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The mounting holes for the bolts and the recesses for the alignment screws were also drilled out, using the rubber seal as a template to get the initial position of the holes, which were then files out until the light unit fitted in place.
3/6/2001
Due to the odd shape of the headlight mounting areas of the body (they
are sort of like a pointed oval, but with the lower half having a
larger radius and also being smaller), to get the lights looking
anywhere near central they have ended up fairly close to the bottom
edge, so the plastic ring that goes around the light needed to be
trimmed at the bottom so that it didn't hit the bodyshell. The
simplest way to do this was just with a stanley knife, shaving bits
off until it would fit, with a lot more needing to be removed on the
driver's side than the passenger's side.
We then finished off shaping four of the side body mounting brackets. They had been drilled at the top and given a single bend just after getting the body fitted initially, but we had never got round to finishing them off. They are just strips of steel which are laid on the end of the chassis outriggers. A 90 degree bend then puts them pointing straight down, and then they are bent inwards, slightly below the end of the outrigger, so that they lie flat on the bodywork (leaving a space for some rubber to go between them). The angle of the body is different for each bracket (though they are all probably around 45 degrees), and as the bodywork isn't perpendicular to the outrigger they also needed twisting a bit to get the ends to lie flat. Three of them were fairly easy to do, but the left rear was made more difficult due to the way the bodywork sticks out there a long way.
We had a few attempts at bending some of the offcuts from the body, using a paint stripper hot air gun, as something like that will probably have to be used to get the rear section of the bodywork into the right shape. The first attempt got a bit too hot, as the gel separated from the glass, and it started to snap anyway. A few goes later being more gentle with the heat (on both sides) and not bending it too much allowed us to put a curve in a previously flat section, that stayed there after it cooled down. Obviously, anything that is done to the bodywork will have to be done very carefully, but if just sitting it in the sun on a warm day won't be enough to get it into shape then something else will have to be tried.
Next, we had a look at how to connect the speedo sensor cable to the rest of the loom. The main problem with the speedo sensor being on the axle is that the cable has to have an unsupported section in it to take up the movement, and this has to be rigid enough to not get caught in anything like the handbrake, but soft enough to move with the axle. I tried coiling the wires into a tight spiral, but once stretched it wouldn't go back. So, I ended up deciding to put the cable into a section of tubing, which would be loosely attached to the alloy seat back above the tunnel, and would slide up and down as the axle moved. Then, a large loop of cable above this could take up the movement. I found a section of rigid plastic injection fuel line that just happened to be a decent fit on the end of the sender, so now just have to find (or make) something for it to slide through and how to attach it all together.
While I was working on the headlight surrounds my dad got a bit more of the bodywork rubbed down with wet and dry paper. Even though it doesn't leave a shiny finish, the reflection in it is much clearer than any of the unscratched parts, and it feels much smoother.
5/6/2001
Painted the petrol tank brackets, and touched up the bits that had
been scraped off the tanks during the multiple test fittings of them.
Found a bit of old Sierra rubber hose that is the right size to act as a guide for the fuel link around the speedo sensor cable. Using something like this should be a bit safer than just an alloy guide.
9/6/2001
A trip to the breakers with my brother to try and get some more
bits. First thing was a windscreen wiper off a Citroen AX. Two wipers
might be better than one, but trying to mount the motor and linkages
to the body would end up being far too complex, so just using a single
wiper seemed to be the best option. There are a fair few cars that use
a single wiper, but due to the shape of the Storm's Marcos windscreen,
it has to have a relatively narrow sweep angle, which a lot of cars
don't have, so the AX seemed to be the best one to go for. Its a nice
compact all in one unit, so should be relatively easy to mount, and
the linkage can be changed if its necessary to adjust the sweep
angle.
The other main thing I was looking for was a rear numberplate light. Just about every single car seems to have the light in the bumper shining up (no use at all), or the plate is recessed and the lights are part of the handle for the tailgate. As the Storm doesn't have a bumper or a recessed numberplate, none of the lights would fit. The closest thing I found was an old Micra and an old Yugo, which both had a light either side of the plate, but these are fairly large and would stick out the back of the boot lid a long way. It might have been possible to shorten them a bit, but the guy wanted far too much money for them so I'm just either going to have to find an alternative from a mailorder place, or just fit a small light to some home made housing.
We did find something nice that would have been good in the car - a quad cam quad downdraught V8 in a huge rusty Maserati. Apart from the fact that there is probably no chance of it fitting without major modifications to the chassis, its bound to be a very nice engine if it is working. So, I just made do with some of the dash switches and a bit of heater ducting from it, mainly for the novelty value of saying that there are parts from a Maserati in the car, but they seemed like half decent switches and they were very easy to extract from the veneered ply dashboard...
Also picked up a set of ignition leads from a Sierra, as the new ones I bought at the Donington show last year don't have a brand name or the word 'suppression' on them, which isn't good enough for SVA, so I got some that are supposedly suppressed. Hopefully they still work alright.
On the way back, we called in at the local garage to see if he had got round to doing the welding for me, but the place was all closed up so will have to check round later on.
Once back home we decided to start fixing the side brackets to the chassis and body. The left hand front bracket was fitted to the outrigger after drilling a vertical hole in it for the bolt, which was a bit awkward due to the body getting in the way. Then, it was bolted in place and the body lined up with the bracket. The position of the hole was worked out, and then drilled in the body, using the flexible drill extension as there wasn't enough height to get the drill in on its own. This hole was then used to mark the position on the bracket (after some rubber packing had been wedged between the body and bracket), which was removed and drilled on the bench. The right hand front outrigger was then drilled for its bracket.
While I was doing some of this, my brother made a start on chopping up some small alloy angle to use as extra mounting points for the GRP tunnel top. It will be rivetted to the top of the tunnel chassis rail, and will allow the grp to be attached to the side of the alloy, hopefully making it a bit stronger, as there are only currently about 6 mounting tabs on the chassis.
After doing this, I realised that the body hadn't been sitting exactly in the right position, as it was resting on one side of the roll hoops, so it was almost 1cm towards the rear of the car. When the body was put into the right place, the holes didn't line up any more, so a bit of re-shaping and some filing will be needed to get it right without having to make a new bracket.
11/6/2001
My brother went round to the garage to get the welded throttle cable
bracket and gear remote linkage, but it still hadn't been done. He had
forgotten exactly how the throttle bracket went together, and my
brother couldn't remember either, so when I got back from work we went
round again and sorted it all out. Should be ready for tomorrow.
12/6/2001
While I was at work, my brother picked up the welding, and made a
start on cleaning it up to fit. Even though I had put correct sized
spacers on the ends of the remote bar, it was a very tight fit so a
bit of filing was needed to let it go onto the gearlever tabs. He also
gave the dashboard a wash with some washing up liquid, which seemed to
get rid of most of the white stuff it was covered with, but it still
doesn't quite look right so it will probably have to be painted. He
also finished off the extra tunnel alloy angle brackets.
In the evening we started fitting the alloy handbrake cutout to the tunnel, as it would be far too fiddly to fit it on my own. The holes were drilled in the three alloy sections, they were rivetted together, some of the holes were drilled in the grp, and the alloy was attached along one edge.
13/6/2001
My brother finished cleaning up the gear linkage so that it now fits
the tabs on the gear levers.
Finished fitting the alloy section to the tunnel, drilled the holes in the tunnel top chassis rail to attach the alloy to, and fitted the alloy angle sections to the driver's side of the tunnel.
14/6/2001
Sealed up the alloy section of the tunnel top with some silcone. Its
going to be difficult to make it totally watertight, but there is no
point in leaving it too open.
16/6/2001
Trial fit of the tunnel with the handbrake lever in place. Its a bit
awkward to put it all together, but once in it seems to work fairly
well. Unless it was mounted much higher, I just don't see how the
handbrake lever would fit with the original tunnel top shape.
Cleaned up the windscreen wiper assembly, and started working out the connections on the new dash switches.
18/6/2001
Finished working out switch connections, and tested the on/backlight
bulbs in them - surprisingly they all worked. I ended up with front
and rear fog, rear heated screen and hazard warning switches, so I'll
probably use the hazard and rear fog for the right things, and use the
rear screen as the radiator fan override. The other one can be a spare
if any of them break. Even though they all have warning lights built
in, seen as the connections are already in place I'll still use the
warning lights on the dash next to the instruments.
With the dash sort of balanced roughly in place, I checked to see that the loom was about the right length to be able to reach the column, instruments and the space for the switches on the left side, and it seems about right. Once I knew it wasn't going to need any major extensions, I made a start on attaching the detachable switch connectors to the loom.
19/6/2001
Finished attaching the hazard, fog and rad fan switch connectors to
the loom. Just the headlight and heater fan switches to do now.
19/6/2001
Started trying to figure out the windscreen wiper wiring. I was
expecting there to be three wires from the column stalks -
intermittant, on and fast, but it doesn't seem to work like
that. There are 4 pins connected to the stalks, none of them are
connected when off, 1 + 2 connected when in intermittant, 1 + 3 for
on, and 1 + 3 and 2 + 4 for fast. I've still got to figure out the
connections for the wiper motor (5 wires, and I presume 2 of those are
the power supply), but it might be that the fast speed is different on
the two of them if the wiper just has 3 connections for each speed. If
it ends up like that then I might have to do without intermittant and
just have on and two fast positions. I don't plan on driving it in the
rain much anyway, but that's probably going to be fairly difficult in
this country...
20/6/2001
I managed to figure out the connections to the wiper motor, with a bit
of trial and error, and some help from an AX Haynes manual. There are
single supply and ground connections, and then two separate
connections for the slow and fast speeds. There is also one other
connection which is used to auto-park the wipers when they have been
turned off. This needs to be connected to the slow wire when in the
intermittant or off positions, which I don't think is how the Golf
stalks work. Also, the relay that controls the intermittant wiping is
a separate bit, which I was hoping would be part of the whole wiper
assembly. This is put inbetween the auto-park wire and the stalk, with
power supplied when in the intermittant position.
I'm not sure how well any of this is going to work with the Golf stalks, so I'm going to have to have a bit more of a think about it. It might end up meaning dash mounted switches instead, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem.
25/6/2001
My brother (who is staying down here again) did a bit more rubbing
down of the bodywork while I was at work - he went all the way round
the car and smoothed down all of the bits where the flashlines use to
be, so the grey bits are now a lot smoother.
In the evening, we bent the front left body bracket to match the hole in the bodywork, now that the body has been put in the correct place. Some of the end of the outrigger had to be filed off to allow the bracket to turn round a bit, but it all goes together now. We then lined up and drilled the hole in the body for the right front bracket. This time it ended up in the right place, though a little bit of filing is going to be needed to make it a good fit as the holes don't always end up exactly where you expect them to.
26/6/2001
More rubbing down of the bodywork by my brother.
27/6/2001
More rubbing down of the bodywork by my brother.
28/6/2001
More rubbing down of the bodywork by my brother.
In the evening we started to have a look at the pedals. The problem is that even with the seat as far back as it will go, the throttle and brake pedals are too close to me, and my legs end up being bent too much. Adjusting the height of the brake pedal is relatively easy, as the master cylinder bar can just be shortened, though the brake light switch will have to be modified as it isn't quite long enough.
Adjusting the throttle won't be as easy due the position of the pivot, which is just an M8 bolt welded to one of the chassis rails. Putting my leg out almost straight ends up with my toes touching this bolt, so a new one is going to have to be fitted further back. The problem with this is that the only place to attach one is the diagonal chassis rail, and with everything in the way a new one can't be welded in so would have to be a long bolt that goes all the way through the 1.5 inch round tube. Also, the tube angles down towards the front of the car, so the further away its moved, the lower the pivot will be. A more dodgy alternative is to make up a bracket that attaches to the upper chassis rail which has the pivot fitted to it, but that is getting a bit more compilcated than is really needed.
Yet another factor is that the shape of the throttle pedal is totally wrong. Due to the position of a chassis rail above the pivot, the full travel of the pedal is when its vertical (which feels about the right place the pedal should be at idle). To get the required 2 inches of cable travel needed at the carbs, the pedal has to swing forward a long way which would make driving very awkward. The pedal has already been bent a little bit to make it a better fit, but to get it right it would need bending too much.
Also, the foot plate on the pedal is attched on the right side of the bar, so that the pedal has to be spaced out from the side of the chassis so that the pedal doesn't rub against the side of footwell. If it was on the other side then the pedal wouldn't need spacing out, and the top section would line up with the throttle cable much better.
The last modification that is going to be done to the pedal is to weld a vertical tab at 90 degrees to the current tab on the top, as this will allow the cable to be gripped by an M8 bolt with a hole through it, but let the cable go straight into the outer, rather than having to go round the corner of the pedal first at it would currently have to do. Probably a very minor thing, but it might make a slight difference to the operation of the pedal by having no slack in the cable to be taken up.
Total hours this month -
32.5
Total build hours -
640.0
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