I bought the donor car in November 1997 a Ford Granada 2.8i Automatic,  having already paid my deposit and confirmed my order for the Sabre. I had been looking for a number of weeks at both damaged and usable cars and finally came to buy one in a private sale. Like many people before me what you believe you are getting is not always the case.  This car seemed tidy enough for the year without to many knocks, rumbles or groans from any of the mechanical parts. In fairness nothing to drastic occurred whilst I was using it, which I purposely did to see if there was anything wrong prior to the strip down. Once the engine was out it was clear that it hadn't seen a service for a considerable time...if ever!! Someone had also decided to include in with the oil an additive, I assume to reduce noise, which had turned into a solid mass....impossible to work with, so it was fortunate that I had intended to complete a full strip down and rebuild of the engine, more importantly it had been budgeted for!!!
I ran the car for 2 months and decided to start stripping it down in the January, getting Christmas out of the way. The Sabre kit had a provisional pick up date of March and I was keen to give myself enough time to get everything ready. One problem that I knew I would come up against was the size of my garage! Its not exactly large, with no room to get in or out once the Granada was in! I had to plan in advance all of the activities required in the build so that I could establish whether they could be done inside or out....fortunately I have very amenable neighbours and an area at the side of the house that was acceptable to use. So far all has gone well..... I can use the garage with the car inside but the wings need to remain off, not a problem until the very last stages. I duly picked up the Sabre kit on March 18th 1998 debating with my friend on the return trip where I was going to put everything! Although I had spoken to numerous people about the build, the size of chassis and the body parts there seemed to be far more than I imagined...after pacifying my wife I secured an area at the rear of the garage.  It was evident that with the poor weather during January and February I had not progressed as far as I should have with the strip down. The discussions with my wife were generally of the nature 'when will that old car be off my driveway' to which the stock response was ' won't be long now dear! ' In fairness my wife has been extremely supportive of the time I have spent on the car and I'm sure things could have been considerably worse!  I would suggest that any body contemplating building a kit records as much information as possible about the hours they work, the parts and costs involved as this all builds up to complete the overall record and is good historical information to keep with the car. I have an Excel spreadsheet that I use, recording hours by week, costs etc. It makes good reading alongside my original budget!! 
Whilst stripping the engine I found that the air intake pipe from the air flow meter had been split and had caused some problems within the plenum chamber, this was stripped and cleaned ( the photo shows how the right hand air intake is full of muck compared to the left) After partly stripping down the car I set about the rebuild of the engine. I wanted to complete this first so that I could test it as soon as possible in the car and I did not want to stop the build half way through to put the engine right.  After spending an afternoon cleaning the muck and grime off the exterior of the block I wished somebody had told me to have the engine steam cleaned prior to it's removal! It would have saved much time and I would have had clean overalls! I stripped down the block and took it away for degreasing and reboring. At the same time I replaced all bearings, valves, guides etc. I also had the rocker covers, plenum chamber and accelerator housing cover polished at great expense! But I think the end result was worth it. I replaced the normal Fuel Pressure Regulator with a Power Boost model, used Bosch 4 spark plugs and renewed the distributor cap, coil  and all leads. Having stripped and rebuilt engines in my youth I was familiar with the general mechanics of the engine, so I didn't encounter to many problems, although fuel injection was new to me. I had decided some time earlier that I wanted full dial instrumentation and quickly learnt that this meant a move away from the electrical movements and onto mechanical. I didn't realise how time consuming the process would be in finding the various adapters that were required, especially as I wanted oil pressure, oil temperature and water temperature, the number of discussions that I have had with adapter suppliers doesn't bare thought and if any body wants to save themselves some time send me an email. I also wanted to use stainless steel hose coverings and end adapters to finish off the engine but after(!) spending a considerable sum on parts and then being totally dissatisfied by the result I gave up and went back to conventional hose. On this point I would advise against purchasing hoses etc. in advance, as I did. These are expensive items and because of the slightly different layout of the engine bay stock items don't always fit. An example of this are the air flow meters to intake hoses which because of their large size are quite expensive. I found I could not use either of these due to the repositioning of the meters and air filters....you have been warned!  The final picture in this gallery shows the engine in all its glory albeit somewhat undressed without all its ancillary components attached. The first phase was now complete and I could look forward to the build itself!! Overall I spent more than 50 hours on the engine and some 88 in stripping down the car, labelling and storing all the components just to get ready for the build! The donor finally went to heaven in November 1998 and cost me £10!  Much to the amusement of my wife!!