1st January 2005
Back again after the Xmas break, no time counted but to record the first roll-out!!! And it started to rain, which may be worryingly prophetic!
I wanted to move the car sideways a bit to make room for the body to go alongside to do some work on it before it goes around the chassis. This meant lowering it off its stands using the engine hoist, rolling it out, moving the rubber mat sideways, rolling it back in and raising back onto the stands.
We then got the main body section and rear arches out of the lounge so that it’s useable again - just the dining room is now out of use!
3rd January
Right! Got going again properly. First job was to rub down the return edges of the fibreglass, doing the main tub and the two rear-wheel arches before aligning them together and joining them together. At the suggestion of Rob Navin from the WSCC, I used plastic number plate screws and nuts, 7 on each side. This went OK until the last one when I didn’t allow for a thickening of the fibreglass at the front lower corner of the wheel arch. After a bit of a ponder, I drilled another hole alongside the wrong one and persuaded a screw to fit by Dremel-ing away some of the excess resin/glass – job done.
Just had to fit the body over the car now......
......it fits!
Checking the rear track against the specification in the manual suggests it’s about right, but I think there’s scope for some spacers to widen it by 10-12mm each side to put the tyres nearer the edges of the arches. Though there’s no picture here, the wheels look nice and central from the side, which is good.
Coo ... starting to look like a car now!
4th January
Just 2 hours tonight to remove and refit one light unit and fit the second, this took 3 hours yesterday to do one! From a build site on the web, I saw that one builder had put beading around the light housing and I thought this was a good idea. I e-mailed him last night but today, I went to Europa at Fauld and got some nice rubber beading. It was a bit dear, but it certainly makes the unit look better.
They do not fit too well at all really, I wonder
if the body contour is different on fixed arch bodies. Still, rather than
try to alter them, I have left them alone. I think they look quite smart.
I have the fog and reversing lights to fit now – in-line with the fitted units: mmmmm...!!
9th January
Before attempting the other rear lights, there were a couple of other jobs I wanted to do, fix the pipe for the header tank and heater to the chassis and make the scuttle fit.
The former was fairly straightforward except the
Westfield supplied rivets didn’t have quite a long enough shank, so
I used some other ones I had. To get the scuttle to fit I trimmed a bit off
with the fake Dremel and then cut away some more to go around the steering
column.
I then turned to the rear lights. I made a jig from a piece of timber.
This had two screws whose tips engaged in the heads of the screws of the
winker and stop/tail lights and then had 3 holes in for the attachment screws
and the body of the extra lights. This seemed to work reasonably well. As
ever, the second unit went on more quickly than the first.
There were some nylon bushes that were presumably meant to limit the compression of the housings as they were tightened up that were too long and a bit awkward to shorten.
Having done all this I thought it would be fun to pop the bonnet on but the air
filter fouled on it and I needed to fiddle about with it. Of course the engine
is 3mm higher on this side because of my bodge... err... modification
to get the steering column to clear the inlet manifold!! This entailed shortening
the inlet pipe where the inlet filter fitted and reducing the rubber hose
between it and the inlet manifold. With this done there is a little bit of
clearance that may need to be further modified when the body is properly
attached.
In this view, the rear wheels look too small! I do think that some spacers will make them look better and allow the blind nuts to be used without trimming the studs down. Some measurements and calculations show that spacers in excess of 5.5mm will allow the blind nuts to be used. Provided the wheels stay within the clearance of the wheel arches I think I can get up to 10mm spacers in.
I actually sat in the car and went brmmm, brmmm.......................... Sad!
16th January
Well that’s it – finished! No? Done the 120 hours so it must be…doohhh!!
I have bought some wheel spacers from Halfrauds, 10 mm, and they certainly make the wheels sit better in the wheelarches and allow the blind wheelnuts to fit.
No photos today as nothing to show any progress for 7 hours work. Having re-read the body fitting instructions, the body needed to come off so that the position of the Rivnuts that are hidden could be marked with masking tape. I had been thinking about filling the clutch hydraulics with the body off, as the master cylinder is so much easier to get at.
So with Jan’s help we did. A little while ago I bought a Mityvac hand pump with which you suck the fluid through rather than pushing it through in the conventional way. Apart from the fact that the clutch slave cylinder nipple was very hard to get at, and none of the supplied adaptors for the Mityvac really fitted, it seemed to go all right and I can disengage the clutch. What I didn’t notice at this point was that the connection between the Ford pipe sticking out of the bell housing and the flexible hose to the master cylinder was leaking. Later on, a puddle of fluid on the floor alerted me to this, but it was a bit of a b****r to fix. Tightening it didn’t help so I took it apart, and it seemed OK, put it back together, re-bled the system... and it still leaked! Eventually after much calm thought (!!) I used some bigger spanners and got it to seal.
Having done the clutch, we both thought that it would also be easier to do the brakes with the body off too. This went OK and I really think that Westfield should suggest you do this, not only is the master cylinder more accessible for filling, but all the calliper nipples are too. Though with this particular engine, with the battery up by front suspension, they instruct you to route the flexibles through the body panels rather than use the pre-fitted brackets like I have. This would mean the body would have to be fitted prior to bleeding.
We started with front right, front left, rear right and rear left. Going round several times. As the Mityvac sucks, the air leaking past the nipple threads shows in the tube, which, though acceptable, doesn’t give confidence that a nice full of fluid tube would. To be fair, the Mityvac instructions did mention this and I took up their suggestion to seal the nipple threads with PTFE tape. When we’d done, the brakes seemed to feel OK, if a little less than firm. Of course there’s no servo that just about all disc-braked cars have had since day one, so it will feel unusual. Need to re-check after a day.
We then cleaned brake fluid off our hands and re-fitted the body. We discovered two sets of instructions for fitting the roll-bar, the later one making more sense so we ignored the earlier one. I think you are told to do this so that the tabs over the mountings are held firm, so I achieved the same thing with some clamps. I then had to set the 400mm distance, as per book except it was easier to make it 360 from the rear of the cross-beam rather than 400 from the front, and then jacked up the rear underneath part of the body to contact the mounting tubes. Drilled 4 holes and put in the long rivets.
Following the instructions, we then clamped the lower front return mouldings to the chassis, placed the scuttle and bonnet on – engine still too tall – and taped up the nose cone. This was sort of OK except the front part of the main tub needs spreading so as to be flush with the bonnet, which is OK, but what perturbed me was that it was not symmetrical side-to-side and nothing would move to make it so. By now it was 5pm and problems are best shut behind the garage door for a bit of thought.
24th January
Cold tonight in the garage! Now with extra G-cramps I was able to re-site the body on the chassis and got the front end laterally symmetrical and clamped at the lower front edges. However, offering up the nose cone, there was a mis-match between it and the bonnet with it being about 3mm narrow on each side. A call to a mate suggested that the nose cone has a bit of flexibility in it and by clamping the two together and pilot drilling for the spigot-bush connection. Hopefully this will force the nose cone to match the bonnet shape.
Got 8 rivets in to clamp the top of the tub to the chassis and cleared fibreglass over the rivnuts on the RHS leaving the LHS to do tomorrow – fake Dremel to the fore!
No photo as there’s hardly anything to show for the evening’s work.
25th January
Although I am logging 2 hours, half of that was spent trying to work out from the manual what was next and where were the parts.
I located, marked out and drilled 2 holes in the scuttle for the M8 bolts that clamp it down into the Rivnuts in the chassis. This meant that the scuttle could be bolted down temporarily.
As a small job I adjusted the speedo sensor to give a gap of 1 to 1.5 mm over the bolts of the Lobro joints.
I have now to think about lining up the nose cone with the bonnet. Also, the manual goes on about key operated locks for the bonnet but all I can find are some over-centre catches. Together with some other queries I composed an e-mail to Mark Walker.
30th January
I posted a query on the WSCC forum about whether to use the catches or locks. The initial response was to use the catches but after a day the balance of answers was to use the locks. An answer from Mark Walker said they were an extra, which means forking out £35, but I am going to offer the catches back as part exchange!
This did not hold things up though. Jonathan helped me sort out fitting the nose cone. First of all, I drilled a pilot hole in the bonnet and then, with them both on the floor and upside down, clamped the bonnet and nose cone together with them aligned as well as I could. I then drilled through the pilot into the nose cone. This then meant that the spigot and grommet could go in.
The flange of the grommet needed trimming on the inside as it was so close to the inside of the nose cone.
Now, lots of careful measurement ensued before drilling the two holes for the M8 screws to clamp the nose cone to the chassis’ Rivnuts. We had the nose off and on lots of times before we were happy it was OK.
In this photo the white bits are the masking tape datum marks still on as I think I may still need them. For the hell of it I drilled a couple of 10mm holes for the seat studs to go through so that I could put a seat in!