams, quad throttles

Colour is Baroda MK2 Silver off the Holden HQ kingswood range

And itll be sitting on these.

opelboy76 · **Posted:** Wed Feb 01, 2012 9:15 pm

oooooh, that's gonna be sweet! can't wait to see it all go together. :tu:

keep us posted.

F3ared · **Posted:** Thu Nov 22, 2012 6:50 pm

Long time between drinks, suppose an update should be in order...

Ended up painting it the same colour as my dads old Gemini/our first fam car - Antelope Metallic.

Camshaft · **Posted:** Mon Dec 24, 2012 8:31 am

That is too sexy! It looks downright MEAN in that color with those wheels. Classy!

john · **Posted:** Mon Dec 24, 2012 3:55 pm

I love this so much... :mrgreen:

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78 Gemini Sedan

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