Longer weekend updates

 This weekend is a bit longer than normal, mainly because it's another change of contract. My last job finished on Thursday, and my new job starts Monday, so a bit longer on the car.

Or more specifically, more time on the wiring. It's like a never ending job. Today I went back over the rear of the car and sorted out all the ground points. This included the fuel tank earth, so for the back of the car it's all set. The only thing I need to do now is to use cable ties to fix it all in place.

Up front I've done one solid ground point near the fuse box, and got several wires terminated and fixed. On the way I picked up a few more wires, specifically the gauge wiring. I've just got the temp sensor now, just one last wire. But I also found a few more wires from the engine side that need wiring.

Now this is where it got complicated again, so I took a break. It was the crank angle sensor this time. The wires are cut short and I wanted to check where they were meant to go.

The CAS has a white red line that doesn't connect to the current white red. I need to use another white red to connect all these;

• CAS
• Main Relay
• Circuit opening relay
• ECU pin 1#B
• Fuel injectors

There's also;

• Black light green which is ground (done).
• White to ECU 2#E
• Yellow Blue to ECU 2#G

The ECU lines are easy enough, then I just need a length of white red to make up the line. 

I also found a few wires going from the ECU to the dash, but it turns out they were related to air conditioning so they came out. I also tidied up the OBD lines, I still don't think I'm keeping the port but at the moment the wires are still there. 

I do need to sort the switches though, I think they're the last three wires remaining from the dash. And the battery is charged and ready to be connected.

(Later that weekend)

Wiring up the white red wasn't too bad in the end, and actually it made the engine wiring look a lot simpler. Now everything is almost in it's correct place I can see a whole load of earths needed. So the plan will be the same as the other side, a nice fat bolt through the bodywork with all the earths hanging off it.

However, I did also find a pretty sorry-looking engine earth strap, so that's going to need replacing. And of course it's a pretty beefy lead so I need to get some decent size terminals to make up a new lead. Fortunately the MX5 battery is in the boot so I have a very long length of thick cable to use as earth and positive leads. Then I need to make up the earth leads for all the sensors, ECU etc. 

Update from the weekend

Not much new going on, but I thought I'd give an update on how things are going with current activities. The bonnet shaping is going well, the corners look a lot better and I've got a couple more sections to add before I can fit the bonnet properly. Then it just needs to be tied down on the ends with the rubber clips I have. I'm not going to fit anything in the holes for now, I don't think that's the way to go and it's clear they're not aligned. More filler I guess.

On the electrics side there's been a decent amount of progress. Today I got all the headlight wiring into the right place, although I've got maybe a handful of terminations to do tomorrow. There was seven pins listed on the diagram, but only six on the actual switch gear. It turns out that I wasn't going nuts, it genuinely was wrong. There was a positive line where there should be ground, and on the other side there was a main beam toggle switch and momentary switch that both do the same thing! I don't know whether part of it is because the light retractor motors have to be powered at the same time. 

Anyway, I've reduced it down to the right level. I have a low power side that energises the headlight relay on position two, and energises the TNS relay on position one and two. There's then a high power side that redirects the headlight relay output either to main or high beam as required. The headlight relay goes off to the headlights (obviously!), then the last lighting stage will be to wire in the TNS relay to the side and rear lights. 

Once the side and rears are lit, I just need to get the last few wires done for the dash lights, then the signal wires for the gauges. They're quite easy though, single wires that are already there and probably just need extending at best. 

Overall it has been a positive weekend. On this journey there's been a fair few setbacks, some have needed very quick solutions and others have been 'I will try this again next week'. The wiring has been the worst, and now I know why. It wasn't just me not getting it, it was genuinely wrong. There really isn't much more now, as soon as it's running and the last bits are bolted/screwed/rivetted in place it can go for IVA. I still need to make the decision on whether to make it perfect for IVA (paint, decoration etc), or get it IVA ready then continue the work after. Having it road legal would not be the end either way, that's simply not how kit cars work! 

(Update...) And of course just typing that I've remembered something. For IVA the edge of the bonnet needs the clip on trim, but the bonnet bumpers for positioning don't currently permit the edge trim. So if I go with what I have, each of the bumpers needs reprinting with a notch missing. Fortunately I've got to reprint four anyway so I'll get the notch in those straight off. 

Bonnet reshaping

 After I'd cut the rear wheel studs and got everything sat straight, I decided to have a go at the bonnet. It still doesn't line up properly. Well, it doesn't line up properly for me! The trailing edge sits half an inch or so lower than the body. I had thought it just needed some padding, which is why I bought the extra foam strip. Turns out it needs a bit more than that.

What I've done is drill holes on the corners, one about three inches in from the top and one about three inches down, both sides. Then using a nut and bolt I was able to dial in good positioning for the corners. I could do with a bit more working space but actually it worked quite well. 

The bonnet sides now need to be curved to match the body sides. The middle part needs to come out, and the bottom needs to be pulled in. That will work well with the bonnet catches I have, I just need to make sure there are suitable fixing points all the way round. I'm not convinced foam is the best way to go, although it will stop the squeaking that currently happens when I roll it in and out of the garage! I think I'm back to 3D printed brackets, not as big and bulky as the ones I did before but probably more curved to allow the bonnet to drop into place. And they will reuse the holes I've made doing the bolt adjusters, so they should be very secure. 

What to do when you lose some wires...

 This weekend hasn't got off to a good start. I had hoped that with the sunny weather I'd get the wiring done, then potentially get the car running. Of course, something had to go wrong. 

That something turned out to be an absence of relays. As anyone who does car wiring knows, there are various circuits that are a little too high powered to run through the switch, and therefore need a relay in attendance to keep things from melting. Just going through the component locator on the wiring diagram, there is;

• A/C relay (not needed)
• Blower motor relay (not needed)
• Circuit opening relay (needed, page 2 C4)
• Cooling fan relay (needed, page 3 E10)
• Headlight relay (needed, page 4 D14)
• Horn relay (needed, page 5 C17)
• Main relay (needed, page 2 E4)
• Retractor relay (not needed)
• TNS relay (needed, page 4 E14)

So that's nine relays, of which I need six. 

• The circuit opening relay is not a standard one. It's got VIO and BLK for energising the relay, blu-red to the fuel tank unit, wht-red which is similar to the main relay, and lt grn which goes to the air flow meter for some reason? This sits on it's own and is already wired up, I remember doing this one yesterday for the fuel pump;

• The cooling fan relay is a regular 4 pin, with blk-wht and blk-grn to energise the relay, blk-red from the cooling fan fuse and yel off to the cooling fan motor. This is inside the fuse box, you can just see the yellow wire exiting stage left;

• The headlight relay is a regular 4 pin, red-blu and blu-yel to energise the relay, red-blu to the headlight switch and wht-blk also to the headlight switch. This is gone, I can't see any sign of it.
• The horn relay is a regular 4 pin, grn-org and wht-grn to energise the relay, wht-grn to the stop fuse and grn-red to the horn. For some reason I still have this one, it was on it's own and I think it must have been kept as part of the horn circuit;

• The main relay is a regular 4 pin, blk-wht and blak to energise the relay, wht-red off to various points on the engine and wht-grn to the injector fuse. I say this is a 'regular' relay, it's a bit beefy compared to the ones above. This also lives in the fuse box and is the largest box in there;

• The TNS relay is a regular 4 pin, lt-grn and wht-red to energise the relay, wht-red from the btn fuse and wht-blu to the tail fuse. And this is gone, it'll be with the headlight relay no doubt but no idea where either of them are.

So this leaves me with a decision to make. Overall I'm going to go visit AliExpress and buy a small relay board for the missing relays. But that's now a third box on my ever decreasing electrical platform;

Even this screenshot is missing the circuit opening relay and indicator flasher, so there is precious little space left. However, the box on the bottom is just a fuse box, it does nothing clever. I am wondering whether I should buy a combined relay/fuse box, and do away with the unit at the bottom. It shouldn't be too bad to rewire, the unit I'm considering from AliExpress comes prewired so I just need to buzz them out and make sure I still have wires going where I need them. 

That fuse box is made up of 17 holes, of which 7 are already empty. From the remainder I need;

• 15A engine
• 10A tail
• 10A meter
• 10A stop
• 10A Hazard

There's also a 15A Fog fuse that I'd like to move out of the larger unit. I can't take anything else out of there because they're all the larger fuses (30A to 80A) and I'm not trusting an AliExpress special to carry that sort of current! 

So that's six fuses needed, I might add a couple spares just in case. For the above relays I have Cooling, Headlight, Horn and TNS to add/replace, all 4 pin. Again I might add one or two spare slots. 

(Five minutes later). So it looks like the prewired ones are no good, they went cheap and put common rails on the fuses and relays. So for the various combinations needed for the car, a common rail is not an option. Shame really, the one I found has six relays and 10 fuses which would have been perfect. I do have one that will work well though, 4 relay and six fuses. It'll be compact, and no spare slots, but that's probably a good thing. Once it arrives I'll get it in place for the fuses, then carry on with the relays. Then hopefully that's the electrics finally done.

In other news, I trimmed the studs on the passenger side rear hub yesterday, so now that wheel sits flush on the spacer. I need to do drivers side shortly, then that's another job ticked off. I could try fitting the rear calipers and the handbrake cables, that may be an easy-ish job to do. 

Busy weekend, no pictures

Well, I managed to get a decent amount of work done this weekend thankfully. I even got some wiring done, woohoo!! Indicators and brakes were the order of the day, all fully plumbed in. That included the hazard switch and tell-tales for the fluid level. I also wired in the fan lead, and added several earth wires for the various circuits. As expected it was a case of JFDI. The work isn't complicated if you take it one wire at a time, but looking at the whole thing and trying to plan it out it would drive the keenest Italian insane (Italian => Spaghetti => wiring loom).

The only doubt now with the wiring loom is how much slack I'm adding to the wires. I am taking a huge amount out of some wires, but still not cutting them as short as they could go. This might mean my final loom has a few loops in there to take up the unused wire. There 'might' be an opportunity to shorten some wires even further but that needs to be balanced out with having multiple joins in wires. In most cases I've been able to leave the wire intact and only reterminate one end to make it shorter. Thinking about it, only the fan wire has had to be rejoined as that had connectors on both ends. 

I had planned on getting the headlights and a few other stray wires done on Sunday, but unfortunately I felt really rough so didn't get much done. Having said that I was able to get the steering rack degreased and painted, as well as the second mounting bracket made up. I'll get the rack back on at lunchtime as I really want to see whether the raised rack helps with the steering angles. Of course, as with anything suspension related it's always a compromise. Ackermann might improve but bump steer will increase. I won't know the impact of that until it's driving though. 

Steering and interior projections

 A couple of jobs done this weekend. First the interior projections. I want to make sure I had everything IVA friendly, so I got everything cleaned out to see what was left to do. Passenger side was as simple as you might expect;

Nothing really to report, apart from a sharp edge to the aluminium on the left hand side (you can even see the sharp edge in the photo!). So that will need to be smoothed down. My only doubt is TR9, the black bar across the top where the firewall rivets to. Because the dash doesn't come down very far TR9 is quite visible and quite 'shin damaging'. I don't know whether it needs some padding. It's 355mm off the floor, and the IVA says anything lower than 150mm off the seat is to be 'blunted'. Given that it's well above that and therefore in the 'specified zone', I'm guessing it needs a bit more than just blunting. 

As a side comment, now that all the plastic is removed and cleaned up, I am very happy with how it looks. The only thing is the back of the firewall, I might paint it because it's basically the 'raw' side of aluminium. 

The drivers side is obviously a bit more hectic;

The steering column is tucked out the way behind the steering wheel, the speedo cable is now safely clamped out out of the way, but the handbrake is obviously very vulnerable. As with TR9 it's in the specified zone, so I need everything to be correctly radiused. So that'll be bolt covers for the bolts, I need a sleeve or something on the handbrake cable end, then the left hand fixing needs some 'refinement';

I think I need to essentially 'box it in', so a 3D printed cover that either clips or bolts into place. It needs to cover the switch mechanism, although the connector tang here needs to be bent out the way so the connector and wiring can be safely routed. 

The second part of this weekend was to do the front suspension. I have a major issue with Ackermann, in that the wheels seem to completely disregard the need to move correctly when turning! The inside wheel is meant to be at a tighter angle than the outside wheel in order for the car to go round corners, but for me the outside wheel turns tighter. That means the inside wheel is likely to scrub. Problem is I just don't see how a good Ackermann angle is achievable with the rack being in front of the axle. I might try and measure my own car to see what sort of angles that has. 

I did initially think that it was because the suspension wasn't tightened up or set to the correct setup. So the first job was to get all the balljoints and other parts in place, then adjust everything. I now have front suspension with 1 degree camber and 1 degree toe-in, obviously based on my limited tool set so both may be within half a degree or so. Still, it looks better than it was... until I turn the steering wheel and then things get cockeyed again. I'll do some measurements and see how bad it is.

I do have the option of raising or lowering the steering rack, and that would help resolve this particular issue;

As you can see the bellows are in contact with the front of the car. This is another of those 'how is this happening' scenarios, where I've done all the measuring correctly but it's still ended up wrong. The Haynes manual says 95mm from the bottom of the chassis, and 93 back from the front. My rack centreline is 97mm up from the bottom, but only 81mm from the front. So I'm going to move it 12mm back for a start, that will get it clear of the chassis. I'll then need to adjust toe again, but maybe that will give me some sort of self centering ability? And yes, that's the main requirement here. I'm not worried about Ackermann directly, I'm not in a London Taxi and lock to lock turning will be a potentially uncommon occurrence. But positive Ackermann also limits self centering, and with the suspension geometry already reducing KPI and causing self centering problems for others, it is one thing I need to keep an eye on. 

Oddly enough a quick Google search for 'self centering' suggests the rack should really be much higher. So that's definitely an easy thing to try, it'll also make the steering column engagement a lot more secure, you can see at this angle it's barely engaged;

I also need to make or find a rack fixing bracket for the passenger side, when I was taking these photos I realised the exhaust clamp and no rubber grommet is probably not the best solution! 

Definitely when I get close to running this car I need to go over everything and make sure I've picked up on all the little jobs. Hopefully none of them will be insurmountable, a bracket here, an extra bolt there, etc.

Exhaust part 2

 After talking about it in my last post, the weather was good enough on the weekend to roll the car out of the garage and get started on the exhaust. Of course, the day started with the now mandatory bit of drama...

You see, in my attempt to cut down on the number of joins on the exhaust (and therefore the number of potential leak points) I welded the cat to the exhaust silencer. No biggie, until I tried to remove it!! Thankfully with only a few crushed fingers the whole thing comes out through the wheel arch.

So the first step was to tape everything off, mark the relevant positions and start cutting. Once I'd tacked the pipe in place I got it in position here;

So far so good, it's a bit tight because of the length of the pipe and the size of the hole. But I wanted to keep the hole as small as possible, and the pipe is to be trimmed anyway. Once thing I did figure out is while the bracket was set up to receive this piece of pipe, it's too low by about 10mm. No problem though, I'll add a nut and washer to lift it up to meet the exhaust. There's plenty of thread visible here;

The exhaust got trimmed to close to it's final length;

And with the hole really tight I got to work on the trim. The aluminium rings worked really well on the roll bar;

So the plan was to do the same here. First a piece of aluminium was cut and polished to an inch of it's life;

Then after much fettling and a bit of double sided sticky tape, I have a trimmed exhaust;

You can see a gap top and bottom because the ring is flat but the bodywork isn't. A bit of encouragement round a surface will hopefully get me what I want. The last thing is fixings. I was thinking of gluing it in place, but I'm actually tempted to drill and fix it with the black allen bolts I've used everywhere else. Glue is fine for the roll bar but I'm worried the exhaust heat, the angle, the curve will all conspire to make sure that ring doesn't survive my first drive to the kit car show.

I'll get the exhaust fit finalised front to back then get this bolted in the final position. 

That was a very busy weekend (well, I lost a quarter of it to a visit to the vet for the cat). In other news, all the light fittings have now been replaced so hopefully the bulbs will stay in place. Turns out that it wasn't just the fittings, the bulbs themselves were cheap and nasty. Buying a new pair of brake/tail light bulbs sorted it permanently, so that's another tick in the box. 

I also got some primer on the wheel arches, despite using an entire tin of primer I think they came out really nicely. Of course it looks like I didn't take any photos of them, that's a bit annoying. I did also try and cut down the wheel studs for the spacers, not realising that the hubs are now quite firmly in place so I will need to do a bit more than simply unbolting the wheel. It was getting quite late yesterday so rather than disabling the car while it was hanging outside the garage, I thought it was best to postpone that job. 

One last thing as well, the screw bung for the radiator arrived so now the coolant system is very nearly finished. I've got to tee in the overflow pipe and route it somewhere 'pretty', but then it should fill up. 

So yes, once again a whole load of work on the car that wasn't wiring...

Exhaust

 I saw an old post from Facebook today, talking about the exhaust. More specifically it was the initial fit before the body went. 

It's been some time since I worked on the exhaust but I forgot how secure it was. It's basically sitting on the outriggers, so my initial plan of dropping the exhaust downwards is out the window. It basically needs to slide back to where the rear wheel is.

Fortunately, that seems to be very doable;

So I can undo it from underneath and bring out the can from the wheel arch. I'd have to remove the wheel though, which makes it fiddly but not impossible. 

So that's the plan. Measure up the right angle pipe against the bodywork, draw out the exhaust to tack it, refit to check, blah blah blah. Then I need to make an exhaust trim for the body, so more aluminium to polish. But what that will allow me to do is replace the gaskets and tighten up the exhaust, ready for ignition.

Light fittings and speedo cable

 When I fitted my lights, I was aware that they're not the best quality. To be fair, 8 lights for £30 was never going to be top quality, however these are bordering on unusable. Actually, scratch that, they are unusable. One thing I had done is add the 'fix lights' task to my to do list. It all stems from two of the lights not properly locking in the bulb, and I just know the IVA would be where it manages to work itself loose.

So without much debate or questioning myself I set about replacing the offending soft plastic parts. I could reuse the rubber, and the electrical contacts weren't too bad, so it was just the plastic part. A quick session on Onshape gave me a few prototypes;

This was the light fitting itself (bottom) which was mostly fine, as well as four attempts at the 'bayonet cap' thingamajig. I say four attempts, but actually this was just three attempts to get the size rights, then a fourth attempt at printing one too many pieces as one print. I can't get the hang of supports, and it's even worse with PETG because it's so much stronger than PLA.

Anyway, eventually I got a holder the same dimensions as the original;

With the wiring back in everything lined up;

It also went back on the car really well so I'm happy the print is good. There is just one issue, basically I'm replacing the visible part behind the lens. Which means that while black looks good as a backdrop (and won't change the light colour), I actually have to replace all of them rather than just the broken ones! So I've spent two half days just running the parts off the printer and gluing them together. I reckon by Wednesday I will have replaced all of them and be all sorted with lights... for the second time. Ah well, as I said I spotted it very early on and it's been a job that needs doing.

Another job that needed doing was the speedo cable. It needs to be pinned in place inside the drivers side footwell, mainly because the Mark 1 MX5 gearbox put it there in the first place! This is how it comes out of the gearbox and into the drivers footwell;

Now once again this has shown why doing one job, removing it, then doing another is not the best plan. The way that I had this was looping up next to the pedals and back on itself;

The problem is that the loop is long enough to go where the firewall is now, which obviously wasn't a problem before but it is now. Given the cable can't be shortened or rerouted (it can only do a certain degree of rotation before it stops working), it has to go through the firewall;

Fortunately that black glue line above the holes is where the radiator tank sits, so it won't be that visible once it's all blocked in. However what I do need to do is blocking both those holes with appropriate grommets. I'm thinking of 3D printing some but I'm not sure it's suitable for something going through a panel. But then the original one had a plastic bracket supporting it's exit through the panel. Hopefully the locostbuilders massive (which is becoming less massive by the month) will have some opinions. Blind rubber grommets are the most obvious choice, but I'd have to heavily cut them to get them over the speedo cable end. Both ends are about 25mm in diameter, quite a bit more than the 10mm cable diameter.

What else is there to talk about? Oh, the fan is fitted. I didn't realise I'd actually planned that out, so I actually didn't have to do any work apart from finding slightly longer bolts to go through the fan and radiator. 

Ah, that reminds me, I need to cap off the radiator. The rad comes with a location for the thermostat (I think) on the original Polo. But on the MX5 the thermostat is on the engine block. Even the bypass valve is also located on the engine, although the hole wouldn't have been any good for that anyway. So I need to find something to bung it up with. I'd best do that now while the printer is whirring away.

(Five minutes later). 

OK, nothing I have comes close, either too big or too small. But a quick google suggests it's an M22 x 1.5 and normally reserved for the fan switch. £4.50 for a suitable blanking cap, It'll get wrapped in PTFE then inserted. I still need to add the T piece for the overflow but that's just a matter of planning. In theory I could fill up the water and check for leaks, although I doubt things would get leaky until it got hot. 

(The next day)

So as I watched TV last night it did occur to me that 'what happens in failure conditions'. IE if the three parts of the lightbulb holder should decide they don't want to be attached to each other. And I think I've got it covered...

First off, the rubber boot will keep everything in line. Then if something should fail inside, the bit that screws to the car is also the bit that holds the boot and the lens in place. Furthermore that same screw also fixes the ground wire in place, so again it's belt and braces. The only thing I can't sort is if the screws for the lenses break and I lose a lens. but that would have applied to the original ones anyway, so overall I've got it as secure as possible. Hopefully Mr IVA will agree.

And talking of IVA, the speedo cable going through the metal work as above isn't too much of an issue. An LCB response confirmed my thought that the cable would be steel braided inside anyway to cope with the rotation, so as long as the edges aren't sharp they don't need to be soft. So 3D printing it is! 

Arches and weights

 First fun job, the car weight. I got my postal scales and tried them out on the weekend. First issue was the batteries supplied were garbage, but luckily it came with a small power supply so it was easy enough to plug in. Now granted I should have lifted the other three wheels up (and be doing it on a flat surface), I got this from the front;

And this on the rear;

So on the face of it, 722Kg (when added together) may not seem too bad. An average Haynes is 600Kg, and I've got a full body plus framing to go on top of that. I do have some bits missing, for example there's no coolant or fuel in the front or back respectively. The driveshafts and propshafts were in the boot rather than attached (so shouldn't change the weight too much), but the brake calipers weren't on so that alone is 2-3kg's per corner. I reckon if I can get it all in for 800Kg's I'll be happy. 

Now, on to the arches. I needed to get them fixed in place and I was struggling for a solution. Turns out some coathanger wire did the trick. Suitably glued to the underside of the arch gave me a fixing point;

Then with comparable holes in the bodywork I was able to mount them. I added a few more on each arch to preserve the curve (needing a couple of overnights for the glue to cure). I ended up with this;

I really like the result to be honest, they look quite purposeful and keep with the overall 'rough rally' look that I'm after. Rears are similar;

And while I could get to both drivers side and the passenger side front, the passenger side rear hasn't been touched yet. I need to roll it out a bit to get the holes drilled and pins located. 

Underneath the front arch shows the pins in place and the cut line;

I didn't forget that part of these front arches is so I can get a greater clearance on the bodywork, as I still only have about half inch before the wheels introduce themselves to the GRP. While the suspension is quite stiff, it needs more travel than that. I'll cut the GRP back to the first line on the tape, then use new fibreglass to make it permanent. The pins can stay in place for an extra level of reinforcement, I'll just have to bend them flush to the bodywork under the arch. 

I did briefly consider keeping the arches as bare metal, but it really wouldn't survive the elements. So they'll get etch primer and paint along with the body. Again, comparing it to the inspiration for much of my work I think it'll be a fair 'homage' to the original;

I just need to find an appropriate time to get the arches fitted permanently, after all working with resin and fibreglass is smelly if nothing else. I suspect 'outside' will be the order of the day for that job!

One last photo, the seatbelt covers;

The superglue did 'ooze' in some places and it turns white when it dries, so I think I'll have to paint them. I was tempted to paint them anyway, I think matching them to the bodywork colour should be good. I just need to ensure the paint doesn't leak through on to the belt!

Rear arches

 A nice little project for this weekend, the rear arches. In the week I set up the arch template that I'd used on the front, essentially a wooden template that is the same size as the wheel and provides an endpoint to the arch. Because the rear doesn't need anything removing from the arch, I didn't want to set it quite as high as I had on the front, so I jacked the car up to suit. (I didn't want to cut the template down in case I needed it again!). Once I'd found a pleasing height to the arch, I started with an 80 degree angle and wooden sticks at every ten degrees;

Of course, at this point I didn't realise that it wasn't quite enough of an arch! The IVA manual has an initial requirement of 30 degrees forward and 50 degrees back, but also at the back it needs to finish lower than 150mm above the axle. To be honest, because the bodywork is raised where it is, it would have probably finished at the right height anyway, but just in case I added another ten degrees.

Then I needed to fill in the gaps with more sticks, and a layer of masking tape just to make it easier to work with;

A quick line and curve on both ends to make it look nice;

And a paper template to pick up the pattern;

Some aluminium fettling later, and I have a wheel arch;

As I was cutting the aluminium I simply cut a mirror image version for the other side. 

So I now have four arches. I also spent part of my garage time cleaning up and making sure I have no more excuses to avoid the wiring!

Well, one more excuse. The arches currently has no method of fixing (as mentioned previously) but the rears in particular don't even have a suitable mark where they should go. I'm thinking of some temporary fixing that might allow the arches to fit unsupported. I'm thinking about three/five drilled holes where the arch will sit, thick enough for stiff wire that can then be attached (glued?) to the arches. That way it can be fixed in place, fairly rigidly, and I can work with it as is. When it comes to fibreglassing them in place, the pins will serve as a cutting mark as well as a base for the GRP. 

The last thing I did this weekend was a visit to Aliexpress, for a magnetic inclinometer, a laser level and a 300Kg scale. With those I should be able to do wheel alignment, or at the very least camber front and rear. Toe will need the steering rack properly bolted in before that can be done. 

Little jobs

 No wiring this time, I will get there eventually but not for now. Brain trouble rather than wiring trouble, maybe another time for that.

This is a couple of small jobs that I've had on my list for a long time. First the seat belt reels. I doubt they'd have failed the IVA with them being bare, but given they're hidden behind trim on the MX5 they are pretty ugly bare units. So I designed and 3D printed a small box for them to live in;

(The clamp was there to just stop the seatbelt from retracting!). The two halves will be glued together, I'm not expecting any maintenance on these so gluing the seam should be fine. I'll do it with the belt fully extended though, I don't want superglue dripped on the belt. It's a really straightforward shape but only the near half will even be visible (the belt will come out the top in it's final position). Then they can bolt in place.

Next was finishing the seats, I went to town on the headrest edge and really trimmed out all the overlapping pieces. The seam on the back board is absolutely spot on if I do say so myself, I'm really happy with how tight they've ended up;

I couldn't have got it any better. And with the black fixing screws matching the dash;

I think they just work really well. 

Next, VIN stamping. This was just a trial but I think it worked;

That's a centre punch rather than a letter stamp, and a paper template to show where the holes should go. I'm thinking of making some 3D printed guide for the stamp to make sure they end up in predictable places (IE straight lines!). Once I've stamped the whole VIN then it'll get welded in place. Given how much this small piece of metal curved I don't want to be stamping direct into the frame!

The last update is for my rear fenders/arches. I did the fronts a long time ago, but I didn't get round to the rears. Using the same method I'd done before, I got the wheel template in place against the body, then using an 80 Degree guide I glued lollipop sticks every ten degrees around the top. That was yesterday, so today I'll go fill in the gaps then make a paper template from the surface. After that it's over to aluminium to cut a left and a right, then they'll be ready for attaching. 

Ah, attaching... I've still not figured this out. I do need to trim the front arches to make sure there is wheel clearance, but on the other hand it also means there's less material to attach to the fender to. Screwing or riveting won't work, I don't want a visible fixing and I don't have anything to screw through anyway. The only thing I can think of is to;

• Temporarily fix the fender in place (with tape most likely)
• Use fibreglass to build up underneath.
• Take the aluminium off to clean up the fibreglass.
• Bond the aluminium back on.
• (add some discrete screws for reinforcement if necessary).

The main thing is what width to do the fibreglass. In theory I could do it right to the edge (and beyond) of the fender, then actually the new fibreglass would become the fender (after trimming). More likely I think an inch or so of 'lip' protruding from the side of the car for the aluminium fender to glue on to. The lip would also give me the option of screwing the fender in place, then a bit of filler to smooth over the screw holes would finish the job. 

I'm going to try it on the front first, mainly because it's better access but because I can get to the bottom quite well just by opening the bonnet. The rear arches will then follow whatever turns out to be the best plan. 

Thinking about it, the extra lip formed on the arch will also restore the stiffness of the bonnet. As I cut away the arch I'm going to lose a bit of strength in the car.