“I SPENT WEEKS RESEARCHING IMAGES — RIGHT DOWN
TO WHERE THE FACTORY SEAM SEALER GOES...”
94 August 2019
That even included new A-pillars: “We folded
them out of sheet steel in-house,” continues
Neil, “and also replaced sections of the fl oor, the
boot fl oor and crossmember, rear arches and
rear screen surround. I bought one headlight
surround but we had to make the other.” The
rear valance, all the jacking points and even the
petrol fi ller fl ap also had to be replaced.
Every piece of the car was gradually removed,
stripped, cleaned and repaired.Feeling blue
“I wanted to put my touch on the car,” adds
Davey, “so had Neil repaint it from the original
Champagne Gold into Caspian Blue.” That
meant sourcing a new interior since the existing
brown one would clash terribly.
“We got a Ghia interior from a racer and had
to swap all the fabric parts over to keep the X’s
heated front seats,” remembers Neil. “We had
the seat covers and seatbelts in the bath at home
cleaning them — my partner Kara is very
understanding, in fact she did a lot of the work
to restore the interior.”It’s here this particular restoration goes
somewhat above and beyond what you might
normally expect as Neil admits he “got carried
away with the details”. Take the engine for
example. “Davey asked we just paint the engine
block and inner wings, but in the end we
refurbished every individual part,” smiles Neil.
“I spent an entire week on that alone. Every seal
and belt, the radiator, the water pump... it was all
stripped and rebuilt. Of course, all the gaskets had
rotted. We painted the fan blades the correct
yellow because we couldn’t get the correct fi nish
from cleaning and polishing alone. The dipstick
was painted with the correct band of red —
I researched that, too. The overfl ow tank and
other plastic parts were cleaned and degreased in
the dishwasher at home. Everything had rust
from sitting; even the sump had holes in it.”
Everything underneath was media blasted,
rebuilt and epoxy coated then the fl oor covered
in tinted Raptor lining. “We were going to
lacquer it but it would have looked too shiny.”
The suspension, axles and brakes had all their
components replaced. “We also fi tted a newstainless steel exhaust specially made to match
the original one.”
The interior had the dashboard and steering
wheel leather-fi lled and dyed to match the
new colour scheme. “We took the instruments
apart and refurbished them, used chrome
paint on the dials and polished the lenses. The
wood was sanded and relacquered.” Another
great example of the pains KD Kustoms went
to is the parcel shelf. “You often see them
sitting uneven,” explains Neil, “we removed
the old cardboard backing, carefully
smoothed the material then fi xed it to an
aluminium plate so it will never bend. It was
attached using a spirit level to ensure it’s
perfectly aligned.” The speakers received new
custom-made hessian cloth covers and the
radio/cassette was stripped and painstakingly
rebuilt. Neil even found a company in
Germany to make a brand-new radio aerial to
original factory specifi cations. “I spent weeks
researching images of Granadas,” admits Neil,
“right down to where the factory seam sealer
goes. I’m obsessive about things like that,