Tyres on.. the wheels

Tyres on.. the wheels & balanced by a local garage - in hindsight if I had bought the tyres from them rather than GBS the balancing and valves would have been free.

Might be a little early in the build - but I needed the space - all four wheels/tyres now sit under the car tucked out of the way.

One wheel didn't balance very well & took weights around 60 degrees of rim so might end up being the spare - still waiting for one tyre from GBS.

Note,
After only a couple of weeks sitting on the garage floor the stick on balance weights fell off. It seems like the new rims might have laquer or wax polish - anyway something which stick on weights don't like - worth cleaning them before getting the wheels balanced.

My garage was good though - re-balanced everything for free.

Little bit of everything...

Panels

1. Drivers footwell panel
    Fitted, drill panel, cleanup, drill chassis - not installed yet

2. Passenger footwell panel
    Fitted - ready for drilling

Note:
    Interesting note on both these front footwell panels, the laser cutter puts in a radius 180 degrees out producing an external curve rather than internal, filed away easily enough though.

3. Main seat back panel
    Fitted - ready for drilling

There is method in the madness - I wanted a good job lot of panels ready to fit before opening the bond - I'll aim to have the drivers site tunnel ready then bond/rivet all these in place.

Pedal box

Fitted this multiple times until I got it right; The bushes were persuaded in with a little filing to remove the powder coat (i have bought a drum sander kit before I go near the suspension).

The tube through the pedal bushes took an age to hand size with emery paper. Now, if I had a lathe it would have been easy, tried to jury rig the drill to rotate it while I sanded but couldn't mount it in the chuck so simply resorted to manual sanding until the pedals had a tight fit but can move under their own weight.

Note:

  Need to play with the steering column setup - it seems very close to the brake pedal right now & I'll have to make sure they can't foul each other.

Note:

  All three pedals had the wrong size cable/pushrod hole, which I only noticed after they were mounted.

  Accelerator needs 5mm, Brake 8mm, Clutch 6mm.

  All sizes I only had old drill bits for - but got there eventually

Master Cylinder

Simple fit & gives me a fixed point for the brake lines - I think I have cut the push rod bolt too short though - I may have to replace and rework it. (Turns out its just an M8 bolt)

A little adjustment required here, the flange on the column fouls the brake pedal right now:

Brake Lines

Just unrolled them for now - a bit of practice with bending them and unrolling from their packed state.

Routed the cylinder to back end line, it seems too long right now - I'm going to double check the routing before anything is fixed.

Note:
  The 4 way brake line connector for the rear end comes with a rivnut, however I appear to have a much larger hole in the chassis to mount it, needs a little research.

Kit picked up!

A long day yesterday, 8am start - hire the van, set out en-route around 9.30am, arriving at GBS around 2pm;

Good support from the team at GBS talking through the build, general advice etc then checking through the order.

I ordered virtually a complete kit so it took the best part of 3 hours to check everything against the list and load into the van. I happened to have rented an extra long wheelbase van which was easily filled by all the boxes.

Of the 100s of parts half a dozen will follow later;

Richard designed a spare wheel carrier for me, removable and integrated into the chassis - otherwise the Kit is standard.


Got home around 9:40pm, lost the light around 10pm, first chance to use the engine hoist (in darkness) to get the motor out of the van, and finished unloading by about 11:00pm:

Note; the bonnet (sitting on top in this picture) is rolled and edges formed as standard now; + the main right angle bend on the rear panel:

Its all tidy at this point:

And now not so much,...  ready to sort out a little:

Again panels - it looks like the side panels have changed a little - larger floor 'triangles' built in and all bent/formed up (bottom left of this picture against the wall):

The picture on the wall is to provide inspiration and make sure I don't lose sight of the wood for trees!

+ the GRP panels are currently sitting in the conservatory loft space.

First build task - sort all this stuff out so I can move in the garage;
Need to find somewhere to put the tyres on the wheels which will save some space too.

Busy - but very productive day!

Kit is ready

The kit is ready to pickup, all scheduled for Friday 25th & the van is booked.
Not long to wait now.

Type 9 Gearbox arrives

Firstmotion supplied me with a reconditioned Type 9 Gearbox & Bell housing.

No clutch release bearing yet though - I need to work out which one I need...

All set now for the kit itself;

First construction..

Only the engine crane though :)
Kept me busy for an hour or so - now just need the parts to lift with it

The only downside of selecting this on price/sight unseen - when folded it likes a wall to lean against or it tips over backwards.

Hindsight - the legs on this hoist sit quite high with their castors underneath, it meant they were too high to roll under the car with its low suspension without a little fiddle with axle stands.

Stoneleigh

Just back from Stoneleigh; very good show 100s of cars and some good displays by the various manufacturers. The weather managed to stay sunny now and again !

Met Richard & Ruth at the GBS stand, my chassis is due to go into powder coat next week & they've designed/integrated a removable spare wheel holder for me as requested.

Should only be a couple of weeks now before I can take delivery...

Bonnet Vents

I was taking a good look at various bonnet vent setups - I can't get louvres on my GT bonnet due to GBS tooling - I'm pretty much decided now - boat vents on left & right look good and should provide a good draft/pull of air out of the engine bay.

Update - these boat vents never happened - instead I cut some bespoke ones which were a little more discrete

I did see some with these facing forward on the intake side & backward on the exhaust, presumably to create a draft across the engine bay - not sure about the forward facing grills though. 

I also saw lots just behind the radiator line and a few back near the scuttle - I'll play it by ear when the time comes - assuming the rearmost vent should be approx level with the back of the engine; forward of the scuttle shelf so anything installed there is fully weatherproof.

I also suspect I need to do this after IVA, too many sharp edges on these things.