Ae86 Progress! Repairing the Dash, fitting the headlight Assembley - Juiceboxforyou

Not everything goes to plan. Unfortunately, our exhaust mission didn’t work out, I sort of forced josh to make an exhaust for me, and realistically I should have got one made up elsewhere. It’s one of those situations where you have a friend who can weld, and suddenly everyone asks him to do work.

This was a productive weekend of sorting the dash, realising the exhaust is fucked and requires a whole new system, painting the little metal piece on the car’s frame to match the life, and sorting the headlight brackets.

I hadn’t been to the shed in a few weeks due to covid lockdown nonsense, so seeing Josh balls deep in his s15 resto and Flip doing some bits on his FC was a pleasant surprise. We usually get more stuff done when there isn’t a crowd!

Flips FC is looking good as always; I can’t get enough of that BB wing.

Flips ingeniously fix the bracket on the new dash, hacking the old one.

I did love the three gauge dash and might rerun it in a future track car, but my heart desired a plain old simple black dashboard, and I found this one for mega cheap.

Flip finished the metal piece of the shell, often forgotten about; this is on show under the windscreen and mates to the dashboard.

Parts are everywhere; it was finally nice to have a home for these pieces.

The Longchamps, that glimmer of hope on this build. I purposely fitted them to the car to keep the spirits high as the rest of it looks like a shit heap.

Flip sadly had to hold the new piece in place for about five minutes until it set.

The Trueno looked hilarious here, almost like a Kaido racer with the over-masked front end.

The rocket sounded incredible; ill just have to hack the back box off and save it for another project.

Flips front wheels from the FC are now sold as he decided to go down the one-piece route with some SSR type Cs.

The Koenigs were a good look, but the car looks way better now.

Josh is balls deep in misery.

I’m incredibly envious of his skills to take on such a project.

Thankfully this worked a treat; the dash was cheaper because of the broken taps; it also has a groove for a roll; cage, and thankfully we will be running one, so everything should work out.

It isn’t looking too shabby here.

I can’t wait to finally reveal the excellent engine bay look down the line.

I am opting for the stealth look with the brake master stopper.

Factory fresh finish on the dashboard piece. Good man Flip.

The rollback clocks, hopefully, work once we hook everything up.

I have to figure out a cleaner look for the cam pulleys.

Finally, it has eyes, well, sort of, once the headlights went in, this was such a good moment.

Lots more on this heartbreaker soon; I hope you enjoyed this little blog post.

– Neil