1st February
Twenty rivets! The body is now held properly to the chassis. It was quite
hard work drilling twenty holes upwards and the rivets are, as usual, tough.
I’m half tempted to put the car on the floor now, maybe at the weekend.
February
Not a stunning day for progress in terms of visible progress but got the
locks into the bonnet (and scratched the bonnet on each side!) and cut the
slots in the scuttle for the demister.
Oh! And used a massive torque wrench with Jan’s foot on the brakes
to tighten the rear drive hubs to 340Nm!
It will be seen that, contrary to my comment in the preceding diary entry, it’s still up in the air. I thought this would stop the tyres from wearing out too soon...............
7th February
Hey! Actually done something to make it look different at last! The screen
side irons. This entailed fitting the mirrors, covering the scuttle with
masking tape, measuring and drilling 2 holes.
The screen side irons needed quite a bit of Dremel-ing with a grinding wheel to make the spigots of the mirrors fit as well as the proscribed shortening of the pillars on the mirrors to take the self-tapping fixing screws.
Measuring where the top mountings go for the screen side irons on the scuttle went surprisingly well and they fit pleasingly well. The screen needs to go in now which is definitely a two-person job.
8th February
With Jan’s help we fitted the screen – twice! After releasing the screws I put in last night, we slid the screen into place. Before drilling the lower mounting bolt holes, I made up a stick of wood that had two noggins cut out of it with the faces the 1010mm apart from the top of screen to the datum cross member behind the seating bay. This saved lots of repeated measurements. With the lower holes in place, we noticed that when viewing the screen from the front, it was higher on one side than the other. So I slackened everything off, made adjustments and re-tightened everything so that it was even.
When sitting in the car, I could not get a satisfactory view from the LH mirror, so, although the manual says the mirrors are not handed, we swapped them round. It’s true, they’re not handed, but it made the LH side mirror a bit better. This actually meant removing the screen and replacing it. Remember, everything you attach to a Westfield has to be removed and replaced.
12th February
This morning I went up to John K to help him install his engine. When I got there it was all but in. He’d bought an engine-hanging beam from Machine Mart for £30 that made it easier than my sling and shackles.
Back to my car, the next step was to fit the fillet at the base of the screen
but I haven’t got a clue how to make it fit. After a bit of messing
about with it, I gave up and sorted out my bolts and then fitted the two
front wheel mudguard/wing supports. These went on OK with clearance –just-
to the tyres. To increase the clearance I put a washer under the lug at one
position on each bracket. It would be nice to put the mudguards on but I’m
sure they’d get scratched so I’ll leave them off for a bit.
I also put the headlights on. They come with flying leads with the AMP connector pins crimped on and the connectors in the box. Funny, I thought, wonder why they’re not on? Of course I then found out why when I put one on and of course it wouldn’t go through the mounting bracket hole! Eventually sorted it and connected up the headlights to the wiring circuit.
13th February
We eventually got the windscreen fillet sort of fitted. It’s not a noticeably snug fit but when the wiper posts are screwed down we think it’ll be OK. With the fillet in place and taped down, I drilled through the moulded centres and into the scuttle. With the fillet removed I then opened up the pilot holes to take the wiper boxes and spindles. The first one took a little while; the second one was much quicker, learning curve effect! I temporarily bolted the wiper boxes in and then took the scuttle/screen assembly off to deal with the inside things; the heater, wipers and demister ducting.
The heater went in OK but I needed reference to photos I had taken on the day we ordered the car to see just where the water hoses come through the scuttle.
The tube of glue, Tiger Seal, that I was going to use for attaching the demister ducting was solid, so that’s a trip out tomorrow to get some more.
The wiper drive tubes were offered up, the middle one seems too long and so I cut off the flare leaving a square end for that one. The ‘C’ tube needed bending away from the demister duct inlet. Bending the ‘A’tube from the motor to the LH wiper box looks like fun – not!
Progress seems quite slow lately, lots of minor jobs without much signs of the car coming together visibly; it looks sort of finished anyway.
14th February
A good long day out in the garage today, the time is a bit of a guess as
I have been in and out all day. First job was to go and get some Tiger Seal
for the demister duct from a local motor factor. Having squeezed a bead all
round I offered it up, clamped it and left it to set all day.
There were lots of jobs to do now, so I chose to fit the panels over the
prop shaft and handbrake. As with the front one I drilled and tapped into
the chassis rails. One of Westfield’s pre-drilled holes was in the
wrong place and needed to be 3mm to the left. Fortunately the head of the
screw has covered this.
As will be seen from the other photo, I then attached the handbrake seal. This really needed 4mm x 12mm rivets but I didn’t have any so used 3mm x 12mm and I think it’s OK. I needed to trim the rubber to fit the surround and also filed a nick in its return edge so that it could bend easily across the change in shape of the tunnel. I sprayed this satin black to cover the bare edge of metal I had made.
Next job was to fit the bonnet lock keeper plates. I had had to wait to do this until the scuttle was off so I could see what I was doing. Fortunately I started with the LH side as this was much more difficult than the RH side. Firstly I established that the keeper plates sat right on top of one of the body rivets so these had to be drilled out. Next, I found that they overhung the edge of the body so that spacer plates were needed. On the LH side I also needed packers to raise the plate up about 5mm. I did this with some aluminium plate I had doubled up in thickness. I drilled through the two plates and then bolted them to the keeper plate and filed them to match the shape. To make up the difference in height to the body from the chassis I made another packer but half width. Much fiddling was needed to get it to work with the lock in a consistent manner. I needed to slot the holes in the keeper plate so that it could move outward a little. Eventually, I was reasonably satisfied with it. The RH side one was much easier. Rather than rivet as per instructions, I drilled and tapped for M5 screws.
Finally, before packing away for the night, I took off the heater, ran some sealant around the edge of the demister duct and then replaced it.
15th February
First job today was to finish the scuttle assembly off by installing the wiper mechanism. The difficult part of this was to bend the ‘A’ tube from the motor to the LH wiper drive. This has to clear the demister port on the duct and then allow the wiper motor to sit on the scuttle sensibly without it fouling on the ECU system that will be immediately below it. The plastic cover provided is meant to cover the wiper motor when it is mounted the other way up so that needed a chunk cutting out of it and then it pushed on. The last remaining thing to do was to install the washer nozzle. The manual said not to bother with the windscreen washer hose, but I thought it might be easier to at least put it on the nozzle now. A quick dunk in hot water and it waggled on.
Oh and one more job, hoses from the heater to the demister duct. These felt liable to slip off the duct so I put a self-tapper through the hose and into the stub of the duct to secure it.
Before the scuttle can go back on, the interior side panels are to be fitted. These slotted in quite easily but needed quite a bit of brain power to sort out where the rivets go and quite a lot of muscle power to drill all the holes in the chassis, pulling the drill towards me rather than pushing as normal with drilling. I stuck masking tape all round the edges and marked up where the chassis rails were.
Some of the rivets went into the chassis rails and a few went into fibreglass, the latter needing the peel rivets.
The RH side was finished but the LH side remains for tomorrow.
16th February
The LH side panel was as hard work as the RH side one, probably even worse as it was longer and getting at the rivets in the passenger footwell was quite hard.
Anyway with them done the scuttle went back on and was bolted down, only to find I should have sealed it to the body, so that will have to come off again. I put some sealant around the wiper spigots but didn’t put the windscreen fillet on as some sealant between the screen frame and body is needed. Objective of all this was to get the car off its stands and into the sun for a photo session!!
21st February
With snow falling, this was a fairly cold hour and a half in the garage to install the fuel filler nozzle. The trick, I thought with this was to transfer the centre of the pipe on the tank to the inside of the bodywork. I laid a straight edge on the tank pipe and extended his to mark the inside of the body. I did this at 9, 12 and 3 o’clock positions. By extending these marks I could make a square on the inside of the body, albeit with one side missing. I then cut out a circle of similar diameter to the pipe in a piece of card but left a strip across a diameter so as to be a guide for the centre. I then offered his over the marked up square and skewered a centre point into the fibreglass. I then needed to make a hole from the inside to the outside. With no room for a drill, I heated a nail to red heat and eased it through to the outside. So far, so good. I then noticed that the centre was quite close to the fog light, close enough, in fact for there to be not enough room for the posh filler flange, so after consulting some other photos, I shifted the centre up about 6mm and used a 64mm hole saw to cut through. From there on it was fairly straightforward to drill the 6, 5mm holes for the clamping screws, cut the rubber hose to length and assemble it all.
Of course, now, the fancy nozzle and pipe do not quite line up and a bit of persuasion was needed to get it all to go together! And to find the two Jubilee clips too, even though there’s not a lot left in my one remaining cardboard box!
27th February
Objective for today was to get the spare wheel and carrier on. But first, I checked the front toe-in with the gauge borrowed from Mark. It toe’d OUT by about 20-25 mm!! Bit of adjustment there then!
At the rear, I put a bit of pipe into the brackets for the spare wheel carrier and pushed it towards the rear as far as the body and scribed round it. Using the hot nail technique again, I marked an approximate centre through from inside to outside. Viewed from the outside, I made slight adjustments to the centres and then drilled 19mm holes through to take the legs of the carrier, which then went of reasonably easily, bit of a tap to get it in to the brackets! With the tyre in place I pushed it in more until it held the wheel and tightened the clamps.
With masking tape on the body, I roughly worked out where the two wheel retaining bolts were to go and then took the wheel off. There is a bar fitted behind the body to take the threaded bosses for the two retention bolts. I wanted these to look right so started lots of measurements,, only to discover the body was not horizontal, so I put the jack under the LH wheel, put a spirit level on the boot box and got it level. This meant I could use a centre line measured between the two arms of the wheel carrier and a plumb bob to get a vertical centre line higher up on the body. Sounds complicated but not really.
With the two 12 mm holes for the bolts in, I used the bar itself as a template for the two 5mm bolt holes that hold it to the body when the retaining bolts are out. Bolted that on, put the wheel back.
Next was the number plate support. There were four holes already in the little uprights off the wheel support so these needed to be transferred to the plastic number plate support to sit it symmetrically. Also the number plate light needed to be fitted. The body of this needed filing down to fit within the moulded recess. The contacts within the light unit were funny brass bullet connectors but of a different size to my crimp on bullet connectors, so I modified them to take them. All sorted, riveted plate support on and found I had got my measurements 10mm out and it was off centre! Damm! Had to drill out the rivets, which was not easy as they are into blind holes and the breakaway part of the mandrel is quite hard. I then had to make good with paint where I had damaged the powder coating, re-drill the panel and refit it. The number plate will cover the extra holes.