XAL 808M - 1974 Manta A 1780 Deluxe
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Previous Owner: Martin
Dodgson
XAL808M is a Manta 1780S in
Signal Red, which was first registered on 1/8/73. It had one owner, who
had it until 2000, and it then passed through the hands of a few
traders, which was when I bought it, to rescue it.
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It originally had
a red plastic interior, which was one of the
reasons why I bought it and it was an all
original, unmodified, albeit very neglected car
with 53000 miles on the clock. I was originally going to
restore it, but it turned out to be worse than it
looked. The corrosion on the inner front wings
was minor and localised, but the cabin had a
severe water leak and had been left to soak, so
consequently the floor/sill/footwell had some
perforations and the metal was covered in surface
rust.
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When I tried to
jack up the left hand front end, the jacking
point started collapsing and the surrounding
floor area distorted noticeably. The worst part
of the rust was the rear wheelarch/lower rear
wing/spare wheel well, which were all rotted
through. The car always
started okay, and once I had stopped the oil coming out of the
dipstick hole, and adjusted the timing, seemed to work okay. The
breather system was blocked and when I took the rocker cover
off, it looked like the oil had never been changed and I was
scraping it out with a screwdriver
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I did drive the thing (briefly)
a couple of times, and compared to my Manta 1900SR, it seemed
slow (partly due to the brakes were sticking on), noisy
(tappets, exhaust, wheel bearing and no carpets at that point),
and there was an odd noise when it had the steering on full
lock. There was also the smell of
all the oil leaking out of the engine, and the
asbestos smell of the brakes sticking on.
Everything else worked, like the lights, wipers
and washers, etc, but I decided it should go to
someone who could restore it.
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It
was sad, because there was enough there to
visualise what a nice looking car it would be if
it didn't have all the rust. I removed the red interior,
to save it, in case the car wasn't saved and
fitted all black trim I got from a spares car
last year. This actually looked 10 times better,
as all the trim was black (with a red interior,
the kick panels, carpets, console and dash are
all black), and the slightly grubby bic pen red
of the interior clashed with the bright red of
the paintwork.
After a couple of weeks advertising,
it found a buyer in Yorkshire AutoTrader.
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New Owner:
Tony Hirst
Date of Purchase :
March 2001
What's been done:
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Extensive welded repairs
to inner front wings, floors, sill, boot floor.
Rear arches (what was
left) cut out and replaced with Chevette arches.
BMW 7 Series front spoiler
added. Manta GTE wheels painted black, fitted.
Respray in cans of red
paint, to match original, bonnet sprayed satin black.
Car now MOT'd, but needing
new engine, as current one (orig. 1.6) overheats after 4 miles
and actually seized once (!), but will be replaced by 1.9 passed
on to Tony by myself (Martin Dodgson).
Rear Axle also a bit
whiney, so a replacement will be sourced in the near future.
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All in all, a most
impressive bit of work from Tony and his welder mate (sorry
can't remember the name) and proof that even cars that look a
bit far gone, can be saved if you've got genuine enthusiasm, and
aren't afraid of hard work. |
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