Another month but a lot of work

 Another big gap between posting, but for several reasons. The first is that Covid hit again, so that was at least three weekends with almost nothing happening. Considering that back on the 18th of March (4 weeks ago) my plan had been to get the engine in and body on, I didn't even have enough strength to manhandle the engine or lift the body!!

In the meantime I did get a few things done. First is the coolant bottle, I have an aluminium and steel bracket that provides suitable support, that will be rivetted to the scuttle once the scuttle is in it's final position. Same for the ECU, just needs riveting on to that same scuttle. 

The battery mount was slightly more involved. First off, a rant at Halfords. I'm fine with them saying 'click and collect in an hour', but when the hour is '10am on May 12th' it starts to get a bit ridiculous! However it did force me to get my butt in gear and make a fixing clamp rather than waiting for Halfords to figure out their own stock levels. And here it is;

First was a little tray, just bent to shape. I had planned on riveting this in place but then I figured I'd be forever stuck with that size battery. So for now the battery will just sit in it!

The battery clamp is steel bar that was cut to length then a thread cut into it for the first couple of inches. On the other end was a right angle bend. This goes through the scuttle into the cross beam steel. The idea is that you hook the bar in place, then with the nuts and cross bar it's held firmly in position. The cross bar is just half of a steel tube. I was going to use angle iron, but they're basically doing the same job. It's extremely solid, I'm very happy with it. My only concern with this design is the proximity of the terminals to the cross bar, it's essentially a short circuit waiting to happen. I might put a sleeve on the cross bar, as well as the required insulation on the terminals. 

So that's three out of four scuttle items mounted. The last one is the engine fuse box which needed to wait until the engine went in. Before the engine went in (hopefully for the last time) I fitted the brake and fuel lines. The fuel lines were an absolute headache, it's 8mm copper that didn't want to bend. In fact, I actually wasted a length of copper because I managed to kink a bend. I finally got it replaced and fixed the length of the tunnel, so now both ends are waiting for rubber pipes to be added.

Oh, and somewhere around this point I decided the last panel for the tunnel is to be removable as well. For the sake of some rivnuts it's going to save me so many headaches!

On to the body, and this might be the first time I've got everything on and in place all at once;

I'm extremely happy with the panel fit, with the braces and the aluminium panels everything is really tight. What I'm not so happy with is the outriggers. My design had the outriggers bonded to the body, then the outriggers in slots bolted to the chassis. That isn't going to work in real life, the outriggers just aren't mobile enough. So I'm going back to rivnuts for the sides and back of the body. As mentioned though, because everything is really tight I'm not using them for outright strength, they will just be there to stop things blowing out sideways and backwards. 

This means I can mark the front for cutting. You can see the marking template in the picture above, that was traced to the edge of the body, taped along the back edge then laid on to the closed bonnet. This is what I'm left with;

The black line shows how much is to be removed from the bonnet in order for it to align with the body. I checked this at least half a dozen times, and I'll probably check at least a few more time before I actually cut. It's interesting that it's so deep in the top, because near the corner between the top and side, the match is very nearly there. Then there is a severe angle to cut off the side. It's not as if I could have got anything wrong yet, I've not cut the bonnet and the front half of the body is profiled. I can only assume that they expected there to either be an overlap like there is now, or for the builder to cut it back to the mark. (Edit: I've just checked the picture of the light blue example and that has a similar amount of overlap to be cut back!) 

What I do need to do is check the body is straight first, I wouldn't want to cut it to the perfect edge then find the body has moved on the outriggers. I've got rivnuts arriving today to do that.

Once I've cut to length and the bonnet has dropped into position, I can cut the bonnet brace to suit. That will keep everything in line, I'll add a strip of rubber so it all stays put once it's tight. 

Next job, along the back of the cockpit;

Basically I need a rounded edge to go between the rear chassis bar and the bottom of the body. It needs to extend to the corners while avoiding the roll bar, with more rivnuts to secure it to the chassis and body. I can't tell whether it will sit on the front of the chassis overlapping the existing aluminium, or bend to fix to the body. Fixing to the existing alumium would look better, but also make the middle panel remove a bit awkward. 

Then dashboard. Now that everything is in place, I've not got enough space behind the wheel for the gauges. They're just too tall for the space. The easy solution is to move them to the centre of the dashboard;

I'm quite happy with how they look there, it just means they need to be more IVA compliant than they would be if they had been behind the steering wheel. I also need to ensure the speed cable works, although just looking at that photo I know the speedo drive off the gearbox is basically right below the speedo gauge! As long as the cable is long enough to loop round to the body then I'm ok.

What else is there? Oh, now the body is fitted I can get back to the last bit of aluminium on the sides, which will need riveting and gluing. The other side of the transmission tunnel can also be riveted. 

The seatbelts can go on now, I'll get that all bolted up. Oh, talking of bolts, I did check what I needed and ordered the outstanding bolts from Westfield fasteners. I now have all the lengths I need. Well, apart from two, for some reason the bolts into the gearbox for the gearbox mounting are a really weird thread. I'm going to have to find those somewhere.

Seats will be the next big thing to do, there's a few details I want to sort out (like the visible metal between base and back), but they will be brought indoors for covering. 

I also need to figure out a way of lifting the whole body six inches and supporting it there. That will give me access to the remaining panels without being too much in the way.

Oh, and a ramp... while it's on dollies rather than one wheels it has a tremendous amount of trouble getting in and out of the garage. Aluminium sheet helped but bent, so I want to make a semi-permanent ramp from wood and aluminium. Then I can just hang it out of the garage and wheel the car in and out as required. 

Well, that was a big post... I'll break it down a bit next time. In fact, I might even chop this one up into a few parts.