Build Part 2
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Exhaust |
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The car was away for three weeks but the wait was worth it. Whether the exhaust will meet circuit noise regs is something we shall to wait and see but its appearance is pleasing and on the whole, the workmanship to a good standard. I was particularly pleased with the rolled edge of the tailpipe and the stainless steel surrounding ring. |
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Bonnet Support
In my opinion, the bonnet needs support at its back edge to prevent sagging and vibration etc. To solve this problem before it has arisen, I made a ledge for it to sit on. I cut some aluminium sheet and folded a safe edge along its length. I then folded it again into a right angle section. By carefully shrinking one side of the angle, I was able to reproduce exactly the curvature needed for the bonnet to sit on over its entire width. I intend to fit a length of self adhesive foam rubber to cushion the bonnet and I allowed for its 8mm thickness when I positioned the ledge.
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Brakes
The brakes were plumbed except for the remote reservoirs so that was the next job. I mounted these as high as I dare and hopefully they will do the job. I had no idea how to bleed a system using two master cylinders and balance bar but it was simply achieved by bleeding one system at a time by unscrewing one of the master cylinder pushrods and treating it as a single master cylinder. The second system was bled in the same way. Easy! |
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Role Bar
I have to be honest here and say that I do not enjoy bodywork so I intersperse mechanical work to ease the pain. I realised early on that raising the bodywork by 30mm would lead to all sorts of problems down the line and one of these was the roll bar. In order to retain as much body |
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stiffness and strength as possible, I retained the fibreglass flange and cut sufficiently large holes so that the mounting plate could be dropped in and bolted up. Because of the raised height of the body, a substantial amount of fibreglass had to be removed to allow the diagonal to fit. I formed aluminium cover plates secured with M4 stainless steel button head into rivnuts. The aluminium covers will be powder coated.
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BodyI might as well have built the car to the standard body height because, when I came to fit the bonnet it well and truly fouled the cam wheels, cam cover and sparking plug connectors. Deep Joy! To make things even worse, the shutline surpassed even British Leyland in their heyday. So time for a little light relief. Off came the bonnet and was shelved until I felt able to cope with it which would be a long time off. |
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Pedal box
I didn’t like the idea (nor, I’m sure would the Scrutineer) of a big square hole between footwell and engine compartment, This is where the accelerator pedal comes through. I also wanted to tidy up the bracket holding the steering column bush so I decided to extend the pedal box. I formed an aluminium box to which I TIG welded a forward extension to accommodate the column bush and bracket. I then made a lid to go over the whole lot and not only was I pleased with the result I had almost forgotten the grief given to me by the bonnet. |
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Radiator |
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| To be honest, I have no idea of the parentage of the radiator. I bought off Ebay. |
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It might be a VW Polo unit, I don’t know. It has always been drummed into me that the radiator must be boxed in so that absolutely all the air going in through the grille must pass through the radiator. I made a tray extending from the front chassis cross member to the bonnet hinge assembly and sat the radiator on two wedge shaped brackets. These bracket were fitted with rubber grommets (1/4”) to accept the spigot mounts on the radiator. An air deflector was rivetted on to close the gap underneath the radiator. Aluminium brackets on the backside of the radiator bolted up to the mountings on the chassis. |
| Next came the fan. I found in my store, a Peugeot unit that blows so was admirably suited to my set-up. I fabricated a simple frame for it and welded it to the hinge pivot bar. |
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Bonet |
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| Back to the bonnet. It needed pieces bonding in for the hinges and it seemed |
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sensible to incorporate them into sides for the radiator boxing. I actually dislike fibreglass intensely and will avoid using it wherever possible. This begs the obvious question, why on earht did you buy a kit with a fibreglass body? Wel, the answer here is that my son bought it not I. Jeremy recommends the use of glass side panels but I decided without need of too much deliberation to use metal. 16swg galvanised sheet that I had in stock. Not light I know but pretty rigid. To these side panels were rivetted aluminium sheet to complete the boxing. |
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There were now no more excuses to ignore the fact that a power bulge had to be made for the bonnet. However, it would not be made from fibreglass. The bulge would have to accommodate some serious contour changes in the bonnet so I decided that the easiest method would be to make a hammerform. In this case the hammerform would be a wooden frame shaped as closely as possible to the contours around the aperture. I have to say at this point, that I am only slightly better with wood than I am with fibreglass!.
It took sometime but came out reasonably in the end. In order to strengthen it up so that it didn’t fall to pieces during the metal forming operation, it was encased in a frame of 2” x 2” mild steel angle. |
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I cut a piece of 16swg pure aluminium sheet roughly to shape and annealed it using an oxy-acetylene torch. The trick here is to put down a light sooty deposit onto the surface of the sheet and then using a neutral flame, carefully heat until the soot disappears. This is the annealing temperature of aluminium which is not too far away from its melting point!
The sheet was secured to the hammerform using woodscrews placed at 40mm centres. Initial forming was carried out using a wooden slapper and bossing hammer. Freshly annealed aluminium is very malleable and the shape came very easily. Providing the hammerform was correct, the panel would be a perfect fit, fingers crossed. |
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In the event, it turned out okay. I bonded to the underside of the bonnet using panel adhesive. It is one of those jobs where the preparation takes more time than the actual job itself and it is worth pointing out, that the better the preparation the better the job. |
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