Lancer is the answer! What was the question?
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AC was degassed on Tuesday. $77.
I removed the AC bits yesterday - makes the engine bay much easier to navigate! Wish I’d done this earlier in the process, but you live and learn. 
Refitted the radiator. Had a long head scratching moment with the bottom radiator hose not lining up, until I realised the neck on the thermostat housing is different between manual and automatic engines.
Easy to go and swap the neck with the old motor out of Ratty. 
Began working out the seat mounting today. I have a seat that we all seem to fit into reasonably well, so it’s the seat of choice.
Looks like I can put it on runners, without it sitting too high.
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Quiet day today, thanks to rain and work BS knocking me around a bit.
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Main Lancer progress was to shorten the throw on the gear shifter.
These are the arms for the lateral movement for two cars. Photo isn’t obvious, but I made the arm at the bottom of the photo longer by cutting a short part off the end, and then welding a longer piece cut from the second shifter.
Red texta on the bench is the outline of the unmodified arm.
The arm in the top of the photo is the two short parts, with an extension piece welded in.
Same again with the bottom of the lever itself - the extra piece I added is scrap from the bonnet pins … it was literally sitting on the bench and was the right length!
Put a sleeve over both of them just to be sure.
Cutting down the crush tubes in the rubber mounts makes the whole lot more rigid. 
Tah-duh!
The throw in both planes is down to about 70% for the “good” one (without the extra bits added. The other one is slightly faster, but not expecting it to be too much different - it will go into the blue khana Mirage. 
The $16 pinchweld turned up, so I fitted it around the door opening. It’s just a nice little thing that helps stops helmets getting chipped when they are bumped into the door opening.
Photo also shows the glovebox refitted, and
the silver vertical support for the dash (to the right of the glovebox, going down to the transmission tunnel.
Side project was to fix my bent press.
I have no idea how I did this - I just looked at it one day and saw it was bent. 
The problem is that it wasn’t pushing straight anymore - it pressed slightly rearward and to the left, which made everything much harder and some things were downright dicey.
I considered trying to straighten it, then decided to flip it and reset the new underside to be parallel to the base plate.
All worked out really well. Haven’t used it properly yet.
Oh, and the resonator turned up today. I expected it to be no-name garbage, but it’s Redback brand which is better than I expected. 
Rollcage has been ordered through Bond. I was going to do this weeks ago, but my two previous pays haven’t arrived and it seemed frivolous to be spending that sort of money when I have no income coming in.
One fortnight’s pay arrived today, so I ordered the cage.
A reasonable morning’s work in one photo.
Battery tray is a chopping board, that I heated and bent the ends up.
The battery isolator mount is pretty agricultural, but I wanted to make it bolt into any CE.
The cable is the old boot release cable. The old filler flap cable will be used for driver.
Will try to get it wired up tomorrow.
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Terrible photo of the isolator wired up.
.Cut the standard seat mount out in anticipation of remaking the mounts. Can also just see the $16 ebay pinch weld on the door opening.
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The external pull cable for the isolator was hurting my brain. Ended up using an offcut from the Magna strut tops I made.
Very happy with the result. It bolts to the back bolt for the bonnet hinge, and feeds the cable inner up to the base of the windscreen.
Looks good, works great.
All of that was yesterday. /\
Didn’t do much on the car today. There was a very tidy white Mirage advertised for wrecking in Canberra, so I went and bought all of the bolt on panels for a reasonable price.
Then the challenge was making them fit in my storage space, so I spent a chunk of today doing that. Big win was working out that I can store a Mirage/Lancer coupe bonnet in the gaps between the support beams.
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Apart from the 940 bumper sneaking into the top left, all of the panels here are Mirage/Lancer…. There’s another rough bonnet, several doors and two tailgates on the outside of the wall too.
I also took the quite nice door trims from the new doors and fitted them to the Lancer (but forgot to take a photo…).
Busy doing “real life” stuff for most of today, plus the flu has gotten a hold of me…
Did manage to wire up the tacho. Originally 1.5 litre cars are missing the signal wire between the ECU and instrument cluster, and the tacho earth. So now the tacho works.
Refitted some more of the dash, including replacing the poxy painted surround around the instruments with a black one.
Similarly replaced the crack blue plastic/rubber steering wheel with the lovely old suede Nardi that was in the S40 race car.
Also bought some a litre of acrylic paint for the bonnet and passenger’s door. $89.
Will try to get that on the car in the next couple of days if I am feeling energetic.
And booked in for a new windscreen next week. $360 is a lot more than I paid last time … but that was probably 15 years ago!
Suck in the paint fumes, certain to dispell flu symptoms
Bit the bullet and decided to remove the original seat mount.
First step is to identify the spot welds and centre punch them… 
Then use this magnificent spot weld drill…
…until this happens:
I am still going to have to modify the tunnel at the front left corner of the seat, but this is a decent start.
Terrible lighting for these photos, but this is where I got to. Note the adjustable rails ($55 from ebay). The 35x35 RHS is CAMS specification, about $12 worth.
It needs a bunch more work with end plates and so on, but this is a start.
The challenge with all of this is that the tunnel is really wide at the front, and it’s difficult to get the seat low enough. I think the best compromise is for me to drive without the seat cushion, and the other (shorter) drivers can use it/booster cushions as needed.
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I was hoping to avoid cutting the car. The whole idea was to make everything a straight bolt in if (when?) the car needs to be reshelled…
But sometimes you just have to do what works…
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This is the backing plate with the captive nuts, before it was welded to the inside of the sill panel.
I had lots of paranoia about getting the two beams on the same plane… and didn’t get it exactly right. They’re parallel, but the front one is rotated slightly. Not enough to worry about.
They both fit quite well. The back one is damn near perfect - it just drops into place and the bolts all just line up! The front is a bit tight and needs a bump to get it into place, but no big deal.
And in. The seat mounts to some threaded sleeves welded into the box section. This isn’t exactly how it is supposed to be done - it’s supposed to be an unthreaded sleeve with a nut on the bottom, but my method gives more thread engagement… and I can still put a nut on the bottom if need be.
Fitting the rear mounting bolts has hugely reduced the rearward travel on the runners. It’s still got enough travel to suit both El Wifeo and myself (being the shortest and tallest people expected to drive it), but the extra rearward travel makes it easier to get in and out of the car, and also makes the harness easier to do up.
I will have a better look tomorrow - I ran out of time, daylight and energy pretty much simultaneously this evening.
I think the seat will need to be tilted forward, and maybe slightly inwards, but it’s good.
The Boy and El Wifeo both sat in it and immediately declared that it feels good, so that’s nice.
I am super low on welding gas - hopefully I’ll have enough to weld in the harness mounting plates tomorrow.
Still flu ridden, so still doing a lot less than I want.
Did manage to paint the floor and the seat mounts.
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Also worked out where the harness waist straps will mount.
This is the seat at the full extremes of its travel. The reason it wasn’t going back far enough is that I had put a too-long bolt in and the two bolts were clashing. A few minutes cutting it down and the problem is solved.
I wasn’t consistent with the angle of these two photos, but looking at the bottom of the steering wheel gives some context.
How would a 3.8 24V motor go into a 240? Work?
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I painted the door and the bonnet today. Today was the day because it was clear and sunny by 9am… we’ve had lots of lovely weather lately, but usually a cold, damp start to the day.
No photos because “upload max filesize limit reached from php.ini”.
Short version is:
Quick sand back with the orbital sander. Slightly less quick hand sand with 800 grit wet and dry.
Quick coat of etch primer. 
Quick sand with some more 800 W&D.
Battle with the “good” spray gun for an hour, but can’t stop it spitting and farting at me.
Dump the paint into the cheap, crappy spray gun a mate gave me.
Paint.
Work out that the new paint is a bit darker than most of the paint on the car, but much darker than the paint on the RHR quarter panel.
Sand back with more 800 grit, followed by 1200 grit.
Clear coat with the crappy spray gun.
Sand back with 1200 grit then 2000 grit.
It still needs a proper buff, but I am impressed with how well it’s come up. I stopped because I had to take the car down to the windscreen place, and needed to bleed the brakes.
Brakes were weird - despite swapping front calipers, I got literally no air out of the rear brakes or the RHF. Only a bit from the LHF caliper and now the pedal is beautiful!
I did buff the bonnet under where the bonnet pins go.
Haven't read this thread in a couple of days..... and I'm again amazed at how much you do so quickly and so well. And then document it! 
That magnificent spot-weld removal tool you wrote of earlier - where did you get it? Looks like what I need to deal with some panels for the 145.
Major Ledfoot
It came from a workmate. There’s (presumably lower quality) ones on ebay.
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This is the best painting I’ve done in many years. Not saying it’s brilliant, but it’s come up really well considering the effort I put in.
Makes me much more confident going into the next painting projects .
Stripes on the door, hoping that they would distract from the colour mismatch… I mean, they do a bit, but…
This lead me to consider repainting the quarter panel, but I:
a) don’t have enough paint left;
b) am getting too anal retentive, knowing that there’s a relatively high probability that the quarter panel will be rubbed up against something in the first event or two.
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New windscreen ($360) means that I can also fit the wipers and cowl panel.
And finish the stickers on the bonnet. They’re a bit “more” than I wanted, but don’t look too bad.
A reminder of what it looked like a few weeks back…
A bit of silliness to fill in a few minutes.
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Will try to get the bumper bars repainted tomorrow.
Have also decided that the seat is too far to the right. It feels fine in the car, but I should be able to move it over by about 25 or 30mm which will give more head clearance from the rollcage. 
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Sanding bumpers….
Forgetting to take photos of any of the intermediate steps.
Breaking the cheap spray gun. 
Using the recalcitrant gun, and actually being very happy with the results! I was actually getting a really good result from the cheap gun too.
This is a dark, metallic, acrylic paint straight off the gun. Absolutely stoked considering I’ve been half-baked with my preparation and am painting on a pile of old tyres in my driveway.
Haven’t even buffed them back in the photos. Will do tomorrow after the paint has had more time to harden.
The front bumper is missing most of the factory mounting points. The bumper skin has these flimsy little tabs moulded into the inside of the skin - they are often broken, but this one has ALL of them broken.
Will try to work out a better solution tomorrow.
Power steering belt turned up this morning. Took two minutes to fit, and now the PS works, which is nice.
I also sikaflexed the floor plates back in. No biggy, but another thing ticked off the list.
Still to do (off the top of my head):
Rollcage!
Move seat to the left.
Fit the harness mounting eye bolts.
Tidy up the wiring.
Use foil tape to block up holes in the interior and firewall.
Fit the resonator to the exhaust.
Make an adapter to fit an air filter to the air flow meter.
Lower the rear/raise the front suspension.
Refit the wiper strip to the passenger’s door.
Deal with the broken heat shield on the fuel tank.
Finish the interior cable for the battery isolator.
Finished the isolator pull cable. Cable adjuster from a MTB brake lever, was the simplest way to hold the cable outer.
Fire extinguisher mount. The original mounting hole is some weird thread (M11???!) rather than the 7/16” UNF I expected it to be, so I had to use an M8 bolt with a nut instead, but it works fine. 
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Holes taped over. Did the firewall too.
Rare, factory option S40 T4 strut brace fitted. 
So very tired of this flu.
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Moved the seat over today. Got 38mm in the end. 
Of course it was more difficult and time consuming than expected…
I extended and braced the left hand seat bracket, and then welded in new threaded sleeves under the right hand side
I swapped the base cushion with a Sparco one, because the Sparco one is about one-third the thickness, and allows me to fit better - both more head room and the harness holes over my shoulders are in a better position.
The short-arses that drive the car can use a booster cushion.
Swapped the clock over. The replacement dash section without the poxy blue paint had a non-working clock, so I had to re-use the original clock. I got about 95% of the way through scraping the poxy silver paint off the clock surround before it occurred to me that I could just use the unpainted surround.
Here’s the junk that was left over.
And then the big news:
I drove it.
Seems to run really well. The broken heat shield on the fuel tank bangs and clanks, and there’s a rattle in the rear suspension, but everything else seems good.
Did a dozen or so slow laps of the back yard and then left it idling to see if the thermo fans work, but it just wouldn’t get hot enough!
Rollcage is due to be made mid next week, so I left it in the shed to stop the garbage yellow stickers fading in the weak winter sunlight until then…