August 2002 - Page 2
August 2002 - Page 1Monday 5th
Fitted driver's side body panel. Only problem this time was some of the underside rivets 'popped' without engaging the chassis rail and I had to drill them out and re-rivet. Top Tip - To ensure that the rivet has engaged, position it in the hole with the rivet gun and gently tap the back of the rivet gun with a hammer. It's strenuous stuff this drilling and rivetting; it takes ALL my strength to pop a 4.8mm rivet with the hand rivetter. I've found that it is best to use several small squeezes of the handles rather than attempt one big one. I've used 300 4.8mm rivets so far. Oh, for a compressor and air-rivetter...
Driver's side panel from front |
Alternate view |
Driver's side panel from rear - Should clean-up quite nicely. |
Saturday 10th
Fitted the expansion tank.
Decided on positions for the IC Ignitor Unit and the Rectifier unit. I've put the rectifier on the bulkhead panel under the expansion tank, and the ignitor unit on the engine mounting cradle towards the front of the engine bay, as this seems the most convenient place for the loom. Many of the wires going from the ignitor unit had to be shortened, which meant using my soldering iron for the first time in years. Made a simple bracket for the battery.
Also, realised that I had fitted the fuel filter the wrong way round (oops!), so removed it and fitted correctly.
Expansion tank |
Battery bracket |
Fuel filter fitted correctly to fuel pump inlet |
IC Ignitor Unit |
Engine, starting to look a bit tidier |
Sunday 11th
Continued tidying up the wiring by wrapping all the loose wires with that black loom tape that sticks to itself.
Trial fitted the nosecone, bonnet and scuttle. The bonnet will need trimming where it fits over the nosecone and scuttle; I'm terrified of this job! Trial-fitted one of the rear wheel-arches, these will need trimming as well.
Sunday 18th
Fitted a battery isolator keyswitch to the battery. I'm hoping this will serve as my 'anti-theft' device for SVA. After fitting it on the positive cable, I realised that it would make more sense to fit it on the earth cable. I'll swop them over.
Finished the rest of the under-bonnet wiring. And fitted the fuel tank.
Trial-fitted the fibreglass rear panel. It was quite a good fit, but needed trimming around the top corner where it meets the rollbar and at the OSR bottom to allow clearance for the towing hook. I decided that this would be a good time to do my first fibreglass cutting! I needn't hav worried. I used a Dremel-like Black and Decker multi-tool with a cutting disc attachment. It was like a knife through butter. I finished off using a fine sanding cylinder attachment.
Encouraged by this small success I decided to tackle cutting the grill hole out in the nosecone. I used the cutting wheel to cut the bulk of the shape out and again finished off with the sanding cylinder. Very pleased with the result. I've got some wire mesh with diamond shaped holes that I am going to use for the grill itself.
Battery isolation switch terminals |
I've since decided that it would make more sense to connect the negative (earth) cable to the isolation switch |
Battery isolation switch from under the scuttle |
IC Ignitor unit wiring tidied up with some harness wrap |
Nearly finished! |
Nose-cone with grill panel removed |
Close-up of nose-cone |
Saturday 24th
Bodywork today! Fitted a mesh grill to the nosecone using P40 'stawberry jam'. Drilled mounting holes in nosecone and attached to the car. Trial-fitted the rear panel. Some trimming was required to clear the top of the shock absorbers. Trimmed the bonnet and cut air vent holes using a cutting wheel on a multi-tool.
Nosecone, with grill, attached to car |
Close-up of nosecone |
Rear panel trial-fit |
Sunday 25th
Fitted the rear panel using rivets with small repair washers and lots of Sikaflex. Finished off with metal-reinforced plastic edging trim. I trimmed one of the rear wheel arches and would have fitted them both except that when I unwrapped the other one it was for the same side! Ian will be getting a call on Tuesday! Trial-fitted bonnet to determine final position of the scuttle. Rivetted the bulkhead into position.
Rear panel fitted
Monday 26th
Monk holiday bandy! An extra day to work on the car, yippee. First I attempted to fit the clutch cable. Several problems here. The sleeve was too wide to fit in the bracket at the gearbox end and the cable was very tight against on of the engine cradle brackets. Eventually managed to fit it by reaming the inside of the bracket carefully until the cable sleeve would fit. I measured the amount of travel required and decided on a position of the cable mounting hole on the clutch pedal lever. The pedal-end of the cable as a small eye connector. The sleeve of the cable has a threaded outer shaft and two nuts. The nuts are too small to fit over the eye so this makes it impossible to put a nut on the inside of the footwell panel. I wondered whether the tension in the cable would be sufficient to hold it in place so trial-fitted the cable to the pedal. Hmm, it was not really working. The pedal operated the clutch no problem, but when released, there was nothing to stop the pedal falling forward and the cable coming loose. I need advice on this...
Clutch cable and bracket at gearbox end |
Clutch cable entry to footwell |
Made representations of all the instruments and switches on thin card and tried out various dash layouts. The tachometer is too big to fit behind the wheel so I decided to put it towards the centre of the car, but as close to the wheel as possible. I like my indicator switch on the right so I placed tis on the right above the ignition switch. I placed the 'gang' of warning lights behind the wheel and the gang of switches below and to the left of the tacho. Other thing to fit include the neutral light, horn button, main beam switch and Stack 'driver' button and rotary switch. I was a bit annoyed to find that the rotary switch was missing its mounting nut.
Dash trial layout |
Dash trial layout |
It was time to start cutting holes in my lovely carbon-fibre dash panel. Gulp. I'd already successfully cut a a very neat hole for the steering column using a hole saw. The Stack required an 80mm hole. Unfortunately the closest hole saw size I had was 76mm so I had to use this and carefully widen the hole using the sanding cylinder on the multi-tool. I marked out the position for the other holes using masking tape. I cut ot the square holes using the multi-tool cutting wheel and the circular ones using a drill or hole saw depending on the size required.
Finished dash. Still haven't made my mind up about the position of the Stack buttons so they're still made out of card! |
Dash with steering wheel |
Dash from above |
Saturday 31st
My seats have arrived! Well, they actually arrived yesterday when we were out, so this morning I had to go to the depot to pick them up. Don't you hate it when that happens?
I've spent ages trying to find some seats that would fit my 44cm wide cockpit. None of the main brands (Sparco, OMP, Momo, Recaro) do a seat that narrow. What I was looking for was a high-back, vinyl-covered (waterproof), thinly-padded racing bucket. The only seat I had found was the Cobra Seven which I quite like, but are not really 'sporty' enough for my basic racer. Then I saw a picture of a Stuart Taylor Loco fitted with Westfield seats, which I had assumed would be to wide. Well, you know what they say about assuming. I phoned Westfield and they sell two sizes, 15" wide for narrow-bodied cars and 17" wide for wide-bodied cars. A quick calculation reveals that 15" is 38.1cm and 17" is 43.18cm. The wider seats would fit! Seems that my chassis is the equivalent of a Westfield wide-bodied chassis; the narrow-bodied car must be a tight bloody fit! I'm not exactly fat, but even my cockpit is a bit of a squeeze.
I asked about colours and it seems that you can specify just about any colour you like, including combinations and contrasting piping. I toyed with the idea of black with yellow inserts, but the Westfield man said that it would look great new, but the yellow would soon look grubby. Then I considered all black with yellow piping, but maybe even that would be a bit much. So I eventually decided on plain black. Westfield man said he had some in stock, so the order was placed!
As you can see from the photos, the seats that arrived are actually black with yellow piping! But I'm not complaining, I think they look pretty cool after all...
Westfield racing seat |
Trial fit in car. Looks good! Quite comfy too. |
View from above. It's tight, but they fit. |
After a call on Thursday to Ian Gray, I sorted out the clutch pedal and cable. Ian suggested drilling three holes in the pedal lever starting with one close to the pivot. My original hole has at the end of the lever, but Ian said I wouldn't need that much travel. I drilled two more and at the moment have mounted the cable in the middle one. To stop the pedal falling forward, you simply fit a bolt through the floor to act as a stop. Job done!
Clutch pedal showing three cable holes and pedal stop.
Finished off a few of those little jobs that I'd been putting off: attaching the loom in the tunnel, wrapping the last of the wiring in the engine bay etc.
Started wiring up the dash.
August 2002 - Page 1