3rd February 2008
Did a bit of work on the car this afternoon. I have decided to re-work some of the wiring for the Autocom that I did last year, which although worked fine, could be made more convenient. With this in mind, I removed the power cable which I fitted along the top edge of the tunnel, as I am moving the actual Autocom box to sit on top of the tunnel just under the dash. The advantage of this is that I plan to mount the phone and music devices on the dash where I easily see/reach them, and also will be able to adjust the vox setting (which would have been handy a couple of times last year).
In order to do this, I decided I would remove the dash as this gives better access to the wiring, and it also gives me a chance to check everything over, and possibly change a couple of other things also if I can find the bits I want to be able to do it.

9th February 2008
Seems to have been a week of ordering bits for the jobs on the car, but not actually progressing them very much. I did receive the rear wheel bearings, and dropped them into my local friendly garage, who seemed very amenable to pressing them in/out for me - not heard anything back from them yet though. Also I have been busy gathering parts for fixing the half doors to the car (studs, clips, etc.).
Another little project I accumulated some bits for, was that I would like to move some controls onto the steering wheel. In particular the PTT button for the radio, but whilst I'm on, a few others would be useful too, like indicators and main beam buttons. With this in mind, I got some nice little sealed buttons, and so today I spent a bit of time starting to fabricate a mount for them. It is made from some carbon sheet I had lying around but never used, and will be sandwiched between the wheel and the quick release coupler which is bolted to it.

10th February 2008
As it was a nice day today, I figured it would be a good time to have a bit of a clean up around the rear suspension. Now this is not just vanity, cos if it was, it's a poor result, the main advantage I see of this is that it means everything gets a decent eyeball/wiggle check, so hopefully I'd spot any damage or wear. Fortunately, everything seems to be ok, and this is now ready for the uprights with new bearings to go back on.
Whilst I was here I also decided to clean up and recoat some of the brake parts which were looking a little rusty - this really is vanity I'm afraid!
I also spent a little more time on the steering wheel controls bracket. In fact I spent too long trying to get it all to fit with the quick release coupler, but got there in the end. I then trimmed the bracket down to a more sensible size (after deciding that four buttons was plenty for now). The downside of doing this has meant that there is a bit more flex in the bracket than I'd like when pushing the buttons, so I'll have to think of a way to strengthen this up - I may have to cut and bond another piece of onto the back of the existing one.

Apologies for the ropey photos, I'll have to try harder, but the camera is getting a bit knackered (bad workman, tools, etc)

        

17th February 2008
Nothing much to report I'm afraid, due to a weekend doing other things. However I did get my uprights back at the end of the week, with the new bearings in place. Also I got another sample of some foam extrusion which I need to offer up and choose one for sealing around the half doors. That's about it I think, other than I think I have now got all the bits and pieces I need to progress the current tasks and starting doing more productive things.

24th February 2008
Trying to make some time in the garage, but all the best laid plans get averted by other things, this week it is preparation for a biggish project happening in the house. But I did get a good few hours out there today.
First thing I wanted to do was to get the rear suspension back together. I got the uprights back a week or so ago, and I remembered to get some new nylocs for all the bolts too. So it was a relatively simple, though still time consuming task, to put it all back in place. Mainly because I wanted to be sure that there bearings we ok, so I firstly reassembled it all with the old nylocs to ensure the bearing was tight - relief, it is :-) so I then replaced the nuts one at a time plus some paranoia thread lock. I even managed to carefully get the hubnuts fully torqued without pulling the car off the stands.
The afternoon was slightly less organised, as I seemed to be doing a bit of this, then doing a bit of that, and not really finishing anything. Firstly I need to get on with the steering wheel buttons, which was left with it deflecting a bit too much after I cut some material away. I was going to have a go at laminating two identical pieces of carbon back to back, but I figured the easiest way to do this would be to start again (and cut less material away this time) :-/ So I cut two pieces to the rough overall size, bonded them together, and clamped them up in the vice - we'll see whether it works.
So then I couldn't do any more on that, I figured I also need to spend some time on the half doors. Unfortunately I haven't got around to ordering the foam seal I am going to bond to the door edges, so can't do all that much on this, as that is the next step really. But on the assumption that I need some fixings on the underside of the top side chassis rail, I need to get the seat out to do this. So I did that (which also obviously requires removing the belts). I also need to remove the additional bolted-in brace for the roll cage side impact tube, fortunately this came out really easily - Caged did a really good job of making and fitting the cage.
With this all out, I marked up (for photo purposes more than anything) where I am going to have fixing points for the doors. The idea is that I will attach a loop of shock cord to the door at the equivalent points, which will then loop round hooks at these points. I've not quite worked out how to attach things at the rear edge of the door yet though - any bright ideas? 		  
As I was packing up for the day, I got distracted with another idea. Looking and sitting in the seat, I was thinking about some seat pads. I want some removeable bits of padding to use on long journeys, as I actually get bruises on my back, and the osteopath was a bit grumpy at this last year. So I attached some paper to the seat and starting to work out an outline of what I need, and how it might attach (velcro on the outside of the shell, hopefully, to make it easily removeable). While the seat is out, I could easily drop it off at the trimmers to get this done.

©2002-2009 David Hackett UDM4