Assembly!

OK, with the "car" safely in the garage, it was time to start the assembly. As always, I thought this would be a "quick fix", a couple of weeks, and the car should be on the streets again. Oh boy...

Problem no 1: I lived and studied in Karlstad, a 3 hour drive from my fathers garage.
Problem no 2: This was the last year at the university - neither time or money existed in overflow...

This meant I didn't really get started until school ended, and summer began. First I had to find the "missing" parts - I was lucky and got in touch with Janne, who happened to have the glass needed, an engine and a set of bumpers. We made a deal!

Now the next thing to do was welding the rust holes in the floorpan. Since I hate welding I talked my father into doing it for me. He doesn't like it any more than I do, but at least he's good at it... This meant another couple of weeks passed before he had the time to help me. One contributing factor was that the garage is quite narrow and small - we had to get the car outside to do the welding.

More stuff was missing though. The interior floor carpet for example. Finding one of those turned out to be nightmare. Light brown ones were available, but I wanted a black one, or maybe dark brown. I ended up buying a complete spares car for the carpet and some minor stuff. I only bought that car because another friend, Johan, needed the remains of it for his project. The parts car was some 300 kilometres away, but that didn't scare me.

I have to tell you about when Johan came to pick it up after I finished stripping the parts car. We (Camilla and I) had removed not only the carpet, but also the front windscreen, and the gearlever (since I know from my first Capri that these may break!). I had told Johan he needed a trailer to get the car home. Imagine my suprise when he and his father arrived with no trailer but a towing rope for the 100 kilometre trip...but they got home ok.

Anyway, at least we got the car welded, and the "real" assembly could start. Interior, glass, all those small parts you always forget about sooner or later found their place. The engine was fitted one weekend in august, and the following monday it was time to start the beast up for the first time! At the first turn of the key the engine spun, but didn't ignite. Hmmm...someone switched the leads to the coil. New try - and it's running, ladies and gentlemen!

It sounded quite healthy revving in the driveway. A short test drive the same night confirmed that most of the stuff worked.

A couple of days later it was time for the dreaded "car inspection". They didn't have anything to say about the lack of bumpers, but the rear brakes were not quite in shape, and some other minor stuff made them want to see the car again... The brakes were no easy fix. Two new wheelcylinders, new piping and some engineering was needed to pass - but then it was go on all systems!

The same week I moved 800 kilometres to my new job - and the Capri seemed to enjoy the trip as much as I did...funnily enough we got stopped by the police for a "flying inspection" - one of my headlights had gone out - just a bad contact it turned out.