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The header tank was temporarily bolted in place and the length of pipe worked out and chopped off. It'll end up clear of the bellhousing so shouldn't rub on anything.
Started working out the routing of the water pump to heater pipe. This is going to take a similar route to the header tank pipe, clipped to one of the upper alternator bracket holes, then clipped to one of the engine mount bolts and somewhere else further back. Only had time to make the first alloy p-clip and trim the end off another M10 bolt.
4/11/2001
Finished off the routing of the water pump pipe. It was p-clipped to
the top original alternator bracket bolt hole and the top rear engine
mount bolt. I now have to figure out how to get it to the heater, but
that will wait until the heater has been fixed in place so that I know
where it will be.
A steel p-clip was made to hold the clutch cable next to the top front engine mount bolt. This keeps the cable between the 2 and 3 exhaust headers, otherwise it presses against the 2nd header and will melt through the cable outer.
My brother removed the original Tiger supplied throttle bracket, which took a while due to the limited access only allowing 1/6th of a turn at a time. The mounting studs ended up coming out instead of just the nuts, as it seems the nyloc grips better than the stud in the manifold, even though I had used threadlock on them all. The studs were put back in with more threadlock, and the nuts tightened down onto the thackery washers. Now that the throttle cable won't be pulling on the washers they should last a lot longer.
The new throttle bracket was held in place, and the bits to be removed were marked up. This was really just the top corner of it that bolts through the trumpet bolt hole, where the body of the barrel is round against the corner of the bracket. This was reshaped to fit the carb, and once it was a decent fit the top bolt hole was marked and drilled. It was then bolted in place and the middle bolt hole marked and drilled. Finally, the throttle cable hole was drilled in the bottom section. Depending on whether I decide to route the cable from above or below, a wider hole may be needed underneath to support the cable outer, but until all the water pipes etc. are in place I'm not sure which way to route it, so that will have to wait until then.
6/11/2001
Fitted the wiper connector and intermittant relay to the loom. The
relay will be attached to the top of the chassis strip that supports
the top of the pedal box, as that is the easiest place to mount it
close to the wiper and the loom.
7/11/2001
Connected the battery up (which is so much more awkward with the
bodywork in place), plugged the stalks onto the wiper connector, and
tried out the wiper. Amazingly it worked perfectly first time - both
speeds, the park, and the intermittant. I also decided to try out the
speedo, as I'd never actually had it plugged in yet. The display came
on showing 7.2 miles, and waving the magnets around near the sensor
made the needle twitch, so that is all connected up correcly. I'll
have to check that it does register speeds properly some time, and
will have to work out the number of propshaft revolutions per
mile...
Drilled the mounting hole for the intermittant relay, and then drilled out the chassis tunnel pilot holes to the correct size for the rivnuts.
8/11/2001
Fitted rivnuts to the holes in the chassis, and drilled/filed out the
holes in the GRP tunnel to line up. With just 5 bolts in, the rear end
is fairly rigid but the front pushes from side to side easily, so I'll
see what its like when all of the holes have been drilled and bolted
but it might need some extra brackets at the very front to keep it
still.
11/11/2001
Rivetted the two brackets to the heater, as I'll need to know exactly
where it will be to work out the length of the heater hoses. Rivetted
in a small plate to cover where the loom used to go through the alloy
panel above the gearbox.
Temporarily fitted the heater, then worked out where to route the heater pipes. They have to avoid the header tank and pipe, the engine and bellhousing so that they don't rub, the brake pipes coming out of the master cylinder, and the clutch pedal (which is straight across from the heater outlets).
The best thing to do seems to be my brother's suggestion of making a U shaped clamp that will attach to the front chassis rail above the bellhousing, which will hold the pipes onto the rail. After this, they will go through the alloy bulkhead panel (which still has to be made) to the heater, but as they are clamped before this, rubbing on the bulkhead panels shouldn't be a problem.
The current clips for the pipe coming from the water pump should be enough (ensuring there is enough slack to allow the engine to move forward which they are supposed to do under heavy braking), but the pipe from the head will need to avoid the throttle cable bracket, the underside of the carbs (as the throttle pump has some fairly sharp bits on it), and the side of the engine. A p-clip on the top left bellhousing to engine bolt will hopefully be enough, but there will still end up being a fairly long section that is unsupported under the carbs...
12/11/2001
All that we got done was to attach the heater hose to the head between
the carbs, but we did stand around doing a lot of pondering...
Basically, the position of the clamp to hold the heater pipes depends on the position of the bulkhead. The position of the bulkhead depends on the engine bay side panels used, and also how the passenger compartment is sealed off, which in turn are affected by the windscreen support (whenever that gets made).
Two GRP panels are provided in the kit to seal off the engine bay sides, attaching to the top of the side chassis rails and to the side of the bonnet recess. Amazingly enough, these are a totally crap fit, so won't be used. They are the wrong shape to fit the bodywork, and aren't big enough so there is hardly any overlap to the body and nowhere near enough to stick/rivet them on, and they sit on top of the wishbones so would move when the suspension compresses. Once again, there is another part of the kit that isn't up to the job and either has to be modified to fit or junked and a proper one made from scratch...
The decision is to only be concerned with sealing off the passenger compartment, with the engine bay sides being relatively unimportant as getting a full seal doesn't matter, whereas we want to keep as much out of the interior as possible. Doing it this way makes the panelling a bit easier (the curves round the rear corners of the bonnet being the main problem), but also means that the bulkhead will run across the front edge of the front chassis rail over the bellhousing. This is where the heater hose clamp was going to go, so the clamp will have to be behind the bulkhead, but hopefully this shouldn't be too much of a problem. An extra small panel will also be needed across the two chassis rails above the bellhousing to blank off the gap.
Making our own engine bay side panels also allows extra oportunity for ventilation (more louvres possible) if it is required, and means that we can leave plenty of space around the carbs for whatever airbox we end up constructing, which would be another problem with the GRP panel.
We also had a think about bonnet catches, as these might end up getting in the way of the bulkhead. I don't really want any locks/catches sticking up on the bonnet, so some concealed catches that are released from inside the car will be used. The simplest option for this seems to be a version of a garage door catch, basically a wedge on a spring that will click into position when the bonnet is pressed down, and be released from inside with a cable of some sort. Two will have to be used on the rear edge corners to keep the bonnet sat down square, so releasing and opening it will be interesting, but springs will probably be used somwhere to make it pop up.
13/11/2001
Made the heater hose clamp from a bit of thin galvanised steel, which
was shaped and drilled. Due to the routing of the brake pipes around
the pedal box area the clamp can't be bolted in place, so it will just
have to be riveted in. The mounting holes were drilled in the chassis,
but it won't be attached until the whole of the bulkhead is ready to
be put in place.
14/11/2001
Made the last p-clip for the heater hose, which attaches to the top
left bellhousing bolt. With this bolted down, and the hose clamp
clamped in place, the routing seems to be fairly tidy, and shouldn't
be able to rub on anything.
With all of the hoses now held in place, I had a quick look at the routing of the throttle cable, as this affects whether a wide hole is needed on the bottom section to support the cable outer if it comes from underneath. The problem with trying to route the cable to under the carbs is that it has to go past all the heater hoses, has to avoid rubbing on the bellhousing and any bits of the engine, and also ends up with some tight bends to avoid the exhaust and get all the way round.
Taking it over the top of the engine makes the routing much better - it can just go straight across through the tab on the top of the rocker box, and then down to the carb linkage, avoiding all heater pipes and staying well away from the exhaust pipes. The cable also has no sharp bends in it, and can be a lot shorter, so I think that is what I'll end up doing.
Measured up the alloy needed for the bulkhead panels. The stocks of spare alloy are starting to run low - hopefully I'll have enough left to do all the passenger compartment and engine bay panelling...
15/11/2001
Measured up all of the alloy needed to finish the paneling - the sides
of the bulkhead, and the top sides of the interior to cover the holes
between the body and the chassis. Then I measured all of the bits of
alloy that I've still got left. There should be enough left to get it
all done, but I'll have to check that any awkward shapes will fit,
though they could always be made up of a few smaller parts if
required.
17/11/2001
The heater hose was trimmed to its approximate final length, as I want
to have it all fixed in place properly before cutting it to length in
case I end up taking too much off.
We decided to make a start on finishing off getting the GRP tunnel fitted to the chassis. The bit that has been causing a problem for a while is the rear of the driver's side, where there is an angle in the chassis rail to clear the diff casing, but the GRP is straight. There is absolutely no way that the GRP could be bent to fit, so ages ago it had a slot cut into it so that the rear section could twist to line up with the chassis. Unfortunately, this still isn't quite enough to get the GRP to fit without bending it far enough to hear a nice cracking sound, so we thought that the best solution was to cut the entire rear right hand side of the tunnel off, and put it back together so that it would fit the chassis exactly.
This involved cutting the tunnel in half down the middle for about a third of its length and then vertically down the right side, and cutting off the rear section for the short angled chassis rail, leaving us with three bits to put back together.
The edges of these bits were trimmed and filed so that they would fit together and to the chassis with the minimum gaps possible, and then put back together using short strips of galvanised steel riveted in place. These should be strong enough to stop the tunnel bending at the gaps.
18/11/2001
The rear section of the tunnel was finished off and all put
together. Some more rivnuts were fitted to the chassis rails and alloy
angle on the rhs, and the tunnel was drilled so that it could be
bolted together.
19/11/2001
The final rivnuts were fitted to the rear angled section, so the
tunnel is now held in place fairly rigidly along the bottom edge. Once
this was done, a thin alloy plate was formed and fitted over the gap
between the two rear sections of the right side, as to get it all to
fit the chassis rails there were a few gaps that would be too big to
fill with sealant.
We then decided to do a little bit of weight saving, and drilled a bunch of 8mm holes along the brackets for the bulkhead, wiper motor and throttle cable, and also the four seat runners. It will probably hardly make any difference to the weight, but the holes won't affect the strength of the brackets so they might as well be done. The brackets were then all painted.
20/11/2001
Picked up some thin MDF to put in the front of the floor wells, as the
alloy on its own is fairly flexible and I wouldn't want to trust
standing on it to get in and out, so putting the MDF in will help to
spread the load a bit, and gives a convenient thing to fit the carpet
to so that they can be removed if it rains and they get wet.
Called in to a bike breakers hunting for wing mirrors, as the recent trip to a car breakers didn't turn up anything at all that would be suitable. I wanted something that was E marked to be sure that it was fine for SVA, but it seems that most bike mirrors aren't. He did have one that was basically what I was looking for, from a Kawasaki ZX-6R - E III marked (as specified in the SVA manual), convex surface, and a narrow mounting point with two bolts which should be able to fit on the windscreen surround with no problems. There was only a rhs one available 2nd hand, and its a bit scuffed on the back, but at around a quarter of the price of a new one it was worth having just to see if it would fit. The mirror is fairly large as well, so with the central mirror I already have, I should be able to get away without using a passenger mirror.
Next stop was at a garage door company to try and find some suitable bonnet latches. They didn't have any in stock, as apparently they almost never break, but did have some old doors round the back with just what we were looking for - a 1" wide plastic wedge on a spring. They were kind enough to let us have them for nothing, as the doors are probably going to be scrapped anyway.
Once back home, the gaps in the newly modified tunnel were filled with sealant, and some rubber spacers were made for the driver's side door.
21/11/2001
The windscreen support brackets were made, after deciding that they
wouldn't affect the side bulkhead panels. The planned structure is
some steel tubing placed inside the surround, with a bend in it so
that it points almost vertically down. This end of the tube will be
flattened, and then bolted to an L shaped bit of steel strip that is
bolted to the chassis. The L will have a diagonal side added to give a
bit of triangulation so that it should all be fairly solid when bolted
together. Bolting the tubing directly to the chassis rail wouldn't
really be possible, as without bending it forwards to follow the line
of the chassis there wouldn't be space to bolt it at more than one
position.
The steel tubing that was bought a while ago was cut in half and then trial fitted to the windscreen surround. The location of the bend required to get it pointing at the top side chassis rail was worked out, and a wedge was hacksawed out of the tube at that point. The tubing was then bent, and bits chopped out until it was at the right angle. This is then going to be welded shut, which should be a bit more solid than a bend in the tubing would be.
Once the tubing was sorted out, a long 1" strip of 3mm steel was laid along the chassis rail, and then bent up to meet the tubing. Another bit of strip was used to make a side to the bracket, which will be welded onto it.
The forces on the windscreen surround shouldn't be too big, but with the screen fitted and this little lot added, it should hopefully be more than enough to stop the GRP snapping when someone leans on the the side.
Some front bonnet pins were made, which were just shanked bolts put through 2 holes in a strip of steel. These will be welded into place, so that the threaded ends can be chopped off and used to hold the front of the bonnet in place. The plan is to bolt these to the bodywork, with the pin sticking into the engine bay, and have two holes in the front of the bonnet that the pins fit into. These holes will be reinforced with some steel strips glassed into the back of the bonnet, which will also have holes in for the pins.
As supplies are starting to run a bit low, I counted up all of the nuts and bolts needed for the current brackets etc. that need to be fitted. After the welding has been dropped off tomorrow, we'll call in and buy the bits that are needed.
A start was made on some small brackets to fit the bonnet latches to the bodywork.
22/11/2001
The windscreen supports and bonnet pins were dropped off to be
welded. Should be ready by the end of the week.
The bonnet latch brackets were finished. These are just small sections of 1" steel strip bent to 90 degrees to allow the latches to be bolted to the vertical bit of bodywork on the rear of the bonnet hole, as the bolt holes in the latches themselves are on the top, and I didn't really want to bolt through the top of the scuttle.
The holes for the wedge parts of the latches were then cut out of the bodywork.
23/11/2001
The edges of the bonnet were filed off so that it would actually fit
into the hole in the bodywork. Various sections of the lower edge of
the bonnet are already rounded, but a lot of it has a sharp corner to
it, and as the bodywork has a rounded edge all the way round, the
bonnet has to match this to fit properly. It took quite a lot of
filing, and plenty of trial fittings, but it now goes in fairly
well. The problem now is that as the shape of the bonnet is so uneven,
bits around the edge stick above the body, and others are below the
body, so I have to decide what sort of level I want it to end up at
and file down the lower edges of the bonnet so that it will fit as
flush as possible...
Now that the rough location of the bonnet is known, initial holes for the latches were cut out, but leaving plenty of excess round the edges to make sure that it can be filed out to the correct size and position once the bonnet is located properly.
Two extra supports were added to the GRP tunnel top, one at each end. These should stop the tunnel moving from side to side, as with all the bolts being around the lower edge the top is still free to move. So, an alloy angle was riveted to the panel between the seats, with rivnuts and bolt holes through the top of the rear of the tunnel.
Bracket location at the front wasn't quite as simple, as it can only really be attached to the long chassis rail that runs across the widest part of the car. The problem with this is that the bracket has to be flexible enough to allow the tunnel to be put in and taken out (which a short strong vertical bracket wouldn't allow), but also rigid enough to stop the tunnel moving. We ended up putting a diagonal strip from the lhs top of the tunnel to under the chassis rail on the rhs, connecting to the bolt that holds the steering column bracing in place. The bracket was riveted onto the tunnel, and doesn't stop the tunnel being fitted/removed.
24/11/2001
The welded bits were picked up in the morning. They all seem fine, and
were put together correctly.
We made a start on fitting the front bonnet location pins to tbe bodywork. The front of the car was put on axle stands and the wheels removed to give decent access to the front of the bodywork, the bar with the pins on was chopped in half, the positions of the pins were worked out (basically as far apart as possible), then the rhs hole was drilled in the body followed by the hole in the bonnet, and the same for the lhs after the right was finished. The bolt holes were then drilled in the rhs pin bracket, and pilot holes marked and drilled in the body.
25/11/2001
Bolt holes were drilled for both of the pins in the bodywork and in
the lhs bracket. The front edge of the bonnet was filed to make space
for the rounded roofing bolt heads, which took quite a while as the
front of the bonnet gets very close to the bodywork at the lower edge,
even through there is a gap of at least 5mm at the top of the bonnet.
Holes were then drilled in the body for the rhs bonnet latch, and we finally got round to trimming the alloy panel around the rhs steering rack boot to make sure that it doesn't touch (the lhs was trimmed months ago the last time the front of the car was on axle stands.)
26/11/2001
My brother rounded off the corners of the left side bonnet pin, and
then the bonnet pins and latch brackets were painted.
27/11/2001
The steering column shroud was trimmed to fit over the column. It
seems that its for a slightly different column than the one I have, as
the top section of it fits fine, but the lower section catches on the
wide tube bit of the column, so has to have the bottom edge trimmed
off. This isn't really a problem, as it will be so far down in the
footwell that it shouldn't be seen, and as its all black plastic/metal
you can't really tell if its there or not anyway.
As I'm sure I've mentioned before, the rear side of the bodywork is anything but flat (not that the outside is flat either...), with lumps and bubbles all over the place. There just happened to be a few large mountains around the area for the left side bonnet latch, so the whole area was filed down to something level so that the latch could be mounted properly. The right side isn't too bad, but is probably worth doing anyway.
28/11/2001
My brother finished trimming the column shroud so it now fits pretty
well. He then made a start on an alloy cover for the hole in the
driver's footwell for the steering shaft.
I finished filing the area of bodywork for the left side bonnet latch, and marked and drilled the holes. When the bolts were fitted the heads caught on the bonnet, unlike the other side, so a start was made on chopping out bits from the edge of the bonnet to fit over the bolt heads, using a drill as a scraper. Looking at the gaps around the bonnet, the lhs is noticeably longer than the rhs, as you can clearly see the latch and bolt heads on the right side, but they are almost totally hidden on the left side, even though the front edge of the bonnet is basically level.
29/11/2001
My brother got some of the scuttle area near the windscreen rubbed
down, as once the wiper motor is fitted in place it will make it a lot
more awkward to rub down. He also got a bit more done on the footwell
steering shaft cover, and made a start on chopping some small holes in
the tunnel GRP so that it will be possible to adjust the nuts/bolts on
the gear remote linkage without taking the tunnel top off..
I continued chopping bits out of the bonnet to fit over the bolt heads, which involved lots of refitting to check whether enough had been taken out or not. The bottom of the lhs latch hole in the bodywork was filed a bit to allow the latch to slide freely, and with a bit of pushing the bonnet can be held in place using the pins and latches.
Total hours this month -
67.5
Total build hours -
886.5
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