Drivers side footwell & tunnel

The bonded panels from Friday evening had all set fast so I ran a bead of bond around the rear axle well and inside the footwells and made sure all the panel corners had no visible holes to at least try and be watertight.

I'm going to under-seal the exterior axle well area and eventually work forward to the floor pans. I'm not sure yet if its worth a brush width of under seal around the inside of the passenger space too, its all going to be carpeted anyway so looks are not an issue at this stage.

Fitted the entire drivers side tunnel this morning:

This vertical join is the only part which needed a fold, clamped it with a piece of scrap wood over the bench and carefully eased in the bend.

My panel fitting process is

1. Offer panel/clamp & mark chassis tube positions
2. Remove panel fettle/fit as required
3.   Drill panel on the bench & de-bur holes
4. Refit the panel, clamp and drill through holes into the chassis (I know not ideal :)
5.   Cleco the panel as the holes are drilled to make sure nothing moves
6. Remove the panel
7.   Clean the chassis to be bonded with white spirit & dry
8.   Apply a bead of bond to the Chassis running over/in the drilled holes
9. Refit the panel and line up by push fitting some strategic rivets
10.   Pull all the Rivets working on opposite sides
11.   Apply a bead of bond to the reverse side & fill any holes with bond

I must remember not to fit the passenger side before the gearbox is in place!

 Generally the panels are fitting really well, a little filing required in places, and the top of the tunnel panel needed about 1cm taken off with the nibbler, taking care to put rivet holes in where I have access to drill them out & pop them, nothing too close to the corners etc - no major snags yet.

The 8x mini clamps and Clecos are the perfect tools for this job - well worth the investment.

Pleased overall with how this came out.

Seat belt mounting points

Just make sure I have these for IVA reference before it gets boxed in:

Panels: Seat back, foot well front x2 installed

Started with the small footwell panels:

The steering column will be out again at some point for the small filler panel:

Seat back - I'm going for bond over rivets - i.e. enough rivets to keep things solid, none on the round tubes, only one on each vertical side. It wont be the seat back that keeps this part of the chassis square.

Managed to break a drill bit on the bottom edge of the seat back panel - the chassis tube underneath is square (vert/horiz) with the panel at an angle - too much angled stress on the bit!  1 3.2mm bit left now (2 more on order)

Too late this evening; The next step is to ensure a good bond bead around the back of the seat panel & then under seal the lower rear joint between chassis, panel and the floor trays.

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.