17th April 2003
My cold is really kicking in well, but I've got the day off anyway to have a play with the car and make the weekend extra long. One of the main reasons for having today off is to make a mission to get some tyres sorted out. The A032Rs on the car at the moment are quite soft, and not having had the suspension setup properly yet seems to have been at the expense of the rear tyres. There's still a fair amount left on them, especially the fronts, but I'll take the opportunity to put a slightly longer lasting tyre on all round, and save the sticky ones for the track later in the year. I'm not driving the car anything like well enough to take advantage of the better rubber anyway.
So I'm off into the fens for the morning to get a set of A021Rs fitted to the wheels.
Back into the garage for the afternoon, and I'm striving to get all the wiring finished off. There's only two things left to sort now I think, the oil pressure feed from the engine to dash, and working out what I need to do with the speedo (i.e. whether the speed sensor in the gearbox is providing a signal the tacho can interpret).
So I start to chase down the oil pressure switch wire. The sender is in the engine, and the wire disappears into the loom, but it doesn't seem to come out again. I have to start stripping the loom to find where this wire goes, starting where the engine loom passes through the bulkhead, but it's not here. So I then track it back from it's connector until I eventually find it terminated in the middle of the loom.
Having found the wire, I extend it, divert it, and then re-wrap the loom back up. So this wire is now through to the dash area with the ECU and immobiliser wires. I've got a connector for these wires, which will allow the scuttle to be easily removed when needed since everything will be unpluggable.
Then I move onto to looking again at the dash loom. The wires which will feed up to the warning lights on the brow dash are a bit of a mess, so I spend some time re-optimising these wires and preparing them for a connector to be fitted on there to allow easy removal in future. I'll make up a subloom on the other side of the connector, once I have got some more wire of an appropriate thickness for the job (I've run out for now).

18th April 2003
Yep still feeling truly under the weather, but it seems to get a bit easier if I just get on with things. I've gone as far as I sensibly can with the wiring for now, until I can order a few more bits, so having borrowed Tim's ball joint splitter, it's time to tackle the tidying up of the front suspension.
Using the car in the winter weather really hasn't done it any favours at all, as all of the salt water has made things look rather nasty. So I'm going to dismantle it all, and repaint the ball joints and track rods, and whatever else needs tidying up to make it look a bit better.
I get the whole of the offside stripped down and some of the prep work sorted before lunch. Fortunately it all seems to come apart quite easily, as does some of the powder coating on the front wishbones. I'm not overly impressed by this, but the powder coating doesn't seem to take well at all to sharp edges, and just flakes off in my hand. So this will all have to be re-protected, and I'm going to give satin finish Hammerite a try. Some people suggest it is to brittle and will easily chip off, so I'll have to see how it goes.
I'd not realised about painting the ball joints when assembling the car all that time ago, so the lower ones hadn't seen any paint at all, even though the others had had some put on retrospectively.
The rest of the afternoon is spent dismantling the nearside suspension in the same manner, preparing everything that needs to be painted, and starting the coats of paint. It all takes quite a bit of time, but hopefully it will be worthwhile effort.

19th April 2003
With yesterdays paint mostly gone off (I've put three thinned coats on in fairly brisk order so it's not totally gone off yet), I can get on with re-building the front suspension today.
First thing to do is to remove the shock and spring, as I am going to invert these to help reduce the unsprung weight. With this off I take advantage of improved access to have a good clean around the chassis a bits behind. Then it's back on with the inverted shock, and continue with re building the suspension: re-fitting the ball joints, uprights, cycle wings, etc. I am also being careful to apply a wipe over with WD40 of alot of the bits to help reduce the attack of road muck. I'm not wholly sure how long the paint will last since it gets pretty well blasted by stones at the front, but it's an improvement over what is was like anyway.
The car is going for a full suspension setup by Terry Nightingale next week (no pressure to get it al finished then!), so it's time to re-fit the anti-roll bars now. I fitted them when I built the car, but removed them to save the extra aggrevation they may have caused at SVA.
So after I while I have got this almost entirely fitted, although I recall that the droplinks need shortening to fit properly, so will leave these until I have worked out what length they need to be. Also I find that the ARB is rubbing on the chassis at the front, I don't remember this being a problem last time, but I pack some washers in to space it out and resolve the issue.
So by the time I've re-fitted everything, and cleaned everything up properly, on both sides of the car, it's taken up the rest of the day. But it looks much better now, and I just need sort out those front ARB droplinks to complete this.

20th April 2003
Having sorted the front suspension, it's time to have a look at the rear. It is not as badly attacked by the elements and stones (although the driveshafts don't look too great!), but I need to fit the rear anti roll bar, and invert the rear shocks, so I may as well have a good clean up back here too.
First problem is that the powder coating on the ARB mounting brackets is all flaking off - again it seems to be a distinct disliking to sharp edges causing it to come loose quite easily. The problem is that the brackets are mounted on the rear most upper wishbone mount, the bolt for which passes from rear to front of the car, and because of the petrol tank cannot be removed.
There's only one thing for it, if a job is worth doing etc, so I decide to remove the petrol tank, which will allow me swap the direction on this bolt and eliminate the same problem occuring in future. Annoying and time consuming, but hopefully worthwhile.
After a short while, and good dowsing in petrol, the tank is out and work can begin on tidying up the rear suspension bits. And since the tank is out, it all gets a good clean up and a protective wipe over with WD40.
So now I have lots of access to the rear suspension, and can remove the ARB mounting brackets to be painted. The next few hours is spent doing a load of cleaning up, painting bits where the powder coating hasn't got into the corners or the welds, etc. And inverting the rear shocks, which is quite fiddly trying to hold all the rear uprights in line when re-assembling them. I've a slight feeling that there is something not quite right about the way I have put the rear uprights together - they are very tight fit which doesn't seem entirely good, and may relate to the rear tyre wear thing. I'll get Terry to check it over as he will have to dismantle it all to adjust it anyway.
Hmmm, it sounds like I am not doing much here, but this is another full day spent working on the car here. With all the painting and cleaning up work done, I can re-fit the fuel tank. I don't need to re-fit the rear ARB brackets now because they can be accessed as I am turning the bolts around in the mounts - and the brackets aren't quite dry enough yet.
I had noticed when cleaning the tank up that one of the bolt heads has _just_ made contact with the indents, so decide I need to re-mount the tank a little further towards the rear of the car. This will allow enough clearance and access for the nut to be fitted to the bolt which is passing through the other way now. I just need to re-drill the tank straps to hold it a little further back. The tank is now re-plumbed and ready for re-filling.

21st April 2003
First job to look at today is the fitting of the rear ARB. Now that the mount brackets are dry, they can be fitted to the car, and then the blocks, the bar, and the droplinks fitted. This is simple enough job, and means that the back of the car is now complete, and I can start working my way forwards. I should be able to get it all done and dusted by the end of next weekend, ready to go for it's setup session.
So moving forwards, the next job to look at is to sort out painting the brackets for the forward brace. These had to have some edging trim applied to them for SVA, and when that trim finally succumbed and fell off, it took some powder coating with it. So rather than leave it to eventually rust (!) I think I'll paint them up now. I remove the remainder of the trim from the lower bracket in the passenger footwell, mask them off well, and (over the course of the afternoon) apply a couple of coats of paint.
Whilst I was here, I also touched up some of the rust spots on the roll bar where the powder coating had not quite made it fully into some small gaps in the welds, and where it had got scratched when fitting the main bodywork.
The next area to look at is re-fitting the seats and harnesses. The first thing that needs doing here is working out how the new crotch straps are going to fit. The straps were supplied with brackets for attaching to eyebolts, like those used for the shoulder straps, rather a normal headed bolt which I will have to use for clearance down the side of the seat.
I have got some replacement brackets, but the only way to fit them is to cut the very ends off the belts so that I can unthread the strap, and put the new bracket on (they are looped on rather than stitched on). If I were circuit racing the car this would not be allowed, but as I'm not, it is, and for lower levels of competition it is not a problem, so all is well. The ends of the straps can probably be easily re-stitched (by a clever mother!), but for now I will glue the ends up to stop them fraying.
At this point I retrieve the seats from storage and clean them up ready to go back in - the passenger seat was still well caked in muck from the last time I went out in the car, it seems the passenger gets extra mucky from stuff hitting the exhaust or something!
I also clean out the cockpit where the sits fit, and end up having to scrape out some of the sealant which has been put around the panels in the corners as it was loose and a load of dirt had settled in there and started to rust. So I get that all painted and re-sealed, and hoover out a ton of grit from the footwells ready for the seats to be re-fitted.

I then get distracted by the dash panel. It is nearly finished, and if I want to get it powder coated it will have to be this week, so the final hole needs to be drilled. I have ummed and aahed a bit about what to do with the main beam switch, and have decided that I am just going to re-use what was already there for now and see how I get on with it. So I drill the hole for the switch - just about the horn button, and within reach of the steering wheel.
I then remove all the protective plastic and masking tape which has built up on it, and set all the edges with a small file to remove all the bits of burr which were trapped under the plastic before. The dash panel looks quite nice and shiney without all the scribblings and stuff on it - and it ready to be covered now.

(A lack of pictures here caused by the camera adapter seemingly being broken so I can't download any of the pictures from it at the moment)

22nd April 2003
Continued working on the harness and seat fitting. The first thing to do having chopped both pairs of straps is to seal up the ends where they have been cut, to stop them from fraying. I mix up some Araldite for this job, and it goes off pretty quickly whilst I am pottering around preparing the rest of the harness straps.
So then I spend some time fighting with the straps and the passenger seat. The seat has to be in the space so that the straps can pass through the slots before being fixed to the car. Ideally the crotch straps should pass through some extra slots in the bottom of the seat, and be fixed through into the floor. But, for now at least, I am going to try using the spare belt mounts alongside the seats, the existing lap slots, and then the straps will be sat on. This actually gives a good area of belt to leg contact, but not ideal angles on the brackets at the mount point.
I also have to cut down slightly some new set screws which I got for attaching the belts to the mounts, but after some trial and error I think I have a setup which I am happy with. So I can tighten the belts into the mounts, and the seat I will need an extra pair of hands with.

23rd April 2003
More working on the seat and harness re-installation. I soon have the drivers crotch and lap straps fitted, and then it's time to actually bolt the seats down, for which I get some help from Craig as it's a bit of a long armed job. After a short while and more hassle than I remember it taking last time to get the bolts aligned and through the holes, we have both seats bolted in position. The only thing to complete here is the shoulder straps, but they just clip on, and need a clean as they are a bit mud splattered.
Just time for a couple of other small jobs. Firstly I do battle with the evilness which is the handbrake lever - it should be a simple bolt-on job, but it's a bit of a fiddle due to having to attach the cable first (or go through the nightmare of trying to do it after fixing to the chassis). A few skinned knuckles later and it's done though - but I'm still not wholly convinced that the rear calipers are fully freeing off.

The other job which I ought to do is to fit the throttle cable to the pedal. Since the cable has loosened (couldn't really call it frayed), it's reluctant to pass through the tiny hole in the widget which holds it in position on the pedal. Fortunately a brain wave sees me drill the hole and 1mm larger, then it's a walk in the park!

24th April 2003
Not alot of motivation to work on the car this evening, so I just spend a short while having a closer look at the leaky cam position sensor. Having read the Haynes manual about it, I realise that it splits into two parts: the sensor itself, and the casing. So it's worth a look to see if I can see why it's drawing oil down inside the cable.
The sensor part seems to be a sealed unit, so I just clean it all up and re-assemble it. Thought it doesn't seem to be a major problem, I will probably get hold of a new one for the sake of my sanity.

25th April 2003
Decide it's time to get all the wiring secured again. The only thing which is left to sort out here is the signal for the speedo, but that wire makes an appearance at the ECU, so it will probably be just as easy to splice into it there. This means that I can tie up all the main wiring near the engine output and under the fuse box area.
Fiddly and time consuming, especially when I keep changing my mind about it, but I think this is probably about as neat as it can sensibly get.

26th April 2003
I was originally going to get a powder coated dash from Westfield - it was part of my original spec - but that may have introduced problems at SVA, so the factory kindly loaned me a padded dash. In the meantime, they said they couldn't get satisfactory results on the powder coating, so I ended up having a plain uncut ali dash panel. The advantage of this was that I could change from the default layout, but it meant that I would have to sort out the powder coating myself.
Given that the rest of the interior is all black, however, I have come round to the idea of having a go at vinyl covering the dash with a carbon effect vinyl. This will match the other bits of the carbon effect I have (yes, I cannot afford the real thing!), and will differentiate the interior a bit. And although good quality vinyl is not cheap, it should also work out cheaper than powder coating, which is quite costly to get it done right (the piece of vinyl to do this cost about £10-£15)
So I spend today down at Gregs since he has a contact with a local vinyl shop, who have supplied some nice looking carbon effect adhesive vinyl. It was quite a scary job, and I wasn't sure how it would work out doing a DIY fitting on a reasonably large flat area.
After a couple of hours, we got it done, and the result is quite good - considering neither of us had done anything of this scale before. On close inspection you can see there are few small blemishes, but overall you cannot really notice them, and it looks pretty good. If I was doing it again, I'm sure I could do an even better job, but for now this is plenty good enough, and the vinyl is supposed to be UV, rain, fuel, oil proof so will probably last a good while.

27th April 2003
Back into the garage today, and on with re-building the car. I've got two days to get it into a state such that I can drive it over to Terry Nightingale on Tuesday for the suspension setup work.
So the first thing to have a look at today is sorting out the brow dash. We covered it yesterday as a practice before doing the dash, and it looks quite good, so now I've got some more wire, I can finish making up the sub-looms for it.
With the wires cut to length and the connectors fitted to the bottom end, I drill a hole through the top of the scuttle, and pass the wires through, then attach the connectors for lamps to the other end. With this done, I fix the lamps into the dash, and connect up the wires as required. All that is left to do then, is to put the connector onto the main dash loom, then it is ready to be tested.
Also recently arrived, I got hold of the small blade connectors which I needed for the horn and start buttons. So I can attach these to the appropriate wires in the dash loom, and also I make a slightly longer lead for the earth for the horn switch.

I managed to get hold of some clear side repeaters yesterday also. It was a slightly lucky find I think, as these ones have metal part to the clip mechanism, which can be encouraged to fit better than the plastic ones. I was expecting to have to silicone these in, as I had with the previous ones, but they seem to clip in ok, and I fit a tie wrap like before to assist.
Next thing to do is to have a final sanity check on the dash wiring loom, and to ensure that I have got the brow dash wiring correct. So I dry fit the scuttle (now with brow dash), and then prepare the main dash by applying the wiring loom to it. This can then be balanced on the car, and everything connected up.
With this all done, I connect up the battery, and go through all the electrics, start the engine, etc. A few tweaks required to the brow dash to include the immobiliser light, but all the other lamps work first time. So now the dash is pretty much ready to go and proven, but I need to get hold of some suitable bolts for fitting the master switch to the dash panel.
A few small tasks before finishing, once of which is to fix some loom saddles to the rear of the dash panel which will be used to support the dash loom in place, and also hold the horn and flasher relays to the dash.

28th April 2003
Got to get the car sorted today, so the first job is to get a hold of some allen headed bolts for fixing the master switch to the dash panel. I also have a search around for some loom tape before I realise that I've still got a load I took off the dash loom, which should just about be enough to re-wrap it!
So the master switch is soon attached to the dash, then it's a laborious and time consuming job of re-wrapping the dash loom. After a couple of hours it is done, and is attached to all the switches and the loom saddles on the dash panel.
Before the scuttle goes on permanently, I decide that I should take a flylead off of the speed sensor signal wire. I am going to try sticking this directly into the speedo - not sure whether it will work or not. A little bit of time searching and I find where the wire goes into the ECU, and splice into it here (as it is nearest convenient point to the dash). Hopefully this will be able to provide me with a more reliable speedo, but I need to check out what sort of signal the previous speed sensor put out.
A small apology now for the lack of pictures, but I got so busy that I really didn't have the time to keep pausing for taking pictures. So these pictures were retrospectively taken once the work was all done.

The next task is to get the scuttle onto the car and fixed down. This is simple enough as it is just held on with four bolts which are easy to fit (due to getting it right when I built it!). Once this was done, I could have a look at fitting the dashboard.
Fitting the dash should have been very straight forward, but at this point I realised that I had totally not got around to trial fitting the dash before I covered it. This was really not a great idea, as some of the holes didn't _quite_ line up and needed a bit of fettling. Nothing too drastic, but a mild annoyance all the same. Unfortunately, during the fiddling a couple of rivnuts on the scuttle seem to have died, and the bolts quite tighten down into them. They'll have to stay put for now as I don't have time to take it all off again.
After a while however, the dash is fitted, and it looks pretty good. With a bit of groping around the back it is all connected up, and all wiring secured out of the way. A quick test shows that everything is still working (except the speedo).
Plenty of remaining tasks, but most of them pretty straight forward re-assembly. So it's on with the tunnel top cover, the rear boot area covers, then fit the harness shoulder straps. Then the nosecone can be re-fitted, re-connecting the front indicators, fit the wheels (via some fiddling with the cycle wings as these tyres must be a _slightly_ different shape), and lower the car down onto the floor.
The only thing I have a problem with is the front anti-roll bar drop links. They need to be shortened to prevent the bar from fouling on the upper wishbone. So I happily go ahead and chop the first one down, but find that I need a tap to tidy the thread that is left. As a quick work around, I stick just the one on, and will get Terry to sort it out tomorrow.
Just time for a quite test drive around the block to make sure that everything is working, and fill it with petrol to save having to do this early tomorrow morning. I am pleased that all is well, especially the new prop, but it is a fairly gentle run as the suspension is still all wonky of course.

29th April 2003
An early start, and fortunately the sun is shining for my drive over to Terry Nightingales for the suspension setup work. The drive over is quite nice, and the car is feeling pretty good, much smoother with the new prop. It should be fantastic once Terry has worked his magic on the suspension.
When I get there I find that the rubber bobbin on the exhaust mount has broken and the exhaust can has been bouncing around. The tab on the strap which goes around the can has scraped the bodywork a bit, but hopefully it is not too much that cannot be sorted out simply.
A call from Terry later on in the day confirms that I'll be collecting the car tomorrow, to allow time to get it all sorted.

30th April 2003
Off to collect the car from Terry today. Unfortunately it's been fairly sunny most of the day, until a couple of hours before I go to collect the car, then the heavy showers arrive. So it looks like I'm in for a good soaking when I arrive at Terrys. But before I can head out I need to fix up the exhaust mount - I've been unable to find the tiny small rubber bobbin used (it turns out it's a fuel pump mount, no wonder it's failed!) so I manage to make good using a long bolt through some rubber fuel hose.
I hang around a short while as I can see that the rain is going to clear up, and it does. So I get a pretty dry run home, just damp roads. Already the car feels soooo much better, as I know the rear suspension was well out from the tyre wear. Time will tell, as I'm not going to drive it around in the rain this evening.

©2002-2009 David Hackett UDM4