Elapsed time vs effort

 One thing I have been wondering about this entire build is 'where has the time gone'. The first blog post is from February 2013, so it's now 11 years 1 month. Even Bentley don't take that long to hand build a car!

So I decided to have a look through this blog and add up the actual time. Up to this point I've spent 801 hours on the car, approximately 20 weeks based on a 40 hour week. It does seem a bit high but it's nowhere near as much as the 11 years suggests. 

For the first few years I didn't get much time to work on it, in 2015 for example I didn't work on the car at all. That's the joys of working away unfortunately, I only had weekends for literally everything and car building came fairly low on the list at the time. In the first five years I did 119 hours, about 3 weeks worth.

Covid also took a toll, despite having a lot more free time (because we couldn't actually do anything!) I was still unable to progress with the car. So 2022 was another year with zero time spent.

Thankfully the last couple of years have been improved, with nearly 300 hours last year and 82 so far this year. And it shows from a progress point of view, it has really moved on recently and is getting very close to finishing.

I also need to add up the costs, I did have a cost calculator very early on but I didn't keep it up to date. The bodywork was still the biggest cost (£1000), closely followed by the donor (£435), then the various metal purchases. I reckon even if I got to 3K total costs, that's only £300 a year. I pay more than that for insurance on my tintop!

But I'm definitely not making a profit on anything. Even if I sell it for 10K (which is very optimistic), that's 7K over ten years. Not exactly something I could live on. 

Fibreglass and wiring

 So one thing I've got to sort out is fixing the wire for the side repeaters, and possible the rear of the car. The guidelines say that it needs to be fixed a minimum of 300mm space, which means quite a few are needed. But just using adhesive pads isn't going to cut it with Mr IVA. 

I've asked this question before, and was pointed towards a mounting plate with a bolt welded in the centre. They're not cheap though, and I'd need maybe a dozen in total? But of course there's always a cheaper option. Strips of steel with a bolt welded in will do the same job, then I'll use fibreglass filler or similar to fix it to the body. 

As a reference, here's one that Toolstation stock https://www.toolstation.com/made4trade-backplate-for-euro-clips/p55986. But it uses an M10 bolt which is mega overkill for two wires! I can drop it down to M4 or M6 and still provide enough security for wiring. 

So I'll get some made up then figure out the positioning before fitting them. 

To do list March 2024

 After the wiring and painting is done, and the handbrake is ready to go, there isn't a great deal left now. It's time to make a more granular to-do list;

• Fuse box, battery and coolant bottle mounting on scuttle. This is a few brackets and a shedload of rivets, should be a couple of hours work max.
• Fuel filler pipe and cap. I'm not sure I can do this before the body is fitted, I'm not even sure what filler pipe I need. Time to go online to figure that one out.
• fuel pump and filter mounting on the back of the car. As with everything on the scuttle, it's a few brackets and a shedload of rivets. Or maybe rivnuts.
• Front body cross brace cut to height and welded. This is a supporting bar that has been made to the correct curve but needs to be set to the correct height in order for the body to sit well together. As you might expect this is also another job for after the body fitted.
• Dashboard. Yeah, that. 
• Seat trimming. This has been on my list for ages but I can't put it off any longer. It also means that the seats can't live in the garage, once they're trimmed they're then vulnerable. Unless I wrap them with something, maybe clingfilm? I'll have a think about that.
• Drill the wholes for seat and seatbelt fixings. The aluminium sheets quite nicely cover all the mounting holes, this will be to uncover them.
• Pedal limit brackets for all pedals. Each pedal needs to only move a certain distance. The brake pedal has a natural limit (the brakes being 'on') and the brake switch itself stops it from coming too far out. The clutch pedal is completely free in both directions so needs the most work. The gas pedal is actually limited by the travel of the throttle cable but I might want something a bit more rigid. Otherwise I'm going to be snapping throttle cables!
• Exhaust end trim. To be done once the body is on.
• Boot hinges and lock. To be identified then fitted once the body is on.
• Boot lining. Question mark on this one, it's not needed for IVA but depending on when I get my test appointment I might try and add it.
• Drill seat belt mounts on roll bar. They're currently just marking holes, they need to be opened up to the relevant bolt size.
• Paint roll bar. Not sure about the colour though, I'm sort of leaning towards either a green to match the body, or a matt black to match the chassis. In either case it needs to be a very high quality smooth surface, so probably roller?
• Trim front body to the right length. Also to be done with the body on.
• Shorten driveshaft. To be sent away after triple checking the measurements.
• Wiring brackets/fixings. I need a few wiring fixings, mainly for the front and rear bodies. Nothing clever, most likely 3D printed.
• Chassis number stamped in place. Oooh, that makes it a real car!!
• Trim under rollbar. Body on task.
• Bolt audit (I still need to do this so I can order whatever bolts I don't have.)

It looks like a longer list, but each of these is an hour tops. This is in contrast to previous to-do lists where it was a week per line!

On to next week then. I have this in mind for next weekend (if the weather allows);

• Engine back in and chassis back on skates
• Body in place to check aluminium panel fit (particularly where the panels tuck under the body)
• Bond runners and aluminium in place (this could actually chew up a fair bit of time on the weekend so I need to be careful)
• Add front and measure/mark/cut to suit. (Eeeek!!). 

Handbrake finished

 I nearly forgot, I have finished the handbrake. The initial plan was to have it under the dash, but that got a bit challenging, I came up with a location under the steering wheel, but had some fun and games with cable routing;

Ignoring the cable for now, this posed several challenges. I couldn't get the mechanism to operate on the rear cables without some major engineering. The pulling force was across the car instead of front to back, and it was slightly higher, and it had to avoid the gearbox. 

Basically the only option was a Bowden cable. So I started with a quick Ebay search for a cheap cable that seemed long enough and didn't have any fancy brackets or anything. Cue a front cable from a Seat something-or-other. This gets routed from the handbrake, into the tunnel via a reinforced hole;

As you can imagine it needed to be reinforced as the chassis rail wasn't that big to start with. A 25mm right angle with an inbuilt sleeve, all welded and then smoothed flat got me a hole through the middle but without affecting the strength.

Then I needs something at the back for the cable to pull against, a simple bracket would suffice;

Once the new cable was lashed up, it can connect to the bracket, with the rear cables and the spring also in place. My only doubt was/is that the bracket doesn't allow enough travel on the cables, but there's not much I can do about that now. Typically a good handbrake locks at between 3 and 5 clicks, if I can adjust the cable to match then I think I'm ok.

Front body electrics

 Woohoo, we had some dry weather! Well, drier weather, it was still a bit grim. But at least I was able to get the front body out and plan the electrics. This was side repeaters, front indicators, front side lights and headlight wiring. First job was to get a reference on the side and drill a marker hole for the repeaters;

I levelled the body on the ground, then measured a distance up from the ground on both sides. Then matched a similar distance from the front arch (the rear edge of the body is all over the place but not unexpected), then drilled a hole.

The wiring wasn't long enough to deal with the side repeaters, so I borrowed a couple of lengths from the wiper motor. While the main colour is blue rather than green, the trace colour is white and black the same as the normal colour. Along with a black for ground, that was the two runs cut, terminated and taped into place (obviously they'll be fixed inside rather than stay on the outside!!

The next step was to continue those two lines to the front indicators and on to the main connector. At the same time I brought the headlight wiring down to the main connector. When it was all taped up it looked like this;

This is when I realised I didn't have spare wires for the side lights, and to be honest I had no clue what colour it needed to be! Even checking the wiring diagram I wasn't sure, so I'm going to have to track it down. Oh, and I think I'm short of a length of earth wire, a section long enough to get from left to right. I'm sure I have some spare wire so it isn't an issue, I do just need to make sure it's enough to host the headlight as there's a fair bit of juice going through those headlights. 

The holes also need to be enlarged. This is as far as my stepped drill went, I had to get a larger drill bit from Amazon to finish. It's only a cheap drill bit as it needs to drill maybe eight holes in total.

Then again, I did have a thought about mounting. The lights have three fixing holes, remarkably close to the main hole in the middle. I'm not convinced using self tappers or even nuts and bolts will provide a suitable fixing for the lights. What I'm tempted to do is make rear plates, a triangular bit of metal (probably aluminium) that sits behind the lights and gives them a stronger fixing to screw or bolt into. I have spare material and wouldn't take much to knock something up. 

The next job will be the rear, and then I need to get the wiring from the connector back to the various locations it needs to live in. Fuse box and steering column are the main ones for the headlights and side lights, indicators go back to the flasher relay and fuse box. Neither should be much trouble as long as I have enough wire. 

Gauge bezels

One of the jobs I have is to make some bezels for the gauges. I can't find any online for a decent price, but I also can't machine them. I'm heading for 3D printing, but I have trouble with the material and with the output. The prints are the right shape but usually a very uneven texture. For example, here is a raw PLA print;

The front face is as rough as it looks. This is also PLA which will melt and distort in a car. The latter is easy to fix, I have to print with ABS. I did have to do some messing around with bed adhesion, but managed to do an ABS print with no distortion;

So it won't distort in the car, but the surface is just as bad. 

To fix the surface, there are two options. One is to sand and paint, the other is to use acetone vapours to 'melt' the surface. This is a sand and paint;

And this is an ABS print after 5 hours of a vapour chamber;

It's quite clear to me that acetone wins by a country mile. It's nice and glossy, easy to do (just leave it alone for half a day!!), and repeatable. So I just need to adjust the print and then do the work. I did have high hopes for the sand and paint, but it's still just too rough to be able to sit in my line of vision every time I go for a drive.

I did note that even with the acetone, the surface isn't perfectly smooth. I think I'm going to have to adjust the print to get the front edge domed slightly, but also sand it a little bit. The sanding marks should disappear after the acetone does its job, but sanding will give it a head start and give me the best result. 

So I need to leave this one to solidify so I can inspect it a bit more, then print a few. Oh, and the vapour chamber I'm using is an opaque tub so I have to open it whenever I want to check it. And of course, every time I open it I release the vapour that had built up. I think for the final version I'm going to use a glass lid so I can watch it. 

(Update) after an hour or so, here's the acetone polished one in place on the rev counter;

I'm very happy with the result, just the profile to sort as it needs to host a plastic or glass face. Probably plastic to be honest, it's easier to get plastic of that size rather than glass. 

Floor done

 I have put it off for (pretty much) ten years, but I thought this weekend would be floor day. Thursday I tidied the garage, Friday got the engine out and the chassis on it's side, then today started with a clean of the panels. I really ought to have taken the masking tape off on day one, because my fingers and nails are raw from peeling it off. Anyway, clean panels;

A fit with temporary rivets showed they were still ok;

But test fitting real rivets proved to be harder. I'm not entirely sure why, but some of the holes weren't big enough for the rivets. I even had to redrill half a dozen holes for rivets to fit. Eventually they all went in;

Of course, they all had to come back out again to apply the Tiger Seal. But after applying the seal, the rivets went on well. It looks nice too, very even and secure;

It does bode well for the other panels, I was tempted to add some more but I thought I'd not tempt fate and leave it there for today. Of course, it does mean the Tiger Seal is unlikely to survive to the next panel fit. In theory the other panels don't need the same level of strength, but it would still be nice to use it for all panels.

I've also picked the chassis paint, I have a satin black exterior metal paint to go over everything. I'll apply the bottom coat tomorrow then with any luck that'll be the last time the chassis has to be anything other than the normal way up.