Been an expensive week on top of a hard working couple of weeks digging a trench.
Took a while to find a good and cheap concreter to do the job, the guy is good, quick and also a car fantastic like us!
I was getting annoyed at some concreters saying how deep or how many meshes needed etc etc. Having quotes as high as $6500 was like them saying go away, we can't be bothered.
Anyhow I worked out the size trench would be needed even if a bit overkill , it was going to be 150mm deep with 250mm deep middle section but later it all became 250mm or slightly less overall .

Those with a keen eye will notice the pipe has a hole at each end, 1 by me and the other by tree , here is some tree roots I removed ..

And this black stagnant liquid followed soon after.

After clearing the pipes and rearranging their direction it was time to organize the concrete. As the job has minimix access and is all undercover the guy came to mesh the hole ready for the pour, the mixer fitted under the roller door by a good 10in, I asked how heavy the truck with 3.4 cubes of concrete weighs, his reply was about 11 tonne , no damages to the driveway or tarmac . On his way out the truck nearly hit the roller door at full open height, 9in of suspension compress, that's quite amazing ! This is the slab all in and textured

Another 28 days till fully cured .

As I couldn't do to much other stuff I watched him do his wizardry but keeping out the way , I decided to make a start on the sand blaster conversion to vapor (water) blaster. I had the dirt pump already and the new gun which is seen on the glass, I've added a regulator and fully siliconed the the inside to make it water tight. It's nearly ready to start using, just a couple of small things to get.

Been scouring the webs for a decent looking dash vent for defrosting the windscreen, not that the mk1 will see much cold weather action it's cause of the mk2 heater box being used .
I found this vent on a free 3d printable site and decided to crank a print on shiny black PLA for a test, it'll be done in petg for the final version.

high security ignition? he he 
 

Another busy few days sanding, filler and repeat until I was happy with the panel. I did the panel in 4x parts, C pillar , middle, lower and sill, doing it this way was so I wasn't overwhelmed with the amount of work needed.


Once I was happy, but a little rushed due to the weather starting to turn narsty so quickly mixed up the primer and got it covered.

The style line is a little wavy near the rear light but that will get corrected in due time .
Rear arches almost look like regular ones or is it me just so used to them now.
Starting tomorrow I'll be either working on the front panel or start making the mold for the front guard ( yellow one in pic 2 ) , it will be a 3 piece mold due to its shape, I'll keep youse updated

Today I was interrupted a few times so getting something done took a while tho I did achieve something.. first was to get the guard in the fglass room to be prepped for making a mold from it.
First job was to clean the guard of dust etc, then I cut thin card into strips which will become the return edge for the mold where it'll be split, this is needed cause you can't remove something that's hooked past about 180deg, you'll see what I mean later on..

The thin cardboard is covered with masking tape as this also helps to part the mold along with PVA release agent , this is a liquid that acts like a sheet of glad wrap membrane. Once the PVA has dried I can proceed to brush on the gelcoat, I use neutral colour with an added pigment of a variety of colours, this one will be teal, almost like the mk1 Escort colour from 1973 !

I try to make a mold in a contrasting colour so I know where I've brushed the gelcoat on .

Yes Drew, I'm on it. Yestdy I put the first layer of micro fibre tissue to cover the tight corners which the thicker mat doesn't cope with as well. Will see how far I get today as nice weather looming

Last night was the tissue layer and it was slow to set due to damp weather and the cold panel slowing the reaction down.

This morning was way better weather, about 16deg and sunny, good for fibreglassing without stressing of it's going to flash off to soon or heat up, anyways I got it done without distractions or other things.
There's about 4 or 5 layers of 450csm on there now and some strategic placed woven biaxial in there too which is like triple strength of regular fglass . Now it's wait a day to work on the return edges


The guard will stay in the mold till over completed all the glass work and fully cured for about 5 days..