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Tried to measure up where the bolt holes for the seats are going to end up, but its just a bit awkward to tell. There is only one way the bars will fit on the seats anyway, so if they are fitted everything else can be worked out from that. The bolt holes in the seats were uncovered, as the vinyl goes straight over them for some reason. Most of them seem alright, but there are a couple where the bolt won't fit in as part of the frame isn't quite lined up exactly with the hole, so it will need a big of filing or something to get it all lined up.
A while was spent working out where the repeaters should go on the sides. Meeting the minimum height isn't going to be a problem, but its the routing of the cables that are going to cause problems, especially on the offside near the exhaust. As the body behind the wheels is so far away from the chassis rail that will be convenient to route the indicator loom extensions, the wiring will have to arch up and under the wing down to the light. It would be easier to just go straight across to the light, but its a bit too far to have the cable dangling, and would end up just a bit too close to the exhaust on the offside. An alternative would be to move the lights back to just in front of the door, as this is right next to the chassis, but that just looks weird so I think they will have to go in a normal place of just behind the front wheels.
3/10/2001
Spent some more time thinking about mounting the heater, but this time
put the dashboard in to see how it would line up with the heater
ducting. It ends up that the best way to mount the heater is going to
be along the tunnel top rather than across it, with the pipes just
behind the engine and the open side facing the passenger footwell.
This way, brackets can be attached to the top of the heater across to
the chassis mounts for the pedal box, along with a bracket to the long
sideways chassis rail above the tunnel. The front of the GRP tunner
will have to be cut off for the heater to fit, but as the GRP doesn't
line up with the alloy panel above the gearbox anyway, its no great
loss and might actually make sealing the tunnel off slightly
easier.
While the dashboard was in, we worked out how to fit it. As there are no mounting points/brackets supplied at all for it in the kit (just like so many other parts of this car...), it all has to be done from scratch. The thinking is that the edge under the windscreen can be held in place by a few slightly bent strips of steel that are glassed onto the bodywork. This will support that edge if the dash is pushed into place from the front. The front edge can then be held up by a row of brackets that are bolted to the large sideways chassis rail, with an alloy panel put across the front to close the gap, which can then be padded and trimmed.
The ducting for the heater was also looked at. Currently I've got the bits from under the dash of a Transit, which is a long plastic vent with two inlet holes. This was cut in half to match the curve of the windscreen, and can just be stuck to the underside of the dash, as they are both flat. I had ended up with some black plastic vent trim from a Granada to direct the air onto the windscreen, but as these would stick below the dash they would get in the way of the ducting, so I'll proably just end up with some bits of alloy with holes/slots cut into them which can be stuck onto the top of the dash.
4/10/2001
Decided on the final position of the heater, which involved chopping
out a new hole for the loom through the tunnel top panel, as it needs
to move to the top left corner of the panel. Some small alloy brackets
were made to support the fan side of the heater, as it is going to be
mounted horizontal to help with the location of the mounting
brackets. The alloy supports are just small inverted Vs which go in
the bit just behind the matrix. A layer of springy dense foam was cut
which will go between the heater and the panel, to give it a bit of
isolation. The tunnel top panel may need a bit of strengthening, as
with the full weight of the heater on it it bends a bit. The bracket
needed to hold the back was then measured up, and a template bent to
shape out of an offcut.
6/10/2001
Popped round to the local engineering place to buy some more lengths
of steel. This time it was 6' of 1" tube which will be used to
strengthen the windscreen surround, and 10" of 25x3mm strip which is
needed for the dashboard brackets and probably some other things.
The two brackets for the heater were measured up, cut and drilled, which consist of a long bar running horizontally across to the chassis bracket for the pedal box, which will be bolted and rivetted to the heater, and a short bent strip fitted to the full width chassis rail to stop the heater sliding down the tunnel, which will just be rivetted on. There aren't really any other easy places to attach more brackets to, but with the supports on the tunnel and the foam, it should be held in place well enough not to move around too much.
The tunnel top panel had a V shaped channel rivetted on the underside to give it a bit more strength and stop it bending when the heater is in place. The two supports for the heater were attached, and then the whole panel was fitted to the chassis.
With everything in place, the tunnel was put in position to measure how much of the end needed removing, which is most of the front bit. This was chopped off and cleaned up.
7/10/2001
A blanking plate was made and fitted to the front end of the tunnel to
block the gap, and some thin strips were made to block the sides of
the tunnel where the angle at the front doesn't match the angle of the
chassis.
After thinking about if for a while, we decided on how the shroud for the heater was going to be done. It basically consists of a folded alloy box which will attach to the front of the heater, rivetted at the bottom sides, and bolted at the top using the mounting bracket bolt. The shape of the shroud at the top will block off the inch wide gap above the matrix, so all of the air should be heated up. This was then measured up, cut out, and folded to fit. The holes for the heater ducting were cut, and alloy flanges were fitted into the holes to attach the pipes to. The flanges were just made by putting a 90 degree bend in a long strip of alloy, then cutting one side into short lengths so that it could be bent round into a circle and fitted to the back of the holes. The hoses are a tight fit on the alloy, but with a zip tie and some silicone on they should give a good seal and stay in place.
The flanges were rivetted onto the shroud, some sticky foam was put on top of the matrix to give a seal against the alloy, then the shroud was fitted to the heater, running beads of silicone all the way round the sides and the holes.
While this was drying, an extra brace was made to stop the steering column wobbling around like it currently does, as the bit of the chassis it attaches to isn't particularly sturdy for sideways movement, so needed some triangulation adding.
8/10/2001
Tested the heater fan now that the silicone has cured. It seems to
blow very well, so hopefully demisting won't be a problem.
Had a think about the ducting for the dash, and decided to make my own up with strips of alloy instead of using the Transit bits. The main problem is that on the driver's side there isn't much space under the dash around the steering column, and the Transit bits stick down quite a lot. Also, they are going to need modifying anyway as the inlets on them are a different size and shape to the hose I'm using, so I might as well just start from scratch and get it right first time.
Started cleaning out the threads in the seats, as there is a fair amount of glue in them which stops bolts from going in freely.
9/10/2001
Decided how to route the loom under the dash. It will go up from the
tunnel, across the top of the heater attached to the bracket that goes
to the bar supporting the pedal box, then across to the top left
corner of the steering column brackt. Here it branches off to the
column switches and the instruments, with the rest of it going down
the newly added steering column support, then along the big chassis
rail, splitting off for the dash switches, relays and fuses. It should
be easy enough to attach the relays to the top of the chassis rail,
but the fuses will be a bit more awkward as the wires for them aren't
very long so there isn't much movement for them.
As the loom has moved to the left, and the heater is now in the way, the brake switch leads aren't long enough, so were extended. Also, the heater connections which branch off just where the loom enters the tunnel were extended as well, as they have to go all the way over the top of the heater to reach the connections at the back.
10/10/2001
Finished cleaning out the bolt holes in the first seat - it would have
been a lot easier if they hadn't got glue all over the threads...
Marked and drilled two seat support bars which will be fixed to the
chassis to hold the seat in place.
Decided to try out the heater using the loom and switch instead of just 2 bits of wire and a battery, so connected it all up, disconnected the fuel pump, turned the ignition on, and blew the 30A ignition circuit fuse. Damn. Disconnected the heater and switch, and checked that nothing else was connected up apart from the radiator fan (which is on the alway on circuit and works fine though the override switch), and tried again. Pop goes the same fuse. This is going to be fun to track down...
11/10/2001
Fiddled around with the wiring trying to figure out what the problem
was, and it ended up disappearing by itself. Whether it is something
dodgy in the loom, or just one of the unconnected wires touching
something it shouldn't be (though they are all either taped up or have
plugs on so shouldn't make contact with anything), hopefully it
doesn't come back. So, ended up being able to test the heater, and it
works fine on all three speeds.
Before the position of the seats can be worked out, the bodywork just behind them has to be trimmed, as it sticks out in front of the large chassis rail with the roll hoops on, and forces the seats forward. This bit needed trimming anyway to help it line up with the chassis so that the rear set of panels would be a better fit, so out with the junior hacksaw and off it came (in a few little bits anyway, as its fairly awkward to get to). More than enough was left to drill and rivet an alloy panel to, which will block off the big gap past the roll hoops and help to strengthen the rear section of the bodywork.
16/10/2001
Started looking at how to fit the seats. Bolted the support bars to
the bottom of a seat, and sat it in the car. The side away from the
tunnel is fine, as the bolt going into the seat is nowhere near the
flat front to back chassis rail, but on the tunnel side they get in
the way of each other. The front bolt is almost fully resting on the
rail, and the rear bolt just has the edge resting on the rail (as due
to the shape of the chassis the seat goes in at a slight angle
pointing towards the outside edge of the car).
This means that either the tunnel side or the whole thing is going to need to be spaced up so that there is clearance between the bolts and the rail. This could lead to SVA problems for the seatbelt heights, so it was out with the tape measure.
The seatbelt dimensions had been measured near the start of the year, but with nothing quite in its final position it was just to get an idea of how close they would be. With the roll hoops now fitted, and the seat in its final position, accurate measurements could be made. The vertical height to the top seatbelt mounting point is measured from the front of a block placed on the seat. There is no mention of whether give in the padding is taken into account or not, but there is absolutely no chance of being able to use the bracket in the chassis as it is too low. Even without a seat its still not high enough, and as my shoulder would be inches above this bracket, it wouldn't work very well anyway. I've no idea how anyone could have a shoulder lower than the bracket, but still be able to see out of the car!
So, that only leaves the hole on the outside edge of the roll hoop. This is fine for height, (and is just above my shoulder) but there is a minimum distance it can be from the centre line of the seat. Luckily this is just over the required distance, but only by around 10mm which isn't much. I'm glad I positioned the roll hoops as far apart as possible...
If it fails SVA on this point, then there is nothing simple that can be done to it, unless putting a load of washers on the bolt to space it out a bit is acceptable. It'll just have to be chalked up as yet another one of the fundamental problems with the Storm, and something that works constructed from scratch instead.
18/10/2001
Realised that there is enough give in the side wing of the seat to be
able to put it in straight. The centre line of the seat is still way
off the centre of the pedals, but its better than looking off to the
side anyway.
Worked out the final position for the driver's seat, marked lines on the chassis rails (which was very awkward as the seat was in the way) and the seat bars, then drilled holes in the bar, transferred them to the chassis rails, and then drilled through to the underside of the car.
Its impossible to mark the position of the rear of the seat (unless the chassis panels are removed), so the front to back distance on the seat was measured and will have to be transferred as accurately as possible to the chassis. The holes in the 2nd seat bar were marked and drilled, as they have to be in exactly the same position as the holes for the front bar.
21/10/2001
Marked and drilled the rear seat holes in the chassis, and then trial
fitted the seat. It took a bit of persuasion, mainly due to having to
squash it up against the tunnel, but it did go in. The bars and
chassis for the passenger side were also all marked and drilled.
As it was such a wet day (started raining before I woke up and didn't stop until the evening), we decided that it would be a good time to drain the cooling system so that the header tank could be moved and the heater connected up. The large water pump connection was slackened off and this lovely brown water came pouring out. I knew that the engine was rusty inside when I got it (I had been scraping loads out of the water pump and thermostat housing holes), but didn't expect the water to look like that. It will defintely need changing a few times until it starts to run a bit cleaner.
Once it had drained itself, the header tank was removed, and the pump to head loop was disconnected. We then spent a while trying to figure out where to route the pipes. The small lower radiator connection is in the centre, and as the header tank is going to be mounted directly behind the engine, then that pipe could be routed round either side of the engine. The inlet side would keep it away from the exhaust, but with the oil filter and sender in the way it would be far to awkward, so taking it round under the exhaust is going to be the best way. It can be cable tied to one of the steering rack chassis brackets and to a large vertical hole near the front of the engine, then will need a clip attached to one of the lower engine mount bolts before it loops up over the bellhousing to the header tank. The main thing will be to stop it rubbing on anything that will move.
The other header tank connection from the top of the thermostat housing can be run along the edge of the rocker box, which keeps it out of the way of the exhaust.
The water pump to heater connection needs to bend under the alternator, will need a clip attached to one of the top engine mount bolts, then up and over the bellhousing to the heater connection on the rhs of the tunnel. The head to heater connection will have to avoid the throttle cable bracket, then bend round behind the engine in a big S to the heater next to the pedal box. Supporting this one will a bit more difficult as there is nothing convenient to attach it to.
The two metal pipes used to join up the large diameter hoses were removed to check for rust, and the gaps on the outside between the hoses had started to rust more than expected, so were cleaned up and once fully dried out will be painted. As expected, the inside of the pipe was basically fine, just a bit gunked up from the slurry that came from the engine.
24/10/2001
Trial fit of the passenger seat. With a bit of persuasion it went in,
so there's no need to try that again until they are going in
permanently.
The thermostat housing was removed and cleaned up. This was to allow it to be polished, so that if/when the alternator belt hits it, it should glide over the surface rather than being ripped to shreds by the fairly rough casting. It was a bit difficult to remove now that the body is on, as there isn't much space in front of the engine to fit a long socket extension to, and its impossible to get a spanner to both of the bolts. Plenty more gunk in here to clean out, along with some strange clear yellow jelly. No idea what that could be.
We stood around for a while and had a think about hinges for the doors and boot. I decided a while ago that its pointless using the supplied (and supposedly improved) door hinges, as they only allow the door to open a few inches which doesn't really help with getting into or out of the car. I had also thought about using washine machine door hinges, the type where they are a large semicircular bar that rotates in and out of the machine, but the problem with these would be the space needed in front of the door for the hinge to fit into when the door is closed, as they would probably end up having to stick out the side of the bodywork. So, if nothing suitable can be found in a breakers we will attempt to make something ourselves. This will probably be a vertical pivot attached to the inside of the bodywork a few inches in front of the door, with a pair of long squashed V shape plates attached to the door and two slots cut into the rear facing section of bodywork so that nothing is visible when the door is closed. The shape of the door means that it can't be pivoted right at the end (unlike a normal car door where there is space in front of it to move into the bodywork), so the pivot point has to be well in front of it so that the whole door moves out of the recess.
As for the boot, there are 2 options. It can either be hinged from the front or the back. The problem with using the front is that there isn't enough space anywhere to get decent sized (and strong) hinges in, and I don't fancy using the ancient external type that is on the demo car as they don't look up to the job at all. Also, amazingly the roll hoops don't line up with the humps on the top of the boot lid (and there is nothing that I can do to fix that), so it can't be opened very far anyway before they touch.
The problems with hinging it at the back are that the moulded in hinge marks would need to be removed from the front (though the rear wing marks need removing anyway), and the rear section of bodywork would need strengthening to take the weight. Also, something would be needed to stop it falling open all the way backwards as that would end up breaking a fair bit of bodywork...
Hinging at the back does seem to be the best option, but unless we manage to find something suitable in a breakers we'd probably end up having to make hinges similar to what is planned for the doors.
The front of the car was then jacked up and put on axle stands so that there is more space for figuring out the routing of the hoses to the header tank and heater.
25/10/2001
Made a start on mounting the GRP tunnel top. I ended up buying a
rivnut gun a couple of weeks back as it seems the best way of fixing
things like the tunnel but allowing them to be relatively easily
removed if necessary. As there are bound to be problems or adjustments
needed to things like the gear remote linkage and possibly the speedo
sensor, I though it was best not to just rivet the tunnel to the
chassis. Obviously things like carpeting will have to be removeable as
well, but it will be better not having to drill out rivets each time
it needs to be removed.
So, the mounting point locations for the tunnel were transferred to the GRP and pilot holes marked and drilled. These were then marked onto the chassis brackets. To start with I haven't done the rear right hand side, as that is the bit where the chassis has a sharp angle in but the GRP just goes straight, as I wanted to get the rest of it done before figuring out that bit. The GRP has already been cut to allow some of it to match the shape of the chassis, but it will still probably put a bit too much stress on the GRP to pull it into shape so something else will have to be done to it to make it fit.
26/10/2001
Drilled pilot holes in the chassis mounting tabs for the tunnel. One
side was fine, but the driver's side didn't line up so the tunnel
holes were filed out to fit. As they need drilling out to fit a 5mm
bolt anyway, it isn't a problem.
27/10/2001
Popped round to the breakers again, mainly to get a replacement
headlight for my brother's car (stone chip hole which needs fixing
before its MOT), but picked up a few little things for the kit that
wouln't have been worth a special trip for. The best finds were a pair
of smoked repeaters (which are E marked with the right numbers) from a
Mk2 Golf GTi and the column shroud from another Golf. I had wanted
smoked repeaters so that they didn't stand out as much as the normal
orange ones, but didn't want to use the oval Ford repeaters that
everyone seems to have so these rectangular ones will be fine. I had
thought that the column shroud would be a huge thing (never actually
looked though) which wouldn't fit into the Storm due to the shape of
the dash, but my brother spotted it in a car with the whole dashboard
removed so it was obvious that it would be nice and small. Other
things picked up were a pair of windscreen washer jets from a Subaru
which are nice and small so don't need a huge flat area to mount them
(there are far too many curves in front of the windscreen to fit
anything large and flat), a Y union for the washer pipe, a few
intermittant wiper relays which I'll try and bodge into the wiper
wiring if I can figure out how they work, and some springs to try and
use on the throttle pedal/linkage.
No luck with bonnet/boot hinges. They were all either far too big or just totally the wrong shape to go in, so it looks like they will have to be home made...
Once back, the thermostat was removed from the housing and given a clean, then three small holes were drilled in the top of the flange which is supposed to help with bleeding the cooling system. I don't know how much effect it actually has, but as its out at the moment I thought I might as well do it as I don't plan to have to remove the housing again.
The alternator belt side of the thermostat housing was sanded down and polished to a nice shine by my brother. The belt shouldn't suffer any damage from hitting the housing now.
I tried to get one of the wiper relays working. One was from an old Audi, and the other was from an AX (to match the wiper). The AX one doesn't have a diagram on the casing so it isn't obvious how it works (or if it is the right relay). It has a small circuit inside with a few transistors, resistors and a capacitor which suggests it does timing, but putting 12V across the coil just switches it on and doesn't do anything else. The switched path is connected to the rest of the stuff, so it might need a voltage on the other contacts to do something. I'll have to have a look at the wiper wiring diagrams and a think about this...
29/10/2001
Had a quick play with the AX relay, and found that when a supply is
applied to the coil and to the switched path it clicks, then when the
switched supply is removed it waits a few seconds before clicking
again, so it seems that it is the right relay, it just works different
to what I was expecting (ie. pulse generation when it was given a
supply). The test will be to wire it in with everything else and see
what happens to the motor when the stalks are used.
30/10/2001
The thermostat housing was refitted to the engine, after the block had
been cleaned off and some more instant gasket applied to make sure it
seals properly. The large radiator hoses were put back together using
the newly painted metal pipes.
Started on the routing of the small pipe from the radiator to the header tank. There are two M10 holes in the block on the exhaust side which are in convenient places to attach alloy p-clips to (one at the back, and the other is the lower left alternator bracket hole), but it took a while to get the threads clean of the gunky engine paint, especially since with the bodywork in its very awkward to get in to turn them. The holes are fairly shallow, so the spare bolts that I had were cut down to fit. As the hose will run close to the engine mount, the sharp corners were filed off, which should really have been done before they were painted or fitted. The first p-clip was cut out and drilled.
31/10/2001
Finished off the first clip, and made the next 2 which attach just
behind the engine mount and to one of the bellhousing to engine
mounting bolts. These should hold the pipe fairly rigidly along the
side of the engine, then it will loop up over the bellhousing and to
the header tank.
Total hours this month -
36.0
Total build hours -
819
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