December

I have fitted the calipers and connected the brake lines, so I decided to fit the wheels, to make sure that the wheel centres clear the calipers.

The chassis has been transformed, it's starting to look like a car..........couldn't resist just had to place the seats into the cockpit and suddenly all the room in the cockpit was gone!!!!! I forgot just how tight a fit it's going to be in there......but it does look good.

Can't wait for the body to be delivered next Friday.

I've still got to do the bloody alignment though! I guess it's time to bite the bullet and start it at the weekend.

Body Arrived today!!!!

At 8 o'clock on the dot the truck rolled up with this in the back.....................

Took about an hour to off load, now comes the job of trying to find space to put everything, more boxes, bubble wrap, you don't realise just how wide the bodywork is until you go to store it!! I'll make room somewhere.......

Now the fun part begins..........

First up I fitted the Getrag centre gear lever mechanism, I have the cable operated six speed box. The mounting plate was predrilled and just needed to be positioned 46cm from the rear bulkhead, squared and drilled and riveted on the centre floor spine.

Next job to route the cables through the bulkhead with the handbrake cables. It was getting a bit late to start drilling/filing so I decided to paint the fuel tanks with stone chip paint (to help protect the tanks), leaving the top of the fuel tanks unpainted, as these will be seen when the rear clip is opened. I will also cover the front of the tanks (facing the engine) with heatmat as I think this looks a lot better than the black stone chip.

Once the tanks have dried I shall start the prefit process with the side pods.  

Prefitted the tanks, side pods and cockpit sections, also managed with help to get the front clip in position. I now need to position the rear clip but as it's in the 'other' garage I'm not too sure how I'm going to achieve it as space is now at a premium. While I'm contemplating that I'll get on with getting the shut lines at the front acceptable.

Things will start to slow down now as I'm waiting for the alarm to be wired in (after Christmas) and I'm thinking of repositioning the dials (speedo and rev counter) as I'm not too keen on the centre arrangement, I want to place them behind the steering wheel, so I'm currently tracking down a 'glass' man, shouldn't be too difficult as I live in an area that full of boat builders!  might even get someone to do the trimming as well!

 Well haven't done much work to the car this week, my friend Colin came over and laid the wires for the alarm and immobiliser we also discussed how and where to fit the speakers, decided that we would fit the front speakers up under the dash pointing down and towards the seats, no tweeters and the rear speakers behind the seats in the rear bulkhead, these would have a glass fibre box's made up to enclose the cones from the engine bay. I'm also having a stealth install for the head unit (more of that later, if it comes off!) Over the last couple of days I've fitted the battery, filed the side pods to fit better under the chassis, starting to mask up the gearbox for painting.

 

HAPPY CHRISTMAS.

 

 

On to January 2005