Dave Bivens Mirage Build

[davebivens]

Hello, first of all, this site's been a great resource for me in my build process, I've looked through a ton of posts to get ideas but haven't posted much of anything myself but now I figure I should share a bit so others can get ideas. Maybe my pics will spark ideas for someone else in their build. I'm a year and a half into this project, taking a lot longer than I ever imagined but oh well, they all do. I've taken a lot of pics along the way so the posts for a little while will be playing catch up to where I am now (bodywork, door hinges/latching mech, next is pop-up headlight mech.)

I got a lot of ideas from the yahoo group as well but now that yahoo pretty much shut it down this is the place I guess ( there's a facebook group but I'm not a big zuckerburg fan so I stay away).

Hopefully I'll have time to stay with posting as the project continues to roll along,

[davebivens]

[davebivens]

Started with unpacking and cleaning,

[davebivens]

Coil overs cleaned up nice,

[davebivens]

Strip and metal prep the chassis, what a pain that was! Also, it had a roll bar added to the chassis and went up and around the fiberglass windshield frame, sort of molded to it with body filler, I wanted upper doors so had to remove all that.

[davebivens]

I think I found the Chassis # under the rear passenger side suspension upright? Looks like "262___85"? There have been no other marking anywhere on this car, nothing on the frame or body anywhere else but here,

[davebivens]

After initial unpacking a blowing the dust and dirt off I dissembled to the bare frame, some parts I blasted and painted as I went, mostly suspension parts. Tryine to put away clean, ready to assemble parts rather than store a bunch of rusty pull-offs on the shelf. It had some nice stuff as bought, new rims/tires, new koni special D's, a bunch of brake parts, windshield, new radiator, a flipped gear trans... lots of good stuff.

[Bobby Evans]

Welcome Dave! I'm putting a roll bar around my windshield, metal firewall between cabin and engine bay, additional structure/crush zones to protect legs.

[davebivens]

Hi Terry, I'm planning a street car, hope to get it titled. It's got a mustang 2 front suspension, rear suspension is some sort of trailing arm and tubular link setup that a previous builder designed that I plan to keep. Drivetrain, I have porsche 930 trans and I plan to mate it to a chevy LS motor, most likely a 2003-2007 5.3L. I have a KEP adapter kit but it's for a 350 so I'll have to get the LS version.

[davebivens]

Bobby, here's a couple of pics of the windshield roll bar that was on my build as arrived from previous owner. One pic of the roll bar and another of some notches in the rear bulkhead fiberglass where it looked like the plan was to tie that windshield hoop with the rear roll bar. Like I mentioned I removed it and filled in the rear bulkhead because it wasn't compatible with the upper doors,