1st September 2002
First job of today is to finish off what I started yesterday. Because the studs which go through the top part of the scuttle come through at an angle, I cut an angle "washer" out of a spare piece of hard rubber pipe. These will sit between the large washer and the inside face of the scuttle to help the nut to tighten down more evenly.
Once this is done I tighten all the nuts down fully, so the screen is fitting tightly. Then I rivet the central supporting ali bracket to the return flange on the scuttle, and the screen is now fitted quite solidly.
I'm not overly happy with the fit of it, but it seems to be as good as it gets. There are still some reasonable gaps under the front edge of the screen, but I can always do something about these later if I feel the need.
Next job I decide to look at the side indicator repeaters. These are fitted in the side of the scuttle, and it is a simple job to cut the holes using the dremel. As per other GRP cuts, it requires some careful measurement, an initial cut, then repeated trimming and trial fitting of the indicator.

3rd September 2002
In my bid to get the car down on it's wheels and moving under it's own steam, I decide to fit the rear wheel arches. They have been drying for about a week now after being painted with 'liquid rubber', and I suspect this is as dry as they will get, though they are still a little tacky.
Before attaching the arches, I smooth the mounting blocks with fine wet sandpaper, which will help to ensure that the arches mate as well as possible. Once this is done, it is simple, but time consuming, job to fix the arches on. I am attaching them using nylon nuts and bolts in the hope that if I should swipe something the arch will detach without damaging the main body section. The nuts are fitted with large washers to help spread the load.
Before packing up for the evening, I couldn't resist just trying one of the rear arch stoneguards in position. I received these from Westfield just last week - I think the end result looks pretty good (so far).

4th September 2002
Having fitted the rear wheel arches, the next job is to fit the rear light clusters.
I have already cut the holes in the arches which will allow the lamp units to pass through, so it is a simple (!) matter of marking and drilling the four mounting points for the lamp surrounds. It's not totally simple, in fact it's rather fiddly and takes quite a long time, but eventually I have a matching pair of lamp clusters, one on each arch.

5th September 2002
Whilst rummaging around the other day I found a spurious earth lead. Having spoken to Westfield, my suspicions were confirmed that it should be used to earth the engine block. So this evenings first task is to attach the earth lead. Fortunately it is just the right length to reach from the starter motor mount bolt to the chassis earth connection I made for the engine loom.
Before I got around to doing anything else, I was pleasantly distracted by Kris coming round to take me out for a ride on his FireBlade...

6th September 2002
I decided that it is time to get the rest of the bodywork sorted and onto the car. So I start work to fit the bonnet and nosecone. The first thing that I need to do is the cut a slot in the return flange on the nearside of the bonnet, where the rear engine mounting bracket is attached to the chassis. I already had to cut out the top flange on the main body side for this, and so I needed to cut something similar on the bonnet.
I carefully measure where the cut was to be made, but ended up making it bigger than I had originally intended, to make it easier to fit the bonnet rather than have it dependant on aligning a small slot.
Once the bonnet is able to be fitted properly, I trial fit the nosecone also. I soon notice that it is unable to align properly because of the breather pipe coming off the top of the radiator. The curve on this pipe is too great, so I'll have to shorten the pipe to reduce the radius a little, and allow it to clear the side of the nosecone.
That's pretty much all I've got time for this evening, so I do a little preparation for further efforts on the bodywork tomorrow, by marking the rivnut positions. This will mean I can mark the positions once the nosecone is obscuring them. Once I've sorted out the rad breather, then I can get on with fitting the nosecone.

7th September 2002
Time to continue with the work on the bonnet and nosecone. First thing I did was to sort out the radiator breather problem. This is simply solved by removing the pipe (which fortunately has little coolant in it), and cutting it a little shorter, which should reduce the radius when it is re-attached. I tighten the jubilee clip onto it, to compress the pipe a little as this makes it easier to fit, and tie it out of the way for now.
Next I turn to the manual for the first time in ages, and decide that the next thing to do is to fit the studs into the front flange of the bonnet. These locate into grommets in the mating flange on the nosecone, and hold the front end of the bonnet in position (since the nosecone is fixed into rivnuts in the chassis. I mark the measurements suggested in the manual, drill the bonnet flange, and fit the studs.
The locating studs fitted to the bonnet, need to locate into matching holes on the mating flange on the nosecone. This is a decidedly fiddly task, relatively simple, but it's quite important to get this right since the alignment of the bonnet and nosecone are dependant on a good match/fit.
I take time to mark through from the inside of the bonnet (the advantage of skinny arms!), and then drill a small hole, before going through a slow iterative process of filing the hole open, trial fitting and comparing to the bonnet stud, and then enlarging the hole in the appropriate direction. The grommets which fit into these holes require them to be fairly precisely 18mm diameter, which is quite large, but allows some fine adjustment in the filing process.
Once these studs were fitted into the grommets, the next task is to fix the nosecone into position on the car. Firstly the top two fixings are bolts through the flange in the nose into the rivnuts in the chassis. With the nosecone held in position (by the bonnet locating studs), the position of the rivnuts can be measured and marked on the nose and simply drilled through.
Once this is done, the nosecone is fixed to the car at these two points, then the lower fixing point can be measured, marked, and drilled. The nosecone can then be re-fitted to the car and is now fixed in position. The underside of the nosecone is likely to sag slightly over time, under the weight of the nose, so the lower fixing will probably have to be slotted to allow adjustment of the bonnet-to-nose panel gap.

8th September 2002
Today I decided it was time to get the car down onto it's wheels. However, before I could do this I needed to tighten the top ball joints on the front suspension uprights. This proved to be a little bit tricky, since they are a taper fit and although I'd already got the lock nuts onto them, when I tried to tighten them the ball joint was just twisting.
I lowered the car gradually front and rear until it was on the lowest height setting on the axle stands. This allowed me to use the jack under the front suspension to try to apply some pressure on the ball joint, and hence tighten it up. However, there is nothing to stop the upper wishbone from moving upwards, so this didn't really make much difference.
In the end, I applied a small amount of copperslip to the threads on the ball joints, which in conjunction with leaning on them as much as possible, allowed me to get the locknuts to tighten up.
With the ball joint problem solved, I continued to lower the car. After some fiddling about with finding suitable bits of wood to go between the jack and the chassis, and under the front wheels (because the lowest saddle height on the jack is still too high to clear the underside of the car), it was soon down.
I have arbitrarily set the ride height to about half way on the adjustment. However I discovered that the front anti roll bar is either setup wrong or the drop links are too long (I suspect the latter), since until I had cranked the height up a bit further the car would not go all the way down without the front ARB fouling the upper wishbones. I'll have to check with Westfield what is wrong here.
Anyway, it's down, and suddenly, despite possibly going going a little lower on the suspension, it looks very low, quite small, and pretty cool!

Time to do something productive other than looking at it now that it is on it's wheels! So I decide to have a look at fitting a seat. I retrieve the 'jig' which I made previously (26th Aug) and start to look at fitting the seat to the brackets. Craig comes round to give me a valuable hand, because balancing and measuring the seat, trying to get the position right in terms of rake/recline, height, level, and square, is particularly difficult with only two hands!
First thing to do is to cut down the brackets at the front to allow the seat to sit a bit lower, and hence keep my head as far below the roll bar as possible. After much fiddling, thinking, and testing, we have a position for the seat, and so I set about drilling through the seat side to allow the bolts to pass through to mount it to the brackets. Once this is done, the seat can be attached to the mounting brackets.
I then tried the seat in the car. This first seat will likely become the passenger seat, but it is a worthy experimentation model for the drivers seat - I can see what, if anything, I need to change about the position using this one.
The clearance of the seat side to the sides of the car is pretty minimal, but hopefully there will be just enough room around it to be able to sort out the harness belt mountings, and to be able to get a spanner on the bolts through the floor (I'll try them loose rather than welding, as this will mean I can adjust the seat fore and aft if I really need to).
When I sit in the car, I find the view quite strange. I try lifting the seat a bit on some bits of wood to see if that improves the situation, which it does only slightly. I can't see the front of the car at all, and the first bit of tarmac I can see away up the driveway is quite a long way off. I'm not sure whether this is just because I'm sitting on the back wheels with a long bonnet in front of me, the aeroscreen is too tall, the bonnet bulge is in the way, or the seat is too low.
After some deliberation I conclude that I'll just have to give it a try as it is, and see if I get used to it. If I find it a problem them I'll have to think of something to do about it.
Final job of the day I decided, was to make up the strap for the exhaust. I had obtained from a motorbike shop, a strip of the non-melting rubber which Micron fit on their exhaust cans. I then got a strip of stainless steel from Mackays which will fit inside the the rubber strip. From this is was fairly simple to make a P-clip type arrangement which will mount onto the rubber bobbin on the exhaust mount on the car I made (see 24th August).
(Sorry, the camera was full, I'll take some pics later)

10th September 2002
Having done the first seat, I thought I would have a look at sorting out the harness mounts. I'd already spent some time cleaning the threads out of all the mounting points (there are 14 of them in total!, but I won't be using all of them), and spotted a problem. The harnesses mount into eyebolts which bolt into captive threads along the top edge of the rear of the chassis. Unfortunately because I have the welded in roll-bar, it is not possible to get an eyebolt into the end thread on the passenger side, because of the diagonal brace on the roll bar!
After speaking to Westfield about this, the only conclusion I can come to (other than why-oh- why-oh-why do they use eyebolts?) is that I'll have to chop one of the eyebolts down until I can get it in.
So I spent the evening fighting with eyebolts, the trim-and-try approach took multiple attempts on the problem one, and trying to make spacers for them. The spacers will mean that the eyebolts can be tightened up and yet still end up facing the right direction (another disadvantage of using them).

11th September 2002
A whole load of indecision about what to do this evening... so I had a look at the cycle wing brackets, but couldn't determine the right size bolts to use... had a look at the front indicator pods, but I seem to have two nearside ones (I think they are handed)... had another trial and think about seat positions, but can't decide what to do with the drivers seat.
Anyway, I ended up taking the front bodywork off again, and finished off trimming the nosecone to give better clearance around the front anti roll bar mounting blocks, as the nose is fully fitted in position now.
Whilst the nosecone was off the car again, I remembered that I hadn't yet re-attached the radiator breather pipe, which I had had to shorten the other day. The pipe had been left so that it could compress the pipe a bit to make it easier to put back on. The shortened length of the pipe made it a bit awkward to get on, but it looks like it should clear the nosecone much better now.
I've noticed a small fuel leak on the car. At first I thought it was just Waxoyl coming out of one of the chassis tubes somewhere, but closer inspection showed some petrol weeping out in the area around where the fuel return pipe joins the tank. I'm still not totally sure where it is coming from, it may be: the adapter which is screwed into a boss on the tank, the flexible pipe onto the adapter, or possibly the weld around the boss on the tank.
In a bid to rule the latter out I taped some paper towel around the end of the flexible pipe - if it still drips out then it looks like it's the boss which will probably result in the tank having to come out to be replaced or repaired.
While I have the nosecone off (again), I decided that I would remove the front anti roll bar. I am doing this to help SVA, and reduce the amount of suspension nuts and edges I will have to worry about covering or radiusing. I've also already removed the rear one, but the front one is a bit tricker to take out as it requires a bit of suspension dismantling to do so, and could really do with some extra hands to help hold and align everything.
(Compare picture with it fitted on 16th June)

12th September 2002
First thing to do today is to check on the fuel leak situation. I soon discover that the paper towel which I had wrapped around the whole of the joint is still clean and shows no sign of having come in contact with petrol. Meanwhile the fuel has clearly still been leaking and dripping out, so it must be the tank. Close inspection (as close as I can get with it on the floor) shows that there is already a spot repair weld around the boss, and it appears to be weeping out from here.
I finally summon up the courage to have a go at the cycle wings. I've been avoiding having to do this, but for no particular reason really! I dig out the brackets from a box on the shelf - most of them are pretty empty of things to be fitted to the car now.
Contrary to what the manual would have me believe, the brackets are fitted using three short M6 bolts into the pre-tapped holes on the front uprights. This is pretty straight forward, though I am consciously wary of knackering the uprights by cross threading them.
With these bolts done up, and the wings placed onto the brackets, it is clear that they are nothing really like the right shape. The wing rubs the tyre on the outside edge and there is miles of clearance on the inside. I'll have to check what the trick is to get the positioning of these right/better.
Having aborted plans to do the cycle wings, I turn to looking at the front indicator pods. These mount onto the lower sides of the nose cone, and then the indicator lamp units mount into the pods, with the wires passing through them into the inside of the nosecone.
First job is, with the nosecone fitted to the car, to measure and mark where the holes for pod mounts should be drilled. The SVA minimum height is 350mm from the floor, so I aim just a tad higher than this. Once marked, then the holes can be drilled, two for the pod mounts, and one inbetween them for the wires to pass through.
With the nosecone drilled and ready, I fit the indicator lamp units to the pods. The manual seems to be talking about a slightly different pod, so it can once again be left to one side. I decide it's best to fit the lamp unit to the pod using self-tapping screws (rather than the suggested rivets) as this will allow easier removal if need be. The lens is removed from the lamp unit, and then the base is simply screwed into place, after passing the wires down through the centre of the pod and out of the back. The lens is then screwed back into place, and the whole assembly can be bolted to the nosecone (again remembering to pass the wires through first).
This procedure is then repeated for the other side - I had to rotate the rubber surround on one of the indicator lamp units to ensure that drain hole was at the bottom (once I'd worked out that the pods aren't handed like the manual would suggest).

13th September 2002
Again I think I've failed to mention that I have a new SVA date - it is now set for Thursday 26th September. I'm hoping to be able to make this one, but there's still plenty to do, so time to throw some more holiday at it.
First thing to do today is to speak to Westfield about the fuel tank and the cycle wings. The conclusions are: they will have a replacement tank available from tomorrow morning; and the cycle wing brackets can be spaced out at the bottom mount to move them outwards, and the stays should then be set square to the tyre. I have convinced my parents that it would be most useful if they could collect the current list of parts from Westfield tomorrow, and then come to visit me with them on Sunday : )

So I make up some 5mm spacers to fit under the lower mount on the cycle wing brackets, and leave them out to dry as I have painted them black to match the brackets. They result in the wing sitting a bit more central on the tyre, but it's still not quite right.

Whilst I wait for the paint to dry, I decide to work on the airbox. This is the final bit which needs doing to the engine, so it seems like a reasonable to do it now. First thing to do here is to fit the air temperature sensor into the box. This is pretty simple, as it's position is arbitrary within sensible reason.
The next bits to patch into the airbox are the cam breather and pulse air valve plumbing. These both plumb onto elbow joints which are attached to the airbox at opposite ends of the inlet pipes. Unfortunately one of the elbow joints is missing the retaining nut, so I can only fit one until a part is forthcoming, but I can drill the holes for both. A large hole is required, so it starts with the largest drill bit and the file does the rest of the job.
Now I can fit the top part of the airbox. The plate in the box is sandwiched between the inlet pipes and the top face of the throttle bodies. However, upon trying to fit it I discover that the holes in the sandwich plate are not large enough to allow the plain shanked parts of the screws to pass through. This is simple resolved by drilling the holes out to a slightly larger size.
With this done, the top half of the airbox is fitted.
The rest of the airbox can now be assembled. Firstly, I rivet a chassis loom saddle onto the rear end of the box, which will be used to restrain the idle adjuster. Then the air filter is fitted in, and the lower part of the airbox can be fitted into place. It's quite a squash to compress the foam edge of the filter, but it's soon sorted.
Also the top cover can be fitted to the airbox at this point, the idle adjuster attached to the saddle using a tie wrapand the airbox fitting is completed.
Back onto to working on the cycle wings now, since the spacers I made and painted earlier are now play-with-able. I need to do something with the lack of centralisation of the wing across the wheel, and decide that the shape of the flat portions of the bracket is too close to the centre of the car. So it's out with the hammer. After quite a while, I have changed the shape such that the bracket is closer to the tyre on the inside, and therefore the wing is much more centralised on the tyre.
I also ensure that the flat parts of the bracket are shaped slightly to fit the curve of wing, as I have been persuaded that I really should bond the wings on (and have been offered the use of some suitable adhesive to do it with).
Just as I was tidying up, I realised when fitting the bonnet, that the airbox is fouling the bonnet. Hmmm, problem. It's leaning against on the inside of the bulge, which seems to be stopping the bonnet from sitting down properly on this side, and causing the whole thing become a little bit squiffy/twisted. Arse.

©2002-2009 David Hackett UDM4