Next job... brakes

Time to crack on with the brakes. It's reusing the split system in the original MX5. This is a three outlet design, with the two fronts on individual lines, and the rear on the third. The rear also includes the brake light switch before heading off to a T junction mounted behind the diff. Once there, each side gets an individual feed.

The fronts come out of the master cylinder on to the two lower rails just in front. From there they run along the rails until they get to uprights U1 and U2. Then it's to a bracket that is welded to the top of the upright, and a flexi finishes the route to the caliper.

Rears are similar, although with the brackets I've installed they pipes will actually come up to the top of the tunnel first, then routed back to the T piece which will mount on the back of SB3. Then it's off to either side, again staying above the suspension to arrive at a bracket, then a flexi off to the caliper.

So first job will be to find the master cylinder (wherever I put it!!), fit that and the T piece in place, then weld the remaining brackets in place. Or thinking about it, I'll need to weld a bracket in place for the T piece!

Time to get started and see how far I can get in a day.

Jobs list

I don't like doing these as it makes me realise how much work is still to go, but it's got to be done.

In no particular order;

• Fuel tank mounting bracket. Normally there is a full frame behind the car for the rear panel, in my case the rear panel is all fibreglass. Without the full frame I still need something for the fuel tank, so I'll take part of the frame where it supports the tank. Problem is, this makes the car longer than my garage... I'll have a think what to do here.
• Whilst I remember, the fuel lines will need to be routed. But that will go along with the brake brackets and wiring loom within the transmission tunnel. And I need to buy the fuel line too. And connectors.
• Handbrake mounting. This is going underneath the steering wheel, which does reduce leg room but it also keeps it off the centre tunnel which is what I want. The equivalent plates are CP12 and 13 (P47) so I'll adapt those to fit.
• Brake lines. This is another big block of work consisting of;
• Brake line supports on each corner (P51).
• Finish welding on the tabs all along the inside of the tunnel.
• 3D print pipe brackets (or go for P clips).
• Hard brake pipe fitting.
• Handbrake cables. I need to check what's needed here, particularly as I'm moving the handbrake. From memory there are two cables from each caliper, that come together in a 'balance bar' arrangement that goes to the handbrake. 
• Engine mounts. This needs the engine fitting for position, which in turn needs a full day and some dry weather. Fingers crossed for a warm winter here...
• Pedal box tidying. This is mostly built, but it needs a couple more fixings and needs a bit of loosening up. From memory it only just fits, even the application of paint stops it going on easy. I'll need to get this working better if I have any hope of fitting it with everything else in place.
• Check the steering rack for fit. I have brackets for the rack, I just need to find out if they go on ok. 
• Fuel tank straps. No issues here, just a couple of 1mm steel straps that are folded as required. I'll need the mounting bracket done first though.
• Scuttle panel. This needs the bodywork fitting to see what gap is to be filled.
• Electrics. Erm... yeah. Lots of. Spaghetti. The wiring loom is still in a carrier bag and needs to be laid out and routed. It's not complicated, but it will be fiddly and time consuming. Oh, and I think I'll need to buy some lights! I have some from the donor, but not a full set.
• Seat modifications. As mentioned earlier, the seats don't currently fit so I need to modify the seats. 
• Body fit. Big job here, as with the engine fit it'll be an outside job that could take a day or so. Trial fit the bodywork, make brackets as required, fit the bodywork, rinse and repeat as required.

Oh... that isn't as much stuff as I had expected!!

Interior finished...

Well, that's a huge chunk of work now done. I've spent god knows how many days just on these panels, mainly because this is the primary 'visible' part of the car. Pretty much everything else is going to be covered by the bodywork, this is what I'll see every time I get in the car. 

I didn't really have too many issues with it, I think the main thing I have worries about is the tight fit. I got all the panels down to the closest tolerance I could get, I reckon maybe a tenth of a millimetre in some cases. If there was swarf left on a drill hole, that was enough to misalign the panel!! The problem then comes from the adhesive I'm planning to use alongside the rivets. The adhesive will take up an amount of space, even if it's the tiniest amount it's still going to take up space. I suspect I will need a bit more 'refinement' when it comes to actually putting the panels in place. 

So that's it, that's that job done. Now it's time to take all the panels off and store them somewhere, then figure out what the next job will be. I'd best go get the book and work through my list...

Back after the summer break

Well, now that all the fun and games of summer is done, I can finally get the car back on track. First thing, figure out where I was;

This is all the panels as they are at the moment. It looks like I ended the session with the two outer side panels yet to be cut to shape, and the two inner panels to be trimmed along the top. I'm guessing the trimming on the top was because of the centre panel not being done yet.

And just to see what it might look like, I couldn't resist fitting all the panels temporarily;

I just love this look, it really shows how things are going to come together. Even with the panels not quite adjusted together, I can see the interior and how it'll look. I'm very happy with how it's working, and can't wait to get everything finished here.

It has given me a few things to think about though;

1. The passenger footwell end. No biggie, just a bit of metal to fix in place. Probably welded in steel as that's what the drivers side is. For some reason I keep forgetting it though.

2. There's a slight gap where the back panels meet the floor panels. Again, no biggie, I was going to put sealant around the edge anyway. And it's hidden by the seats.

3. The seat bases don't fit. This is a bit more of a biggie. I knew that they were going to be tight, I didn't appreciate how tight. They basically just don't get anywhere near where they need to go. It looks like I'll have to remove the squab and do some quite severe modification to the base metal. It's quite lucky that I've had to replace the heater elements in my main car, as it's taught me some valuable lessons on how to remove leather and foam!!

So next step is to get the side panels finished off, do the centre panel as removable then trim the other side panels to match. 

Engine and body

Today's tasks were;

Engine trial fit

Bodywork trial fit

Engine first. Well, it was meant to be, turns out someone up there decided rain was more important. I tried a few times, even got the engine in the air and almost into the car. But I didn't think rain was going to do the engine or electrics any good so I abandoned it. At least the garage got a bit of a clean!!

The bodywork was a little more successful, mainly because it's waterproof. I wanted to get it fitted to see how much of a gap there was around the panels. The first thing was that the front had to be trimmed. It was designed to fit a range of chassis shapes, so I expected it to need trimming. A quick centre point marking showed that the current cut out was nowhere near the middle, so a minute or so with the jigsaw took care of that!

Once I was able to drop the body down, it was clear that it needed a bit more trimming to fit. No biggie, it's expected. But again, I got fed up of the rain coming and going, so it went back in the garage.

So for the time being the chassis is on it's side, as the garage is intended for another purpose soon. I have a few 3D printing projects that I want to look at, so the first job is to learn Fusion. 

Current progress and pipe fixing

A short update as I have a spare few minutes. The side panels have been cut in line with the back panel, and folded to allow a 20mm section to be rivetted to the back panel. The sheet metal brake that I cobbled together and initially thought was 'a bit rubbish' has actually worked really well. I think the only issue I had with it was the lack of a sturdy base, but it turns out clamping it to the chassis itself provides more than enough stability to fold the aluminium.

I've ended up with panels that are really nicely folded (I'm amazed how well they came out to be honest!), and will butt up against the back panel nicely. The next job will be to cut the notches out of the bottom for the seat cross members, then drill the rivet holes. The inner panels need a small crease added, the outer panels are straight so no more folding needed.

I think the engine fit on the weekend is out of the window though, the wet weather is (literally) putting a dampener on that task.

The next thought on my mind was pipe fixing. Inside the transmission tunnel I've welded some tabs that are intended to carry all the necessary wires, pipes, etc from the front to the back of the car. The tabs are quite substantial, and are done at quite frequent intervals in order to ensure everything is nice and secure. But while that provides the chassis anchor, I hadn't looked into the final fixing. For wiring this just needs to be some sort of protective shield with a cable tie, pipes need something a bit more substantial that is bolted in place.

There is going to be four pipes in total, two brake and two fuel. They will all be copper/kunifer pipes, hopefully I have enough! The runs from front to back are surprisingly short, maybe a couple of metres for each? The bigger issue is the fixing. The normal approach is for a small nylon bracket that the pipes can clip into, but they are hideously expensive (£20 for 10 the last time I checked!). But I now have a 3D printer, so I could actually print some. I'd have to design them from scratch, and I need to consider that 3D printed parts aren't as strong as nylon parts. But they are effectively free (ish) which is always good in the Locost theme!

The other option is P clips. As above, I had thought they were quite expensive, but someone has sent me this link;

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Black-Nylon-Plastic-Clips-Fasteners/dp/B01IHSEO5I/ref=asc_df_B01IHSEO5I/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=256110

Which refers to P clips that are much cheaper. Less than £4 for 50 P clips seems to be a good price. Of course these are only for single pipes, but I was thinking for each fixing I could use a combination of four, laid out as;

qp
db

IE four different directions so the holes line up in the middle. I think it'll need some sort of stand off to keep the clips away from the tab, but that's not difficult.

Some thoughts...

Whilst I've been doing the panels, I have come across a few things that I need to remember for later.

Side panels. The GRP bodywork doesn't come all the way down to the side panels, there is a gap of several inches. In the demo car there was a curved piece of aluminium which I was going to replicate. Problem is, I'm out of aluminium. This isn't a huge problem, I couldn't have used the existing aluminium anyway. Trying to put a nice curve into 2mm aluminium would have been very hard work!! Once I have the measurements I'll order a 1mm sheet which should bend easier. It's only a decorative panel so it's not an issue.

Side panels 2. The bodywork attaches to the car at the rollover bar mounting points, and comes in at the corners where the occupants shoulders would be. From memory, this distance was shorter than the actual metalwork width, so once the panel has been fitted I'll need to trim that back. As with the side panels, this might result in a section that needs to be filled by aluminium.

Engine height. Hopefully this weekend I'll be getting everything out of the garage so that I can trial fit the engine. This will be so I can fabricate the mounts, and figure out how much space is available in the engine bay for everything that has to go in there. The main issue is how high to mount it. The general opinion is to have it as high as possible in relation to the bonnet. Even so, this tends to leave the sump hanging below the chassis, which is a good thing. But I don't have a bonnet, or at least I don't have an easily accessible one that I can use to measure. I am hoping that the trial fit of the rear bodywork will give me a height to work to. From there I can work out where to put the engine.

Front part of the rear bodywork. The main tub of the car is made from one piece, with a built in 'firewall' at the front that fits on to the chassis. As above it seems to be designed for a narrower car, (or deliberately moulded small to cater for most chassis variations) so the opening isn't big enough to fit over the bodywork. I'll need to open it up in order for it to fit over the car.

Engine mounting and 'the extra bar'. The plans have a section of a crossmember that is removed in order to allow the engine to fit. I've yet to figure out why, it seems like an ideal position to reduce some lateral flexing, and engine bay pictures suggest there is clearance between the bar and the engine. At the moment it's still there on my car, but if it gets in the way of the engine it will need to be removed.

Engine mounts. I have the original engine mounts from the MX5, and it makes sense to reuse them. The mounts themselves are an angled design that contain a rubber bush, so I think they'll be perfect for fitting. The Saturn plans actually disagree though, they say that a bush in shear isn't a good plan. I'm not sure why, MX5's have had them in that design forever, as have many other cars! I've asked the font of all knowledge, IE locostbuilders, lets see what they say. I did find a picture of an engine mount;

And a gearbox mount;

Back panel change of approach

As you can see in the previous post, I changed my mind about the back panel. The way I'd done the tabs on the edges was only possible if you can manipulate aluminium like paper. As this is impossible in the real world, I've had to redesign what panels go where. Here is the middle back panel as it is now;

I've split off the side parts to make them up as separate panels. This changes a few things;

1. The transfer from back panel to transmission tunnel is now a fold rather than a seam, I think that will look really good.
2. The two side parts can extend on to the panels either side to provide a secure fixing. The transmissions sides and the car sides can then fold in front of them.
3. There will be a seam on the diagonal portion. As this is partly hidden by the back of the seats I'm not overly bothered, I've also positioned the middle panel rivets to allow the side panels to fit in the same place. The panel isn't trimmed to the centre yet but that can be done once I've got the side panels sorted.

Since all four side panels will rely on the back panels being in place, they're the next things to be done. But first... I need to grind down the stitch welds so I have a flat surface, there's no way a panel will sit flat on those lumps!!

Oh, here's the two panels ready to go;

And with the middle panel in place;

Assuming the arrows are referring to the grain of the aluminium, I'm intrigued as to how it will look.

Two down...

The first couple of panels are done, admittedly they're the easy ones that just go on the top.

The process was similar to the floor panels, but I had to be careful with the edges as they're visible. Actually, everything is visible so I had to be careful all over!

I started each panel on an edge and made sure there was enough metal to cover the relevant hole. I drilled a couple of holes for some Cleco's to hold the panel in place, then marked the fold lines. Using my DIY folder (which actually does work on aluminium a lot better than the thinner steel) I put the relevant folds in the panel. Then using Cleco's as I went, drilling and fixing the panel.

The last stage was to trim the panels to size, the power file came in very useful here. I brought each panel flush to the steel, whether I'll regret that decision or not only time will tell.

There is just one panel left for the transmission tunnel top, but that will use rivnuts for fixings. I think I'll start the process the same as the other panels, the rivnuts will use similar if not slightly larger holes.

Next ones are the sides, and I'm not looking forward to those. Folds, cutouts, all manner of unpleasantness. All so I can have a smooth interior, I hope it's worth it!

Panel tetris

So here is the main aluminium panel, with all the pieces attached;

As you can see, it was a bit tight to get all the panels on. There are a few things to note here. First off, I've not left myself much waste between panels, so I'm hoping the cuts will be pretty accurate. I'm also doing something a bit unusual with the back panel. Rather than trying to do it in one large panel (which wouldn't have worked due to the way I've left tags on the panels for fitting), I've split it into three. The two panels near the centre are intended to go behind the passenger and driver, and form the bulk of the panel. The T shape part towards the right is then the middle panel and the first part of the transmission tunnel. I've done it this way so I have quite a clean rear panel between the seats, with adequate room and access for riveting. Bringing it down on the tunnel also allows for a clean transition between the two, without the need for welding a fixing bracket in place.

This will use all of the aluminium I have left, so if I go wrong I've got to buy more. Which won't be cheap, while the panels themselves aren't too bad it's actually getting them home that's the issue. And I've found that most metal suppliers don't work weekends, so it's a case of having to go during work hours.

OT - MIG welder earth lead

Time to go off on a little tangent here. For a while now my welding has been a little 'rough', and as the saying goes 'a poor workman always blames his tools'. However I think in my case it is actually the tool!

My current welder is a Clarke MIG welder, I got it cheap off Gumtree from a place that was upgrading. It was a little rough, but after a clean it seemed to work well, and better than the old Wolf Aldi one that I was working with.

It's always lacked a little 'something' though, so it was time it got a bit of TLC. First off was the liner. It was a steel one originally, but I get the impression it was way past it's use by date. Me being a cheapskate that I am, I bought some net curtain wire for a pound!! It made a huge difference though, even feeding in the wire for the first time I could feel it moving so much easier. It also meant I could turn down the wire tension and the feed speed, which I always felt was higher than it should have needed to be.

The next job was the earth lead. It was definitely something that had never been replaced, and it never felt good with the way it could bend really easily at certain points. I reckon there were several weak points where some of the internals had broken. The clamp itself was also a cheap one, and I frequently found myself with arc points on the clamp where it hadn't quite contacted properly and made it's own weld.

Looking on the internet it seemed the done thing was to replace it with a Dinse connector and upgrade the lead. So that's what I did! In hindsight I should have taken more pictures, but here's the first. It's the offcuts of sleeve, showing the difference between the old wire (right) and the new (left);

Considering it's a 150A welder, and the new wire is rated to 200A, I have no idea what the old wire was even doing there!!

The main challenge with this was that it was crimped directly to the copper winding on the transformer inside the welder. What I did was cut the old cable off about an inch away from the crimp, then open up the copper wires. Once I'd done the same with a length of new wire, I slid them inside each other then soaked the whole thing in solder to give it as good a connection as I could make. Two layers of heat shrink sleeving and the original woven protector over the joint and I was happy with the result.

The next stage was to fix the Dinse connector to the case. This worked surprisingly well, with nice big screw clamps for the wires. I'd bought a pack of five terminals all rated at 200A, and it was just a case of screwing everything down. This is the outside of the case now;

It even fitted in the same location as the old grommet, right down to the keyway that stops it rotating as the cable is clamped on.

The last stage was to make up the cable. So dinse plug on one end, and the new earth clamp on the other. It really was that easy. This is the new earth clamp now;

This is showing one of the terminal connectors that I had, it's quite clear how chunky they are.

And that's it. Of course, at the moment I'm making body panels out of aluminium, so there isn't much welding to be done. Still, I'm looking forward to giving it a go.

Next set of panels

So now to move on to the other aluminium panels. This will be;

1. Seat back panel.
2. Transmission tunnel sides.
3. Car sides.
4. Transmission tunnel top.

As I've mentioned before, the use of a full body allows me to change the design of the interior panels to cover more of the chassis than would normally be done with a seven. This also means I've split the side panels so the front half gives slightly more foot room, and the rear half can be made out of aluminium without using much material.

Anyhow, this is how I'm going to do things;

Transmission tunnel sides. These will go from the back edge of U7 and U8, to the front edge of TT6. Top and bottom will be from the floor to the top edge.

Back panel. This will go from the top of SB2 to the bottom of BR12. The middle section will come down to the bottom of SB3. For the sides, they will extend across both SB1 tubes. And finally a pair of tabs for the transmission tunnel will make a rivet surface against U7 and U8, on top of the side panels.

Car side panels. Top and bottom to match the car. Front edge up to U4 and U5. Rear edge will need a tab to cover one half of SB1. Not sure yet whether it'll be an inside or outside tab, outside will be harder to do but inside would be visible,

Transmission top. This is done in three parts. SB3 to TT8 will be riveted. TT8 to TT5 will need to be rivnuts as the panel will need to be removable. Although as I'm typing, I've realise I need to test the engine mount first to know where the gear shift will end up!! The last panel is TT5 to TR8 or TR9, again dependent on where the gear shift is.

That's it for now I think, the car is on it's side and I'll be making up some paper templates to figure out the best way to cut those panels. More photo's as the panels get chopped up.

Floor... finished

One box of these later;

And a whole load of hole drilling got me here;

Then a load of cutting and finishing to get the edges matched to the chassis (picture missing because, well, I moved on to the next bit without taking a photo!).

So the floor is done, time for the next panels...

Floor... started

Time to start with my first build job... OK, I've been at it quite a while and done a fair bit to get to this point, but as I was preparing for the build I saw a common theme. The first picture in most people's build logs was the floor being held in place by rivets. So this is my version!

Of course, this isn't the first step of this particular stage. First off was cleaning up the welds on the floor so I had a flat surface;

Then a paper template made for the two sides;

A quick transfer to the aluminium to cut to size;

The cuts were done using an aluminium blade on a jigsaw, with the wood mounted on top to keep the edges from buckling (I needed both edges to stay usable). It did a great job to keep everything flat;

Then the panels were laid in place;

And the first few holes drilled;

After a bit of geometry to get the position of the other rails, the rest of the holes were drilled to bring us back to the first picture;

(And yes, I don't have enough Cleko's).

So that's the passenger side done, and this was the end of the night. Turns out drilling more than one hundred holes is really hard work, my back and shoulders were screaming. And I've not even got to the point where I'm applying rivets!!

Oh, and on the subject of rivets, I didn't buy anywhere near enough. I bought 100, thinking that it would be distributed between the panels. Thinking about it now, I have two floor panels, one back panel and four side panels to rivet. Even getting every rivet right first time, that would leave me with about 14 rivets per panel!! Considering I did A level maths, this didn't quite register in my brain.

So I've gone and bought another 500 rivets. Even with that I'll use up to 400 just for the floor and side panels, that doesn't leave many for the back panel. 

And I'm not looking forward to doing each rivet. As an experiment I did one to a point where the pin sheared, I can still feel the bruises on my palms. I'll be putting some extender bars on to the handles I think. 

Anyhow, that's the passenger side drilled. It needs to be cut, then it'll be on to the drivers side. I'm not going to put them in place until I've done all the panels, as it's quite useful to have an open chassis. 

I'm also hoping for one day this week to get the chassis out on to the drive and put the engine in place so I can weld up the engine mounts. That is determined by the weather though. 

Fuel tank part 3

As they say, paint covers a multitude of sins. But it's air tight which was the main thing I was after. The red is just the standard zinc oxide, I think I'll do a black top coat as I'm not planning on it being visible. You can see in the top picture how much the panel warped when I was welding on the filler, I had to use Cleco's to force the metal back into shape to weld on the cap.

The bottom pic shows my swirl pot, that's about a litre of fuel with the fuel lines taken from the Mazda's filler. The only thing I'm worried about is if the welding has somehow narrowed the inside, but I won't know that until the car is running. Oh well.

Next job, floor and side panels, my first venture into aluminium.

Fuel tank part 2

Well, that took a long time!! Five months apparently since I started the tank. And now it's finished.

There were a few issues. The swirl pot wasn't too bad to weld up in the end, and I reused the pipe ends from the Mazda fuel tank. That way I can attach hoses with clamps and they'll be secure. Unfortunately when it got welded on it did warp the tank itself, which meant I was then trying to weld straight ends to a wavy tank.

What I did was use cleko temporary rivets to pull the metal together before welding, it just meant that I lost four cleko's (they don't like heat apparently!). The filler end wasn't as bad, probably because I learned my lesson and braced the nearest end before welding. There was still some distortion but that could be tapped out by a hammer.

The ends went on with only a little trouble (mainly from the warping), once it's cooled down I'll start the pressure test. For this I have some pipe connectors, a bike pump and a rubber glove!! The plan is to seal all the (known!) holes, the rubber glove over the filler and the bike pump attached to a fuel pipe. I'll then inflate the glove and use soapy water to pick up leaks. Once they've been spotted and welded as required, it'll be painted and left for fitting.

I've also been fixing some cable/pipe mountings to the chassis, they'll be ready and waiting for whatever I need to send down the transmission tunnel. Oh yeah, and on that subject, the front panels have been welded in and painted. The next job will be to cut the aluminium for the floor, side panels and rear panel. I have a week off after Easter so I can drag the chassis out and cut the panels properly. I do have to fix a couple of brackets for the side panels though, the way I'm doing the panels means that they will be on the inside rather than the outside as normal. There are no flat mounting flanges to fit panels on the inside, so I need to make them.

Fuel tank part 1

I'm currently welding up my fuel tank. Whilst it's a little slow going due to available time, it's not really bringing up any issues. At least that's what I thought. Turns out at the bottom of the page in the Haynes manual is mention of having to add a swirl pot to the tank. But no clue on how large to make it.

Cue a quick question on LCB. The general consensus is;

• Deeper rather than taller. This is to stop the fuel sloshing around. Make sense.
• Outlet near the bottom. Again, makes sense.
• Return to the swirl pot. This is an interesting one, I was going to put it back near the top of the tank but into the swirl pot makes more sense.

And then it's just the size. Apparently enough to maintain cornerning fuelling is the guide. So, how long is a piece of string. Back to number crunching for this one.

Based on a fuel pump that can deal with 255 litres per hour (an uprated mx5 pump), I need to give it 4.25 litres every minute, or 70ml per second. Add in a 10 second corner, that means it needs at least 700ml constant supply. If I assume a 1 litre requirement (to give a bit of leeway), that should be enough. Well, it's probably overkill, maintaining a 10 second corner with enough G's to keep the fuel out of the swirl pot would be so far beyond my driving skill it would be silly!

However, having the inlet and outlet on the swirl pot means that the tank itself just needs two holes cut. One for the filler and float, one for the swirl pot. I'll make one side of the pot flat so I don't have to deal with fuel connectors on a curved surface.

I also plan to make the hole in the tank a bit smaller than the swirl pot, in order to make a small lip. That should also stop fuel splashing back out and into the tank.

And then I'll probably be really paranoid, always drive with at least half a tank, and never ever have to worry about fuel starvation!!

Catchup

...And just like that, two months have gone by. I often thought I'd have more time to do stuff as I got older, turns out there's just more stuff to do!! It's partly my own fault though, it shouldn't take much effort to get into the garage and work on the car.

Anyhow, here's where I am. The footwells are nearly finished, I've cut all the metal and just need to weld on the last three panels. A quick coat of paint for that and then I can move on.

I have three sheets of metal in the garage now. Two sheets of aluminium, one sheet of steel, all three are 2 metres by 1 metre. They came from The Metal Store, and while the final bill was £124, that was including delivery to the door which was proving to be the most challenging part of sourcing it locally. Because I needed it in pretty large sheets (as opposed to the steel bar which could be transported much easier), even if I could have bought it from the next door neighbour it would have still been challenging to get it home. 

Comparing it to current prices though, I don't think I paid too much over the odds. There are people who seem to get huge swathes of metals for pennies, but I seem to have to pay normal prices.

The two aluminium panels are going to be for the rest of the cabin (so two side panels, the floor panels and the transmission tunnel cover), with the steel mainly there for the fuel tank. I gave up trying to source a ready made one, there were some second hand ones but they were either tatty, overpriced or a fair distance away (and fuel tanks don't transport well). And on the subject of fuel tanks, that'll be my next job after I finish the welding for the footwells. 

The footwells have actually been done a little differently to the book (and a typical seven). For my car with the Healey body, it's actually more important to me that the interior is better than the exterior (at least on the frame). I also want to give my feet as much room as possible, as it's a bit tight in there. So I've decided to have the forward section done so the metalwork is on the outside of the footwell, then the rearward section is done so the metalwork is on the inside. This gives me a smooth interior surface, but an extra couple of inches at the bottom. 

This does create some interesting challenges though. The main one is how it fixes to the frame. The welded panels are easy, but the aluminium panels are to be rivetted where there is nothing to rivet to! This is mainly around the seat back panel, as under normal circumstances that panel would cover all of the frame. I'm thinking if I can make that panel slightly oversized then I can create 'tabs' round the outer edge. Whether this works in practice I have no idea, but I'll give it a go. 

Extended steering

Well, the extenders have arrived, I reckon I spent all of five minutes before I had to try them on for size, and five minutes after fitting one I forgot I'd not taken a photo... here is the 'other' one;

As you can see, these are really well made. The male thread is for the MX5 TRE, and the hole in the right hand side is for the Sierra rack.

It did occur to me that the steering rack lock nut was designed for the Escort rack, and wouldn't fit on the MX5 TRE. I had to refer back to the picture I'd been sent to realise the extender fully screws into the TRE (and can be spannered tight), then the female end is where the adjustment is made.

This is what I had before, the Sierra extender in place but no room (and wrong thread) for the MX5 TRE;

I wasn't going anywhere with that one. Here is the proper extender in place (apologies in advance for some of the photos, the car is actually on it's side...);

This was the first trial, fully extended suspension. The angle of the TRE does look quite severe, but part of it is the loose ball joints on all three joints, as well as the really bad camera angle. It's at full extension and not bound, which is what I wanted to achieve. This photo shows the extender tight in the TRE, with the Escort lock nut on the rack. There's about three or four threads left for adjustment, I'll find out whether that's enough when everything is tightened up and there is an engine in there.

With the suspension wound in a bit (to better show a 'normal' angle) the TRE looks much happier;

Bottom angle shows how much space is between the steering arm and the bottom wishbone. This was another 'internet complaint' with the design of the suspension. Under full extension and lock the steering column would get friendly with the lower arm. I 'might' have to put some collars on the rack to reduce steering lock but I'm fairly sure there is enough room.

So there you go, a tiny (but very important) cog in the whole machine. I have to send out a huge amount of thanks to thelatheman, the amount of time and hassle he's saved me is brilliant. I started this build with the idea of it being locost, what I should have aimed for is 'best value', and these extensions are definitely that. 

Next time, back to the bodywork...

Seat fixings

Let's talk seats. Since the start of the build when I got my donor, I knew that I wanted to reuse the seats. They were from the V spec edition MX5, and they are a really old brown leather with a decent level of wear. Not only would they suit the Healey, their age and patina would also work perfectly.

This meant I had to deal with a few things. First off was mounting them. Fairly easy, just straighten the sliders and bolt them to the floor. That was one of the easier problems I've had so far. Next step, the width of them. Again, not a huge problem, at least for the squabs.

The issue came from the hinges. The seats were adjustable, in that the seat back could be tilted. This mechanism was a good inch or so wide on either side of the seat. But it wasn't going to be used in my car, the seat back had a limited range of movement in the first place so fixing it at a specific angle seemed to make sense. After removing the mechanism on both sides, the front and base fitted no problem. But of course they were now separate pieces.

The solution is for me to use two cut pieces of metal that mimic the original hinges. These will be made in an L pattern, and cut and drilled in the same place as the hinge. I'll also reuse the screw holes in the back and base, and that should give me a seat that is properly secure but still able to fit in the relevant place on the car. I do need to make sure that the seatbelt routing takes into account the seat back as there are certain restrictions on shoulder height etc. Basically the seatbelt shouldn't need to rely on the seat to provide restraint, the loading forces should go straight from the person to the seatbelt anchor/mechanism.

On the subject of seatbelts, I want to use the donor seatbelts. Again, they're a nice match although a little less wear than the seats (thankfully!). The problem comes from where to mount the reel as it's quite large. Mounting it to the welded mount is a no go as the seat would have to be a good foot or so closer to the wheel to get it to all fit, not a chance.

My first thought was to mount it to the diff cage, then use the donor belt guide to bring it over the drivers side left shoulder. This would work quite well, it would keep everything in the right place and the reel would work as it should.

But there is an option, I could mount it outside the frame to the original welded mount. This wouldn't work with a seven as it would be on the outside of the car, but since I'm building a Healey it will just mean that it's between the frame and the body. Which will work fine!