The new plan is to fix the car up for SVA, this means a few changes and the car will have to be a little more complete before it can be tested but nothing too major. The main points are that I will need a windscreen and the associated washers, wipers and heater. I will also need side repeaters and to replace my racing harnesses with inertia reels.
All this sounds very plausible and really should have been done by now. However pressures of work and having to move the company between offices meant that this didn't happen. After that Catherine and I decided to buy a house, which we moved into on 24th December. Since then I've been sorting things out around the house and have slowly started sorting out the garage. Yes you read right I now have a garage to work in. No power as of yet but that should be sorted on the 6th of Feb when the electrician comes to connect things up. After that nothing should stop me.
For more about the Garage
With power, light and a generally more organised garage thoughts returned to the kit. Looking closely at the kit 3 months in the open covered with a tarpaulin have done it no good at all. It appears the tarpaulin, despite my best attempts had leaked quite a lot and even after sitting somewhere dry for the last couple of months haven't helped. The interior is sodden still, the backs of the interior side panels are covered in mold and the whole thing is looking and smelling a little sorry for itself. Tried to find connectors on the loom for the heater etc and drew a complete blank. Couldn't do any of the jobs I was planning to do and gave up.
Took the handbrake cable assembly apart, the cable locks had come loose and the whole thing didn't please me aesthetically as the shrouded parts of the cable had to make a 90 degree turn as they entered the tunnel. Made up a new fastening plate, the cables will loop through this before getting clamped off, or at least thats the theory. In reality I have a feeling that the cable is probably stiff enough that tensioning it up could be fun and the cable will end up with a permanant amount of spring in it but at least it shouldn't slip.
Looks like I didn't need to fear, the plate seems to be holding strong, I haven't given it a really hard yank yet but things look good. I also took the opportunity to reroute the cable, rather than going through the holes in the de-dion assembly they just loop round the top of it. Solves the 90 degree problem nicely.
Cut/filed down the pedal box to fit around the chassis members. I appear to have mounted the battery mount/expansion tank bracket too close to the drivers side, I'm going to have to move it which means drilling another great big hole in the chassis - Gah!
Took one of the exhaust vents off the mini heater, filled in the hole and painted over it. The mini heater has vents on both sides so to fit in neatly I needed to remove one of them.
Bought all manner of odds and ends to move indicators plumb in the heater etc. Moved the expansion tank/battery mount so that the heater and pedal box have space to fit. Its all a tight squeeze with the mini heater. In hindsight it would have been worth having all the bits handy and measuring things up precisely.
Bought a wiper motor from DMR in wilburton, just down the road from me, thoroughly recommended. The motor has a different plug and fitting on to the previous one I had but a little adaptor will be easy to knock up. Made up a grp mounting for the motor and fastened it in with a couple of bolts. From past experience rivets on this sort of thing are a bad idea as you inevitably want to take it off at some point.
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Wired in the side repeaters, took the live from the indicators and just connected the ground up to a handy point on the chassis. Made up some brackets out of 10x3mm mild steel for the heater, It's not going to be bolted down too tight, just enough to hold it in place. Made up a little mini loom to connect the brake fluid level sensor up to the handbrake warning light as per warning light. I took the opportunity to extend the cable to the handbrake and reroute it at the same time, same plan as for indicators, ground just gets taken to suitable point on the chassis rather than going via the loom. |
Theres been some talk of bonnet fasteners on the tiger mailing list, gaps around the lower edges of the bonnet and difficulty fitting the supplied over centre catches seem to be normal. Matt Cox is having a look at Dzus fasteners and making up 90 degree brackets to mount them against. If they work out they'll be ideal and very SVA friendly. The fasteners are cheap enough but unfortunately the brakets from demon tweaks are extorionately priced and the picture gives you no idea as to the size of the things. If you know of reasonable places to get these things then please let me know.
Tied up a lot of loose cables and had a first pass at polising all the muck off the ally sides. The metal cleaning gloop I've got seems to be doing a reasonable job.
Trimmed down the pedal box cover to fit a bit better and ran a bead of sealant round it so that it doesn't rattle and scratch the scuttle. Cut a hole in it for the throttle cable as well.
Put some thin piping around the dash to neaten it up a bit. In hindsight it should really be fastened on from the outset so that you can secure it firms to the wooden backing. Mine is a little on the loose side so I may need to revisit this later.
When I fitted the brake pedal initially I hacked out a hole to feed the plunger through. Yes I really do mean hacked, it is not at all pretty, or at least it wasn't. I've now cut out a nice neat 2" diameter hole with my holecutter. Cutting sheet ally with a hole cutter isn't too difficult but requires some preparation. It really needs a sizeable chunk of wood behind it to give the drill a decent centre to drill into, it also helps to stop the sheet flexing. I've found that a powerful cordless drill is better than my single speed corded one, the corded one is just too fast and lacks the control and ends up digging in and then kicking itself out of the groove. Spray plenty of WD40 or similar on the sheet and give it a quick burst every now and again as it dries up, this helps stop the saw from bucking out and gives you a much better chance of endeding up with a single clean hole.
Fitted the new wiper motor which all seems to work nicely and also tracked down what happened to the second wipe speed - one of the connectors had worked loose on the column stalk.
Ran a bit of paint around the tank straps and a couple of bits of the tank I missed orignally as they were covered in masking tape to keep the dust/paint out.
Blocked up one of the holes in the scuttle air channel. I had originally envisaged 2 heater outlets, one left and one right to balance the output. However due to the space constraints my heater now only has one outlet and I only have enough hose to reach the passenger side so we're going to have a rather asymetric demist. Who cares though most of the time I should have 60mph demist function over the hole screen so I won't need the heater. Also blocked up all the holes in the heater to try and maximize the airflow to the screen, it has improved matters a bit but not hugely.
Also sorted out the washer bag and motor, spent ages trying to work out why there washer motor wasn't working. Turned out that the diagram in the build manual was upside down and I'd wired the whole right hand stalk up backwards, could explain how I managed to burn out my first wiper motor.
Next job seems to be the rest of the trimming and chasing up my tonneau cover so I can put the windscreen back on.
Borrowed some U shaped trim off william and trimmed lots of bits that an SVA inspector could object to. In particular the front edge of the ally that is visible behind the grp, the headlamp supports, the opening around the rocker arm and some heater hose cable tied around the track rod ends and the locknut.
Ground, filed, sanded and then polished (with rubbing compound) the windscreen supports, the ali is very soft and marks very easily, I've cleaned it up as much as possible and made as close to 2.5mm radii as I can easily get. Since the supports are 5mm thick I think all the tester can really check is that there aren't any obvious flatspots. Needless to say come the test I'll be taking a load of rubber trim just in case. Next job is going to be the windscreen surround, this will be a real pig of a job as the metal is less than 2.5mm thick, so quite how you get the radii I'm not quite sure. I think I'm just going to take the blunting approach and trim it if its a problem at the test.
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Fitted the lid to my boot box, next job will be to fit the boot box. Running out of things to do until my tonneau arrives. Maybe I should send off the SVA application. |
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Cut a length of right angle mild steel to act as a support for the grp at the rear where it carries the weight of the spare wheel, will fix that on tomorrow. Painted the insides of the wooden side panels, hopefully that should penetrate enough to stop them going mouldy if they get damp again. |
On williams advice removing the reverse stop from the gearbox is lots easier with the gearbox in the car. The method william used was to jam a claw hammer in and jank, unfortunately my hammer fouled on the gear remote mounting. I found a handy bit of 7mm thick mild steel, this fitted in nicely and after 15 minutes of beating the living daylighs out of it out the lump of metal popped. Now I need to work out how to mount the remote so the new reverse stop works.
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Tonneau cover has arrived after only 4 months on order, apparently weather gear can take even longer! Largely fitted now, just missing a few poppers to replace the ones I destoyed while working out how to fasten them. In the end I used some pliers and an m10 bolt with all but 3mm of shaft cut off and filed to round off the edges. |
Trimmed bits with U shaped trim and heater hose wherever an SVA inspector might look. Added some bolts to fasten the rear of the nose to some angle iron, apparently some SVA inspectors claim that despite the bonnet holding it down it is still insecure. Added some door trim to fill the gap between the sides and the bonnet, looks the business and the bonnet fastens a lot more nicely than before.
Expansion tank leaks from my bodged replacement inlet after my mishap with it some time ago. Replaced with a new one from tiger.
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For some time I've known that my indicators although aesthetically located correctly are wrong in the SVAs eyes. My intention was to drill an new hole and move them to the correct place. Duncan mentioned that Dax mount them on some long poles to get the correct viewability and to also block the 30° cone to raise the floor level and hencs expempt the suspension from the radius checks. After mulling this over for some time realised that there was no reason that I couldn't do the same so with the aid of some plastic piping, chemical metal some threaded rod,a couple of nuts, a washer and a blowtorch I set to. Results are pretty convincing, not sure I'll leave them there permanantly but they wouldn't look too out of place if I do. Duncan also mentioned at one of the sevens meets that Dax don't fasten their seats in, they just velcro them in and call them cushions, circumvenvting the seat mouting requirements and allowing for easy removal for drying etc. Sounds like a good idea to me. |
Drove the car down to the end of the road and back to check a few things out, discovered that the brakes dont really do anything and while braking there is terrible juddering from the front end. Replaced the brake pads, something I should've done before. Although there was plenty of material left on the pads they wre badly scored and were rusting/crumbling away to nothing around the edges. The other problem appears to have been excessive movement at the tie rods where it passes through the bush in the lower arm. My lower arms use an old style bush which I chose not to replace with the tiger supplied ones as they were in such good nick, unfortunately they're a slightly different thickness and there isn't enough thread on tie rod to clamp it down very firmly. 3 or 4 washers soon sorted that out - I hope.
While messing around with the front suspension I decided to sort out my castor or do I mean camber? problem. Whichever it is the wheeels splayed out at the top so were only really contacting the ground on their outside edges. An extra three turns round and they seem much straighter and my plumb line seems to agree.
After replacing the sump gasket with a new one to stop a slight oil leak the dribble has turned into a gush. Frustrated through poor accessibility, getting covered in oil etc. I've given up trying to fix it, the car is going to have to go to a garage to align the headlights etc so I may as well let them do it where they can put it up on the ramp.
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| Fixed the screen on, it seems that everyone is having the same problems as I have and has either had to trim the screen or gouge out lumps of the bodywork to get it to sit correctly. Why tiger can't source correctly fitting screens I don't know. Mirrors, wipers etc all now fitted and working correctly. The sweep on the wipers seems a little much so it goes off the screen and hits the bonnet at full sweep, should just need adjusting. | ||
Tried velcroing the seats in ala Dax with no luck they just wont stick adequately. Bought a rivnut fastener so will use that instead which will allow me to easily unscrew the seats and remove the carpets for drying etc.
Track control bushes, despite the packing are still too lose,
since I got some new ones with the kit decided to fit them.
This meant unriveting the front ali panels and peeling them
back - not nice but having seen the difference essential.
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