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As the weather was half decent for a change, the car was rolled out of the garage and some photos were taken of various bits. They will appear on the site eventually, once they have been developed and scanned in.
While it was outside, we decided to finish off trimming the boot hole, which had been chopped down a little bit just under a year ago when I first got the bodywork. Originally, the edge of the boot hole was 4 or 5 cm too tall, so had to be cut down quite a lot to be able to get the boot lid to sit flush.
So, the lid was put in, and the heights around the edge were measured and marked onto the edge of the hole so that it could be trimmed off. Most of the edge was then removed with a hacksaw, tidied up with a file, and then checked again. Part of the problem is that the edges of the boot lid are far from straight (big surprise), so the boot hole has to be shaped to match, and also that its very difficult to actually see which bits of the edge are touching and which bits aren't.
Also, none of this takes into account a sealing strip around the edge to try and make it slightly waterproof. The edge of the channel around the boot hole isn't anywhere near deep enough to fit a standard door/boot seal, so what I'll have to end up doing is sticking a strip of rubber or something similar around the edge of the lid, which when closed presses down on the edge of the hole. As I have no idea what I'm going to end up using to do this yet, the hole will have to be done to match the lid on its own, then enough taken off to fit the sealing strip once I have one.
After what seemed like hundreds of re-fitting the lid and filing various bits off all round the edge, it finally ended up sitting fairly flush on the left side, but still up on the right side.
3/2/2002
The trimming of the boot hole was finished off, so now both sides are
basically flush. Of course, the gap all around the lid is far from
even - I got the top sides fairly equal, but the bits to each side of
the registration plate are totally different - TVR panel gap on the
left side, Toyota panel gap on the right side. Without chopping/filing
some off the rhs there is nothing that can be done about this...
While I was covering myself and everything in the area with GRP dust, my brother decided to make a new bracket for the carb throttle return spring, as the current one was just quickly knocked up so that the car could be driven, and the spring did't really fit properly.
The newly drilled dash was trial fitted, and it all went together as expected. There is still a bit of movement in it, so we decided to add another clip just to the left of the wiper motor spindle hole. The clip was cut, shaped, paint sanded off the bodywork, clip reshaped to match, and then glued into place.
4/2/2002
Glassed over the 5th dash clip.
5/2/2002
Test fitted the dash with the wiper in place, and it seems fine. The
problem now is putting something in to stop it moving backwards and
forwards. Even with rubber in the clips, and the rear brackets
properly tightened down, the dash can still move due to the flex in
the vertical section above the brackets. If they were bolted to the
top then it would be fine, but that isn't really possible.
So, something extra will need to be fitted, and we had a think about how to do this. The simplest thing will be to glass in some more clips around the front edge, but this time longer ones with a bolt hole at the end, then have another clip glassed onto the underside of the dash, which bolts to the one fitted to the bodywork.
The main problem with this will be the clips getting in the way of the heater ducting, and also possibly the side bulkhead panels. As there are two hose outputs on the heater, there will be two sections of ducting fitted to the dash, probably a straight line diagonally on each side, leaving gaps in the middle and at each end. Really, there is only need for two dash clips, in the middle of each side of the front edge, but these might end up in the same place the heater ducting wants to be. So, there will probably need to be three - one in the middle, and then one at each end of the dash, though only the middle one would be tried first to see if that was enough on its own.
Of course, this might all change, but you have to start somewhere...
9/2/2002
A hole was drilled for the rhs horn, and the wiring was modified so
that I now have one horn on each side, rather than two on the lhs
which didn't seem like the best way to do it. Alloy p-clips were made
to hold the wiring in place next to the horns, with zip ties holding
the wire running across the car behind the radiator.
While doing this I noticed that the alloy panel around the rhs side of the steering rack was still touching the rubber gaiter, so a bit more of this was filed off so that there should be enough clearance. I think it will be best to cover the edge with rubber trim anyway, to keep Mr SVA happy.
10/2/2002
Some bits of rubber (from the inside of the old Sierra brake servo)
were cut up to go between the dash and the rear brackets.
After it being suggested on the list, I sorted out a relay and peizo buzzer to warn when the headlights are on and the ignition is off. As I plan on driving with the headlights on all the time (to help visibility), I don't want to flatten the battery by forgetting to switch them off. I can't realy fit any of it yet until I've decided how the underside of the dash will be covered, as I'll have to put the buzzer in a place where it will still be loud enough to hear.
Extra wiring for the repeaters was added (no idea why this isn't included in the loom), taken from the front indicator connections. Other people have used the dash lights as the source, but these are a bit too far away for me and would have to go through the side bulkheads and loop across the top of the wings, so its much easier to just take them from the front instead. I then made a start on routing the wires, going back into the engine bay, down the diagonal chassis rail (cable tied to the loom which runs along that tube), coming out next to the engine mount, and across onto the outrigger behind the front wheel.
11/2/2002
I've got a week's holiday, so hopefully should get plenty of stuff
done especially as my parents are staying for the week to help out.
To allow access to the lhs of the engine bay where most of the bits are, I decided to fix the side panel on with rivnuts so that it could be easily removed. So, the current rivet holes were drilled out to the correct size in the chassis and the panel, and M4 and M5 rivnuts were fitted.
Some more alloy p-clips were made, this time for the lhs repeater cable across the outrigger, which were drilled and fitted.
12/2/2002
As the repeater is a fair bit higher than the outrigger, the cable
needs to be held against the bodywork to stop it moving around too
much. So, clips need to be attached to the inside of the grp. I
decided that the simplest way was to make a very shallow V, with one
side stuck to the body, and with 2 small holes in the other side for a
small cable tie to loop through and hold the cable in place. The
positions of these were worked out, and the paint rubbed off the
bodywork so that they could be attached once I've done the same on the
other side.
I then started routing the rhs repeater cable. As there is no loom running down this side, I just drilled pairs of holes in the alloy panel with a small cable tie looped through to hold the cable, as there isn't room to drill holes in the diagonal chassis rail for p-clips.
While doing this I also moved the position of the connectors for the headlights and front indicators. Originally, I had planned on having them just behind the lights, but as the cables on the lights are much longer than they need to be, there is enough spare to have the connectors in the middle of the front chassis rail just behind the radiator. This means that they won't be attacked by anything the wheels throw at them, and should stay dry. The ends of the loom were just cable tied onto the other bits of the loom that are already attached to this part of the chassis.
13/2/2002
Finished off routing the rhs repeater cable down to the outrigger, and
made more alloy p-clips for it. As this side runs next to the exhaust,
thicker insulation wire was used, and ribbed conduit was also fitted
over the top (originally from the AX wiper motor cables) to provide an
extra layer of insulation.
While trying to think up ways of holding the dash in position, my dad suggested just using a few self tapping screws through the current dash clips into the edge of the dash, as the edge is far enough past where the edge of the windscreen not to be seen. As there isn't going to be much force on it then the screws should be enough to hold it.
So, holes were marked and drilled on three of the clips, and using a fine threaded self tapper the threads were cut in the clips and the edge of the dash, then the dash was put back in and it all screwed in place. Some of them are a bit tight to do up (which means they won't fall out by themselves anyway), and can't be fully tightened as there is a small gap between the clip and the dash, but it makes a huge difference to the rigidity of the whole dash. It now doesn't wobble around back to front like it did before, and should be fine without adding any more clips. The middle flat section of the dash still moves up and down a bit, but this it just due to the dash not being strong enough to support itself there, so once the heater ducting has been fitted I'm planning on glassing in some structural supports which should stop any more movement.
To help with thinking about how to do the hinges for the boot, a scale drawing was made of the rear edges of the boot lid and bodywork, so that we could play around with different hinge points and stuff on a bit of paper. That way we can try out as many things as we can think of before doing anything to the grp.
What was decided was to use a pair of long T-hinges, the type used on things like shed doors. The short bit will be attached to a lump of wood glassed to the rear bodywork, and the long bit will go diagonally backwards up to the rear box section of the boot. Putting the pivot point a couple of cm below the lowest point of the boot lid should stop it catching on the body as it rotates, but the edge of the lid could always be filed to an angle to increase clearance. The lid will only need to open around 60 degrees to have decent access, so having the hinges angled backwards allows them to miss the rear lip of the boot hole when its open. The drawing below should show what we are planning on doing.
Using a bit of wood should make it slightly easier to get both of the hinges lined up the same, otherwise it would put quite a bit of stress on everything when its opened. This will have to be glassed securely onto the rear bodywork, and some extra strengthening bars will probably be needed vertically to stop any twisting as the bodywork is fairly flexible in that area. Some check straps will be attached to the front edge to stop the lid opening too far, and some catches will be needed at both of the front corners to lock the lid when its closed, as there isn't anything strong enough in the middle, and I don't really want it coming open on the move!
14/2/2002
The rhs outrigger p-clips were drilled and fitted, then both of the
light connectors were attached to the extensions now that I know how
long they needed to be. Extra conduit was fitted to the tops of both
repeater cables, to protect against anything that the wheels end up
throwing at them. Clips to attach to the bodywork on the rhs were also
made.
A gap was cut in the rhs engine bay panel to avoid the repeater cable, as they get in the way of each other. The hole needed was very close to the end of some of the slots for the louvres, so rather than end up having some bits flapping around I managed to just bend bits of it out of the way to clear the cable.
Made a start on the bit of wood for the boot hinges to attach to. It was chopped from some spare bits that were used a year ago to help support the bodywork on the trailer, and then the ends were planed and filed to shape to match the curve of the rear bodywork.
15/2/2002
The grp and alloy of the repeater cable clips were roughened up and
then glued in place. Hopefully this will be enough to keep them in
position, but if not I'll just have to glass over them.
The lhs engine bay side panel was shaped to pass over the repeater cable. For this side I could get away with just putting a dent over the cable instead of having to cut anything out of it.
After fiddling around with the headlight connections a few days ago, I decided to test that they actually worked. So, a couple of sheets were laid across the engine bay, and the lights were connected up and sat on top of the engine (the amazing thing is that the colours of the light cables exactly match those of the loom - seems like its about the only place where that happens). The rotary headlight switch was connected (which is from a Volvo and works the opposite way round to in the Volvo - it has to be turned anticlockwise to switch the lights on), and also the column stalk which controls the dipped/main beam. Finally, the battery was attached, and the lights were tested. Thankfully, everything worked fine, and the VW column stalks also allow the lights to be flashed, which I wasn't expecting as the stalk is a toggle type where you pull it towards you to switch between dipped and main, rather than the flip forward/backward that I'm used to in other cars.
While fiddling with the column stalks, I happened to notice that some of the glass around the dash clips had started to crack a bit, which will have been during either drilling the holes or fitting the screws, so it looks like they will need a bit of extra strengthening adding.
After asking for recommendations on the list, I bought a tube of blue Hylomar sealant which will be used when the fuel sender is fitted. As the sender has to go in the side of the tank rather than the top as in most cars, there will be petrol resting on the sender seal for a fair bit of time, so it musn't leak at all.
There are 5 screws to hold the sender in place, but the holes in the tank will have to be drilled and tapped, so I don't want to end up overtightening them and stripping the threads. This means that I wanted to use some goo to make sure that the rubber gasket made a decent seal between the tank and the sender. Apparently normal silicone soaks up a lot of petrol, so wasn't recommended to use as a sealant, but Hylomar is specifically resistant to fuel, and doesn't actually set, so can be safely used to seal the sender.
The screws provided with the sender aren't self tappers, so the threads will have to be cut into the tank holes with a tap. My dad has a set of these at home, and the sender bolts are just standard M5 thread, so I'll be borrowing them some time to fit the sender.
16/2/2002
I checked the glue on the repeater cable clips, but this didn't get a
good enough hold on the alloy, so they were all glassed over. While
everything was messy, I put a bit more glass over the three dash clips
that have screws fitted. I had originally used chopped strand mat to
put them on, but this time put a couple of small bits of woven mat
along the top edge to strengthen the bit that will move the most when
the screws are being fitted.
After sitting around in the front wheelarches for the past week working on the repeater cables, I decided to chop the sharp corners off the bodywork at the bottom of the wheelarches. As with the rest of the car, it wasn't symmetrical at all, so only the front corner of the rhs and the rear corner of the lhs needed cutting an filing to a decent shape.
Now that I knew no extra bits needed to be added to the dash to hold it in position, I could make a start on the heater ducting. The basic positions of the vents were marked, the size of the ducts was worked out, and I made a paper template of the duct which will be used to make two alloy ones. The main thing about them is that the pod for the instruments starts right next to the edge of the screen, so limits the furthest round that side that the vents can be positioned, and therefore the other side if I want to keep them roughly the same. Based on the vent positions of production cars, this should still be more than enough to get the whole of the screen cleared though.
Scale drawings of the doors were made, so that we could do the same as for the boot and work out how to do the hinges for them. There had been a few ideas knocking around for the past few months (none of them using the Tiger supplied hinges which are just plain pants), the main problem being where to locate the pivot.
There were really 4 options for the pivot (not including silly things like having them open horizontally down to the side, or gullwing style), inside and behind the door, so that the front lip of the door would open into the bodywork (as in most production cars), right in the shutline so that all of the door opens out of the body, on the outside edge of the front wing (similar to the Ultima doors), or externally.
As there isn't going to be anything else on the sides of the bodywork apart from the indicators, I didn't really want to have external hinges sticking out as well, and they are just more radiuses for the SVA inspector to find problems with, so they are out.
Having the hinge inside the wing would reduce one problem of the rear inside corner of the door hitting the bodywork. As the door is so wide, the door either has to move up so that the rear corner will move over the rear wing, or it has to be cut down so that it misses. The further the pivot point is moved forward the less would have to be chopped off, but it would end up being overly complicated having a hinge there, as it would need loads of strengthening around the bodywork possibly with a bracket attached to the chassis, and slots cutting in the front of the door recess for the hinge to move through. This would be far too much work just to allow the doors to open, so that is also out.
The biggest problem with having the hinge so that the lip of the door moves into the recess is that the front edge of the door isn't really long enough, and the curved shape of it means that some part of it might end up touching the bodywork anyway as it turns round. Also, the front part of the hinge that would be attached to the bodywork would have to be set back far enough for the door lip to move past it and not hit the hinge. Without using long hinges, this might end up being just a bit too weak and easy to break, so the last option seems the best.
Having the hinge pivot in the gap between the front edge of the door and the bodywork seems to be the easiest option, and avoids most of the problems of the other methods. The main thing is that the sections of the door and bodywork that it has to attach to are anything but flat - possibly a whole square cm if you looked hard enough, so the hinge will have to be attached to a lump of something that is shaped to exactly match the curves of the door and body, probably a lump of wood.
Doing it this way will also allow a standard house door hinge to be used rather than something home made or less substantial. So, the plan is to make two lumps that the hinge will attach to, which are then bolted to the door and body, with the weak point being where it attaches to the door, so that if for some reason too much weight gets put on the door it will be there that it breaks, rather than the bodywork which would quite a bit more difficult to repair.
17/2/2002
We walked round to the local DIY place and bought some hinges for the
boot and doors - 4 quid for the two shed boot hinges, and 2 quid for a
pair of 4" tall interior door hinges. At least if it turns out that
they can't be used, I haven't wasted a huge amount of money like on
the types of hinges you find in the Europa catalogue...
I then finished off making the template for the dash heater ducting, and made two alloy ones. The lhs one will just sit flat on the dash, but the rhs one will have to go up into the instrument pod, so was made slightly different.
The other 'achievement' for the day was that I've now passed 1000 recorded hours of work on the car - 23 months since I picked up the donor bits, and 21 months since I picked up the kit. A far cry from the 120 hours or so that Jim originally said, and there is still loads left to do - probably in the region of 300-400 hours, so its only going to be at least ten times longer than expected.
19/2/2002
Refitted the dash to mark on it where the edge of the windscreen will
be. From this I can then work out where the holes for the vents can
go, as I think I'll make a row of holes or slots that follow the curve
of the screen. Once this was marked, I worked out where the ducting
will have to be attached to cover the correct area, and also not get
in the way of the dash clips.
20/2/2002
Worked out the position of the vents on the underside of the dash,
then worked out where the ducting has to go to cover the vents. These
positions were then marked, and the rhs ducting was shaped to fit over
the edge of the instrument pod, as to get the vent as far to the edge
of the dash as possible, the ducting has to go past this and into the
instrument pod. An end cap was then made for the rhs, as not knowing
the shape it would need to be I couldn't make one part of the ducting
as I did for the other 3 ends.
21/2/2002
Drilled and fitted the end cap to the rhs ducting, then shaped both
sides to fit the dash.
23/2/2002
Made nozzles for the dash heater ducts, using the same method as the
ones for the heater - get a rectangle of alloy, cut a load of tabs
along one edge, bend it into a tube, spread the tabs out, and then
trim one end until its the right size to fit the heater
piping. Drilled holes in the nozzles and ducts so that they can be
riveted in place, and checked shaping of ducts on the dash with the
nozzles in place.
24/2/2002
Marked the positions of the ducts on the top of the dash so that I can
see where the holes will be able to go.
Made a cardboard template for the lhs bulkhead panel. This took ages to do, as its very awkward to get access to, and depending on where it ends up the windscreen support tubing and bracket might get in the way.
Filed out the hole in the lhs petrol tank so that the sender will fit through it. The hole is 38mm, but the minimum stated for the sender is 43mm. Rather than make the whole hole this size, I just filed out enough to get the sender to fit through which saved a bit of time (and filings in the tank which will have to be rinsed out after the screw holes have been drilled).
25/2/2002
Got most of the rhs bulkhead panel template made, which was a bit
quicker this time as I was able to use the lhs template as a rough
starting point.
27/2/2002
Finished off the rhs bulkhead template, then made a start on cutting
them out of one of the last big bits of alloy that I have left.
28/2/2002
Got most of the rhs alloy bulkhead cut and shaped to fit.
Total hours this month -
54.5
Total build hours -
1012.0
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