Monday, February 20, 2012
Shiny
| Haven't had an unadulterated "shiny" entry for a while. So here is a photo of my new seats which I took delivery of this evening. And very nice they are too... |
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Saturday, February 18, 2012
First Chop
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First job for today was a little cleaning. I may not have mentioned
previously that I have managed to get hold of a new bonnet for the
car - this is quite surprising since they are not made any more, but
this one has been lurking in someones garage for a long time. It's
not perfect, but should be less work that the one with a great big
hole in it. I also cleaned up the wheels I picked up last week to make them a bit less filthy when man-handling them around. |
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| With that done it was time to get back onto work on the car. The plan is to start with the modifications to the tunnel to help the gearbox fit. Before I can do that, I need to remove the pedal box. I started this last week by disconnecting the rigid pipes and the draining the fluid. I thought removing the box would be simple, but it took a while as it put up quite a fight. I ended up having to dismantle it all in-situ as I couldn't get to all the welds with the grinder (without removing the steering column). |
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Then I could get on with some chassis chopping. I started off by
cutting around the side of the end of the footwell, and then cut
through the top and part of the bottom of the upright at the end of
the tunnel. This allowed me to bend the upright so that it is
vertical, and the side of footwell similar. So this is where I think
the chassis upright needs to be. I tried the gearbox back in place, and ummed and aahed a bit. It looks good, so I decided to continue cutting some bits which are part of the plan. I removed the side of the footwell entirely as it has to come out anyway, and trimmed the end panel back a bit too. Also I cut and tweaked the tunnel top tube on the drivers side and angled it to meet the new location of the tunnel end upright. Finally I removed the brace which went from the front of the tunnel down towards the front suspension - this needs relocating slightly now I'm changing the end of the footwell a bit. The batteries ran out in the camera, so there's only really 'after' photos. I put the gearbox back in and re-did the string down the centre of the tunnel to see how things are lining up. The diff input flange is going to be offset, so a bit of angle on the gearbox will help with prop UJ running angle, but I'm able to move the box over a bit and straight it a bit. It looks like it fits a bit better. |
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Sunday, February 12, 2012
A Little Tunnelling
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Unfortunately, it has been winter this week, the snow from last
weekend has only just started to melt properly. Needless to say,
this has prevented any garage work. It has been slightly above
freezing today, and I managed a little time on the car this
afternoon before my feet froze. I decided I would remove the
remaining tunnel top and side panels - I'm working towards getting
the pedal box out and start mods to make the gearbox fit better. There's not much more to say really, I put the gearbox back down the tunnel to see how it looks, and also ran a piece of string down which is along the centre line of the chassis. You can see how offset the tunnel is, and how the gearbox (and therefore engine) point over to the nearside of the car. |
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Saturday, February 04, 2012
A New Garden Ornament
| Far too cold for working in the garage today (and probably tomorrow), but I had a visit from DT this morning to do some measuring on the chassis. Before he could see it, we lifted the body right off and out of the garage. Once the tape measure had ruled, I got some help to move the front and rear body into the garden where it will have to live for a while - I'll sort out a tarp for it, but didn't have time today. Another errand for today was to pop round and pick up some wheels which will be used for moving the chassis around. |
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Sunday, January 29, 2012
A Mockery Of A Cage
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I decided (remembered?) that before I take the body off and get it
out of the garage and out of the way, I wanted to have a bit of a
mock-up of the roll cage. I picked up some microbore pipe insulation
for the job, that was being thrown out at work. With some garden
wire down the middle of it, it can be formed into shapes, even if it
is still a bit wobbly. So, I fiddled around for a couple of hours
and made something (on one side of the car only, the other will be a
mirror) which is loosely based on the cage I had on my Westfield. The idea here is that the main hoop at the rear needs to be a bit higher than the existing one, and it would be cross-braced within the hoop (I was using the old one as a guide). The main hoop at the front has to more-or-less fit around the inside of the shape of the windscreen frame. These two hoops are then joined together around the top and bottom, and the rear bar braced backwards. The loose parts of the plan are that I'm not sure exactly how it would be attached to the chassis at the front, though it seems that where the dash hoop meets the chassis is the right sort of place. I'm not sure the lower side bars are adding much, and they may well impede my elbow when turning the steering wheel. The upper side bars make it fun/awkward to get in and out. |
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I had been hoping to get the body tub off and out of the way today,
but unfortunately my willing volunteer wasn't around to help. I
managed to hoik it a bit to get it sitting on top of the chassis,
but it really needs another pair of hands to get it out. So I just spent a bit of time staring at it, then put it back on the chassis, and did some garage tidying up instead. Once it is out of the way, I can look more seriously at starting on modifying the tunnel to make the gearbox fit properly. |
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Saturday, January 28, 2012
Body Off
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Plenty of time, not many words and pictures though. I finished off
removing the rivets around the boot, which was simple enough, and
then set about separating the body from the chassis. Since it is
bonded all the way round, I had to release this mostly using a
stanley knife. As you can imagine this was fairly tedious and took a
while. Anyway, eventually I worked my way all the way down both sides and across the front of the tub. I couldn't get at the rail around the back of the boot, but managed to release it by lifting the front of the body up high once everything else was done. I had to remove the doors as the hinges are bolted to both body and chassis - this was the only thing worth photographing really. So, done. Whilst it was a bit tedious, it went a bit easier than I thought it might. |
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Tuesday, January 24, 2012
A Rivetting Experience
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Had a quick hour in the garage and managed to drill out all of the rivets around the inner edge of
the tub around the cockpit. I also got some of the ones out of the boot, but again a few of them
are awkward to get at, but I had ordered a right-angle attachment for the drill, so should be able
to get at these later. Of course the rivets out is just the start of the story - it's showing no signs of giving up its attachment to the chassis, so it could be something of a battle... |
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Sunday, January 22, 2012
Starting On Bodywork
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Today I made some further steps working on removing the body. It
doesn't seem like much when I write it out here, but it all took a
while, as grovelling around working on your back under the car is
not heaps of fun. I started off by looking at the pedal box - this
is from a Mk2 Escort I think, and has an extra box made around to
close all the gaps up. So I removed the outer part as this detaches
it from the front edge of the body tub. I started drilling out
rivets along the front of the tub, but then got stuck as I need a
right-angle adapter for the drill. So I then moved on to removing the aluminium panels which fit between the chassis and the lower side edges of body. Due to the body conversion from classic to RT style, these panels were added at that point, so there's alot of rivets to be drilled out. Also on the passenger side there was an additional aluminium heatshield around the exhaust, which I've also removed. |
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Saturday, January 21, 2012
De-Screening
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I spent an hour or so during the week doing some measuring and
making some datums which I can bolt to the engine/bellhousing and
get it back in the same position it is alreayd in. So first job
today was to whip the engine out - this really didn't take very long
at all, within an hour it was out and everything tidied up. I've
decided that I am going to have a go at removing the body after all
- I was previously going to leave it as the roll cage has to fit
within in it, but at the same time, I figure it will need to be off
for welding mounts for the cage. So I'm thinking I can remove it and
hopefully be able to re-fit of a fashion if/when required. With this in mind, I set about removing the windscreen. This is a bit of a tedious task with lots of running the knife around it inside and out, and trying to get through all the bonding. I used some of that plastic strip they use on large parcels which makes a handy flexible saw. After battling with it for a while, it was out. |
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Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Some Shiny Parts
| Stumbled upon a couple of useful items. Here we have a set of heavy duty con-rod bolts, which are a sane upgrade if you intend to rev the engine. I think the standard bolts may be ok to 8000rpm, which is the limit I'll be sticking to, but better safe than sorry. Also a set of vernier cam pulleys which are needed to be able to accurately time the upgraded cams which I'll be fitting. Both items are unused from someone who changed plans, so a bit of a saving over buying new. |
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