Ollie’s 72 GTR XU1 Rebuild - Take 2.5

I thought I might share the history behind my Torrie and how I have arrived at the point where I am finally in the position to be able to bring her back to her former glory.

My 1st memory of this car was when it pulled into my parents driveway and seeing the awesome purple metallic paint, the shiny chrome Dragway Splats with the tires sticking out of the guards and hearing the beautiful exhaust note and induction noise of the triple Weber’s as my dads mate gave the the throttle a blip.

I think I was about 8 years old.

Fast forward 14 years and I’m looking at the same car in his storage unit after he had recently stopped using it as their daily driver.

She was in pretty rough condition and the paint on the roof, bonnet and boot had crows feet down to the metal.

He showed me the original motor with the original carbies sitting on an engine stand in the corner and explained he had built a “hotter” 202 with Triple 45mm Weber’s after losing a drag race to a mate with a hot Hemi.

Not that he was competitive.....

After a couple of beers, some negotiating and then even more beers, he reluctantly agreed to sell it to me for what was pretty close to the original price when they were new.

So there I was with a 3rd owner XU1, having personally known both previous owners, looking down the barrel of my 1st Resto.

Unfortunately back in the day there were no smart phones with the cameras we have today, so I don’t have any photos of the Resto.

The scanned pic below was the end result just before I headed off on my 1st trip to QLD on a working holiday.  6004B0F1-6051-4232-828B-35C7547B6654.jpeg   175.92K   14 downloads  6004B0F1-6051-4232-828B-35C7547B6654.jpeg   175.92K   14 downloads  6004B0F1-6051-4232-828B-35C7547B6654.jpeg   175.92K   14 downloads

 Apologies for the distorted perspective.

Oops, somehow managed to attach the pic 3 times.

Bloody beginners 

Wow thats different i like it 

Very nice

Noice XU-1. Can't say I'm a big fan of Gunmetal or Chateau Mauve though, sorry.

My bro had Dragway 5 spokes on his HX. They were very popular back in the 80's.

Cool, they definitely are not splats though. They're called dragway 5 spoke, about 15 years prior to the splats, named after Rachelle. When she was working at Dragway & drag racing probably around 2000. Be good to hear more & see more of your xu1, my friend Danny has the same car, 9/72, what month is your's mate ?

They're definitely not, i meant to say.

Thanks for the feedback Gary.
 

I wish he’d kept the original nibless rims, but unfortunately that’s one of the items I’m still trying to track down for my current Resto.

Mines a month older than your mates.

What's your plans for the resto? Are you planning to go back to factory specs?

Absolutely.

Love the bush location of the photo,
Does the Torry proud.

Cheers

A couple of months after I got her back on the road, I decided to head up to QLD to visit a mate for a working holiday. Just out of a town called Banana, a massive roo decided I needed a bonnet emblem.

It took me nearly 12 months to save the money to get it repaired and back on the road, but unfortunately the workmanship wasn’t the best.

So once I had enough coin put away I headed back to SA and ended up getting another full bare metal paint job done 20 years ago in Adelaide, but held off on getting the blackouts done.

It then sat in the shed for 20 years in bits as other priorities always seemed to chew up my money.

Fast forward 20 years and I get the car around to my mates workshop to start the assembly process. We put it up on the hoist and I could not believe my eyes. I found some small bubbles in the paint above the bottom sill on both sides. There were also hair line cracks in the paint where the nose cone joined the guards on both side.

So here I am starting the process all over again.

The pic below is after we had pulled out the front end and diff readying it for being put back to bare metal again.

Danny nice the best of best a 8/72 Adelaide xu1 cheers

Cheers

Danny is it between body 725A to 775A but don't give the body number out ....just a yes or no cheers

Can I ask why you want to know?

Back to bare metal and in primer.

A couple of months after I got her back on the road, I decided to head up to QLD to visit a mate for a working holiday. Just out of a town called Banana, a massive roo decided I needed a bonnet emblem.

He was a big mongrel mate.
 

It was a raised road and he basically landed dead smack in front of me, I don’t reckon I even had a chance to get my foot to the brake.

The dent behind the front wheel was made by his head as he went over.

The radiator was pushed back into the fan so I couldn’t even limp back into town and as it was well before mobile phones were around, all I could do is sit and wait for someone to come past.

I couldn’t believe my luck when the 1st person that came along was headed to the same town as me, Moranbah.

He towed me the 400+kms through the night with only my handbrake to slow us down.

I lost count of how many Roos he bounced off the bullbar on his land cruiser, but he never once touched his brakes.

I had the original motor and gearbox fully rebuilt by GTR Supplies about 18 months before the last paint work was done. As it has been sitting for so long, we pulled the head off the motor and dropped the sump to check all was still good and then put in fresh gasket set and coat of paint.

Still need to change out the mismatched bolts

All those bolts fitted in that picture excluding the distributor hold down get painted rocket red mate. They where zinc ect originally, but when the engine was painted together at the engine plant, they received colour.

Cheers mate, that’s an easy fix.