It's a cover up

Decided to make a start on the bonnet. Not a huge amount to do - hole cutout for the exhaust and bonnet catches really.

Made a template for the exhaust cutout:

Transferred to the bonnet:

Bit of work with a saw and file and all done:

Trial fit looks good:

That's it for this year - have a great New Year,  folks!

Satan's Elves

Yeah, while everyone else was getting visited by the big, red fat man from the cold, Northern place, I was visited by the big, red man from the hot south and his thieving minions...

Tried to fit in a garage session between various families and friends but the elves have stolen everything - I was sure I had another tube of black gunk but I couldn't find it and I also thought I had some tadpole trim left for the rear wheel arches but no...gone. Very annoying...

Spent some time getting the final cabin panel (passenger side tunnel panel) right - cut-outs for rivnuts and holes drilled for the other end of the speed sensor holder I made many months ago. I also briefly tried to engrave the VIN number in the chassis rail but the stencil I've got is useless - still not sure how to get this done.

All this took a surprisingly long time (2 hours), although 20 minutes was spent searching for stuff.

I've ordered the 'missing' items and also a few other details I'm starting to find I need now; trim for the bonnet edge, rubber trim for the chassis rails that the bonnet will sit on, bonnet catches and pedal grip tape.

Ahead by a nose

Time to fit the nose cone grille. Strangely,  no one seems to have used the cheap and nasty grille that GBS sell so I was on my own in terms of deciding how to fit it.

The grille has 4 locating pins/pegs (just the ends bent at 90 degrees) so I marked the locations and drilled small holes. I had to make them a bit bigger with a file to get the grille to fit but once in,  it was quite firmly in place:

However,  I couldn't just leave it held in place like that obviously and I had a,  hopefully,  good idea. I drilled 4 small holes on each side,  fitted a cable tie through,  round the grille and back through the hole,  with a small washer for extra strength:

Nice and firm and almost invisible from the front - I'm quite proud of myself.

The grille gaps are a bit large and aren't  going to stop small stones but it will help cooling as it won't restrict air flow,  so swings and roundabouts - I'll have to consider changing it at some point in the future.

Also tonight,  fitted plugs on the front indicators and swapped the wires on the fan - I had it sucking hot air out of the engine bay through the radiator which isn't going to help :-)

A Dremel engraving bit also arrived and I tried engraving on a scrap bit of metal using a plastic stencil.  Not great results but the scrap metal piece is pretty rough,  so hopefully it will work better on the smooth chassis rail. First,  I've put a coat of Hammerite on the rail and I'll try the engraving next time.

Christmas lights

My temporary phone is a tad old,  so excuse the photo quality but here is the VIN plate I did last night:

The electrical connectors arrived for the rear lights so a quick session to finish them off.  I've put loom tape round the wires,  then a rubber sheath and then the armour you can see in the picture below. Possibly overkill but I can imagine this is a very harsh environment for a cable. I also P-clipped it to one of the bolts:

Result looks pretty good (arches just resting on the tyres so will be higher) :

Stamping around

I guess couriers are kinda busy right now but my electrical connectors still haven't arrived.

What has arrived is a stamping kit to do the VIN number stamping. I could spend £30 and get GBS to do me a professional looking plate but seemed a simple enough thing to do myself.

Now,  my reading of the IVA manual says you only need 2 items on the plate; car manufacturer and the VIN number itself. GBS also add the axle weights but that is not required and how is that of any use or interest to anyone?

It just so happens that I need to cover the hole in the pedal box cover (normally to allow the Sierra brake fluid reservoir,  which I don't have,  to sit above the master brake cylinder) and that hole is VIN plate shaped.

So,  cut a plate out of ally and stamped 'GBS LTD' and the VIN number underneath. I'm afraid I've lost my phone so no photos at the moment but,  to be honest,  it does look pretty rubbish,  like it was done by a drunk ape. The saving grace was my genius idea of spraying black paint over the stamping and then wiping the wet paint off the surface,  leaving the black paint in the stamped characters - they show up nicely (if crookedly).

I also tried to stamp the chassis in the allocated space that GBS left in the O/S side panel,  on the top chassis rail but that didn't work - my stamp didn't do a neat letter in the powder coat. I tried sanding off the powder coat but then the stamp hardly made an impression in the steel rail, despite a decent hammering. I'll have to think about it...

The summit is visible

As I approach the end of this journey (deep,  huh?),  I'm slowed down more and more by little bits I haven't got; this week,  it's plastic electrical connectors to connect the rear lights to the loom.

I've made a list of what's left to be done before my first IVA fail :-)  - a mere 19 items. The most difficult is going to be the steering column shroud; as I'm not using column stalks,  the basic Sierra shroud is no use (well,  not quite true - if push comes to shove,  I could maybe get one and just re-cover it). I've got a sheet of ally ready to... er... make some sculptural magic.

Basically, front and rear wheel arches,  nose cone grill and indicator wiring,  speedo sensor setup, carpets,  seats,  seatbelts, boot panels and mirrors. I could probably get it done in a week if I had any holiday left from work...

But then there will be the inevitable missing bolts at some point.

It's all Greek to me

With the recent ice age hitting us,  it's just been too cold to go out until tonight. Brief hour drilling holes in the rear wheel arches for the lights. I was planning to fit them as well but guess what?  Go on,  guess. Yup,  no #%&%£* bolts of the right size! On order...

Spent most of the last week thinking about probably the trickiest part of IVA - emissions. I have my engine idling pretty well but it's unlikely to be producing the right CO and HC levels to pass IVA.

There are 3 routes to go to try get the right figures:

1. Hope you (or an expensive specialist tuner) can tweak the ECU map.
2. Fit a narrowband lambda sensor (about £40) in the exhaust and then fiddle with the map (but less fiddling needed than option 1).
3. Fit a wideband lambda sensor (about £200) which will help with emissions AND will also help setting up a power map to optimise engine power.

I'm not bothered with power (yet) so option 3 is out. I've been advised to do option 2 but Richard L did this and still failed IVA.

So,  my cunning plan (!) is to take the car to an MOT garage (when it's pretty much finished),  hook up to their gas analyser and try tweak the map to get the right emissions myself. I've emailed Emerald and they've sent me a cheat sheet on what to adjust in the map,  so I'll give it a go. If it doesn't work,  I will only lose the cost of an MOT and then I'll consider other options.

The easiest route is to take the car to GBS for IVA. They charge a minimum of 6 hours labour but could be much more if there are lots of failures. I reckon I could fail IVA at least twice (retest is £95 a throw,  I believe?) for that much.

And apart from the cost,  I do feel it's a bit of a cheat getting GBS to do it. I've done the build,  I should stand or fall by my own hand,  if that isn't too pompous.

We shall see...

Road trip #1

Finally sorted out the handbrake light; firstly,  I'd wired it the wrong way round - it's an LED so unlike a normal bulb,  you have to get the polarity right. Same for the battery charge light. Secondly,  I discovered the little microswitch on the handbrake wasn't getting pushed up enough to engage - I think I can just bend it to fix that.

Today was engine tuning day,  as it wasn't raining and the rest of the family was busy. Car rolled out the garage (new ramps did the job),  laptop connected up and away I went. I'd got some instructions from Simon (ex of GBS - he recently left but is still thankfully answering questions on the forum,  which is very good of him).

As with a lot of my work,  I'm not sure if I've done this right. I've had the engine running fine before using what I thought was the Power Map (as Simon called it) but when I loaded it up today and recalibrated the TPS,  I couldn't get the engine to idle at all - it wouldn't run without a lot of throttle and even then,  it popped away like mad. Very confusing.

So I loaded up the base Zetec map that came with the ECU and that idled fine,  thankfully. I tried following the instructions,  adjusting the mixture to get the most stable idle,  fiddling with the idle screw on the throttle until I think I got something decent; idles reasonably smoothly at around 950rpm.

I decided that reversing back into the garage is too tricky,  especially without mirrors so I decided to drive in forward,  which meant... a road trip!

OK,  the world's slowest and shortest Road trip but that's MY car,  that I built myself!

I did have a slight coolant leak but a quick tweak on the offending jubilee clip and seemed to be OK.  I've also made a start on the rear wheel arches...

The good, the bad and the blue

The Good: my reversing light works. This might not sound like much but some people have found the reversing switch on the gearbox doesn't work. I couldn't test it while the gearbox was out the car because I couldn't the gear lever into reverse without the clutch pedal. If it hadn't worked,  gawd knows what I would have done because that switch is not easily accessible. So BIG relief...

The Bad: the handbrake light doesn't work. Might just be a fuse... needs more investigation.

The Blue: I wanted to use washers on the bolts holding the dashboard in because I'd had to widen the holes and so I needed to hide the gaps and also it's GRP so needs to have the load spread. But normal ally washers would just look a bit too industrial so I tried to find some blue ones,  to vaguely match the dash. I couldn't find blue bolts and washers but I did find these:

Supposed to be bling for engine bays but I quite like them:

The indications are good

I've been waiting for a few weeks to do the front indicators because I've had to wait for little niggly bits to be delivered; large washers,  threaded  tubes and rubber gaiters.

First step was to drill a small hole in the metal extenders to match the little lug on the indicator body. I then marked up the nose cone and drilled a 10mm hole, 400mm from the ground (350mm is the minimum for IVA) and 80mm in from the front edge.

Annoyingly,  I had to cut off the perfectly good spade terminals as they wouldn't fit through the threaded tube. If anyone needs it,  this is the combination of nuts and washers I used:

The gaiters are just bog standard,  generic driveshaft gaiters for a FWD car - trimmed off one end and they fit perfectly.

I used large washers to try spread the load as much as possible on the GRP of the nose (one on either side) :

Look as good as they can and feel reasonably sturdy:

Replaced the hub pinch bolts with longer versions and a nylock:

Finally,  knocked up some basic ramps to get the car out the garage:

Pretty rubbish but hopefully they'll do for a while.  Long-term,  I'd like to build a concrete ramp.

Fog on the Mole

I realised I hadn't actually checked my newly installed fog light worked,  so battery connected up and... nothing! Spent 20 minutes panicking before I realised I hadn't connected the switch to the loom! All working fine and so is my main beam flash button,  which I'm very proud of - means I'm getting the hang of the electrics.

However,  the handbrake warning light isn't working.  There is no power to the handbrake switch and I'm sure one of the wires should have a positive voltage - I'll have to check with GBS.

Dashboard off to try tidy up the loom. I could only find space for one big P-clip on the firewall and managed to re-use a hole in the firewall to fit a cable tie holder - those 2 hold the bulk of the loom in the centre. I just used cable ties to hold the rest in various strategic places - hope that's OK for IVA?

I wanted to replace the hub pinch bolts for longer versions so I could get a nylocs on the end. Some people say this is now required for IVA but I can't see anything in the manual and at least 1 person got through IVA without it but for the sake of a few quid,  no harm. No harm,  as long as you order the right bloody bolts! Ordered half-shanked versions but there is too much shank and it gets stuck in the threaded part of the hub. New,  fully threaded bolts on order...

Does my bum look big in these?

Short session to get the reversing and fog lights fitted. The fog light has to be perpendicular to the road and even though the reversing light doesn't,  it would look a bit odd to not do it the same.

So I started on the reversing light as practice because it wouldn't matter if I screwed it up. I decided to trim a triangular chunk out of the bottom of the light unit and then use the IVA trim on the top edge,  like this:

Seems to work ok - I used some of the smaller trim to tidy up the rest of the body unit:

Sadly,  I tried to do the same on the fog light but didn't do as good a job,  shaving off too much off the bottom of the unit,  meaning I had some extra work to do. Looks OK although neither of these feel hugely solid and they are butt-ugly :

A bit of bounce

After the euphoria of my last entry,  it's been a quiet week.

I tried to make a start on the reversing light but,  as so often happens,  I haven't got the right length bolts - they're on order.

I did manage to get the Emerald software to talk to my ECU by installing it on my work laptop but I gassed the house out by running the engine for a minute in the garage,  so that will have to wait until I roll her out the garage next time. However,  I need to sort out some proper ramps for the garage - the lip is just too high.

I also went round all the bolts on the rear suspension,  loosening them a little to try get some movement. One in particular was very tight and took a lot of effort to loosen but I do now have some movement,  thankfully.

I had,  to my eyes,  too much negative camber on my front wheels. GBS confirmed that I should really have set the distance on the top rose joint to 50mm instead of 48mm that everyone else seems to mention in other blogs. Doesn't sound like much but after I'd partly dismantled the front suspension and wound the rose joint out a couple of turns on each side,  negative camber was down to about 2deg, which I believe is about right.  Definitely looks better...

The Beast Awakens

One of the best days of my build so far...

The plan today was to get the wheels on,  roll the car out,  clear out the dump that is my garage and try get the engine tuned to run better. 

Firstly,  tidied up some tunnel wiring:

I had to cut-out a small piece of the dash support piece on the side where the Carling switches are,  to enable the dash to be fitted in place:

Only 3 holes line up with the rivnuts on the dash support -  I will need to fettle the others at some later point. 

With that done,  out came the wheels for the first time and simply bolted on. The next step was getting the car down off the axle jacks, which was trickier than I expected; the rear wasn't too bad as my jack could go up enough to lift the car,  removed the rear stands and lowered the car to the floor. The front was more difficult as my jack wouldn't extend up high enough to get under the front chassis rail - I had to use an extra piece of wood and,  after removing the front stands,  then I lowered the car too quickly,  trapping the jack underneath! Luckily,  a neighbour came to the rescue with his own jack,  which I used to recover mine. 

So,  the car was on its wheels for the first time! Damn,  it's low... 

Now to get out my garage which has a 2 inch lip down... my son in the driving seat to work the brakes,  my neighbour pushing from behind and me at the front checking nothing grounded. I used a couple of wood pieces as ramps and slowly,  she rolled out to meet the world - and looked amazing:

Absolutely love those wheels!

My garage looked a state:

... but a bit of work and tidiness was restored:

The one bit of bad news was that I couldn't get my ECU to talk to my laptop - I recently had to overwrite Windows with Ubuntu (because of a virus) and it doesn't seem to recognise the USB port. Not sure how to fix that... 

I left the engine running for long enough for the fan to come on,  which is great to know that works and my thermostat seems to work as all the coolant pipes got hot (and didn't start leaking). Brake lines all still leak-free as well,  all my electrics seemed to still be working and all the gauges do something - wonderful!

Even the handbrake works well without any adjustment (although I should maybe do some to make it come on with less travel). 

Even the wife,  dad and dog got involved:

But best of all (after a weekend of great things) was DRIVING MY car!! OK,  2 metres forward and several back but IT MOVES! Like a real car! 

Spent a while having to adjust the clutch cable (and still needs fine-tuning) but all gears were easy to select and power goes to the wheels. 

Which is lucky because I had hoped to reverse the car back into the garage,  which I was able to do,  with some wheel spin,  lots of fumes and wonderful noise. 

I am a very,  very happy chappy. 

There are some issues to be addressed; the horn didn't work and the wheel alignment needs work and I may have done the rear suspension bolts up too tight all those months ago; there is no give in the rear at all,  even with my weight on it. 

But it has been a weekend of great import and I am,  as the kids say,  stoked! 

Finally, a car shape

Lucky you -  2 posts in one day...

I hadn't planned to even go into the garage today but I somehow managed to squeeze in what I thought would be a quick session to start on the nose cone

Several other blogs seem to have had issues with their nose cone so I was a little concerned but it turned out to be much easier than I expected. First was some rivnuts in the top chassis brackets:

The nose needed a little bit of the flange trimmed off to allow it to fit over the outside of those brackets.  Then 2 holes underneath in the lower chassis rail with rivnuts,  a little jiggery-pokery with the holes in the nose cone and voila:

As I still seemed to have some (stolen)  time left,  I thought I'd try fit the scuttle. Again,  this was something that seemed a bit daunting but unless I've done something wrong,  it was very simple. Maybe this was because I already had the correct shape formed but all I had to do was bolt it in place and tighten the bolts gradually. It tightened down perfectly:

Finally, something I've wanted to do for ages - fit the steering wheel. A few simple bolts and done - placed the dash roughly in place for the full effect:

So I finally have something that looks far more car-shaped which should please my son who keeps complaining that it doesn't look like anything!

DiVINe

Just a short post to mention a further step along the path to legitimacy - got an email through from the DVLA with my VIN number they have allocated me.

A small thing that strangely feels like a big deal.

Auxiliary battle

Brake fluid in and bled and,  touch wood,  no leaks so far since the Great Flare Fiasco.

Spent some time on the front tunnel and auxiliary panel,  drilling holes and fitting rivnuts. Once again,  I've not done a great job here - I fitted 4 rivnuts a few months ago before I had the auxiliary panel delivered. However,  once it got delivered,  I realised it needed extra holes. The result is I have drilled 11 holes in the front tunnel panel when it only needed 6! Luckily,  it's not a structural part and the extra holes will be covered by vinyl but I'm getting a bit more slapdash as the build goes on - not a good sign. 

This is with the extra bits roughly in place; main beam flash button on the right,  12V power socket, 2 USB sockets (both under rubber covers) and then a spare (not quite sure what for yet but a few options). 

This is it vinyl-covered and buttons /sockets in place:

Not too shabby, if I do say so myself...

Broken brakes

Well,  you live and learn,  I guess.  This week,  my education involves the relevant merits of single and double flares on brake lines. Bottom line? Don't use single flares as they may not be strong enough for the pressures they will eventually have to deal with.

Guess what I did on all my brake lines? Yup,  you guessed it...

In my meagre defence,  I did those brake lines in the first couple of months of my build and most people buy the pipes ready - flared from GBS,  so no-one in their blog ever discusses them.

Fortunately, the fix isn't too bad. Through the RHOCAR forum, I borrowed a smaller,  hand-held brake pipe flare tool which turned out to be far better than mine (thanks Colin). Drained the brake fluid and managed to re-flare the front brake lines and those going into the master cylinder. Tricky but they do look much better than before.

The rear lines were much easier as I could take them out completely and redo them on my bench.

Just waiting for some more brake fluid to arrive so I can refill the system and pray the leaks are all gone.

Took 30 minutes to fit the anti-rattle  clip on the brake calipers. Hard work and scraped off quite a bit of my nice,  yellow paint. Will try touch that up.

Finally tonight,  added the wiring in for the main beam flash button that will go on the aux panel.

Chinese fluid torture

Thread lock arrived so I was able to bolt up the rear brake calipers and test the brakes.  All seems to be fine - discs lock when pedal is pressed and release OK and the handbrake seems to work as well although I guess it will need some final adjustment later.

However, I've got an annoying,  tiny leak from the front join between copper and flexi pipe. It's literally a drop a day but I just can't fix it. Tightened and adjusted several times and finally decided to take the plunge and re-flare the pipe which is a nightmare with difficult access and slippery fluid dripping out the pipe all the time. Improved the flare but not sure if it's any better - I've left it now and will check again in the morning.

Bit more tidying up - cable-tied the throttle cable to the offside brake line,  put some corrugated conduit over the brake lines where they pass under the steering column in the footwell,  riveted the indicator relay to the firewall and went round with the paint pen to mark all the recently re-done bolts.

Spic and span

I ordered thread lock from someone on eBay where the advert said 'UK stock' and 3 days delivery - checked it today and it says at least another 10 days for delivery! Turns out it's coming from China...I've reported him to eBay and ordered more from elsewhere... 

Forgot to mention last time that I moved the car about 6 inches to one side,  so I could get to the offside more easily. Scary job - car balanced on the jack at the rear and I found the car is now too heavy for me to lift at the front,  not even the few mm needed to allow the move.  I had to make use of my  car jack to lift the front and then pull it sideways. 

With no thread lock,  I couldn't tighten up the rear calipers and test the brakes,  so I decided to concentrate on tidying up bits and pieces in preparation for rolling the car out the garage. 

First off,  I decided to move the ECU from the special bracket I made a few months ago to be on the firewall. I've decided I'm not going to install a heater in the future so I don't need to leave space on the firewall for it. 

 

I've put a thin layer of foam and some rubber mat between the firewall and ECU for some heat and vibration protection (no idea if that is needed but can't do any harm).

Fitted the steering column shaft and tidied up the engine loom,  alternator wire and HP fuel line by cable-tieing (is that a word?) them to the brake line. I'll check with GBS that it is OK to have those 3 tied together. I also need to check if I'll need to trim down the bolt on the steering shaft:

It's not close to anything but just looks a tad long. 

Bleedin' 'ell

Time to sort out the brakes - bolts arrived so bolted the front calipers on:

And fitted the front flexible brake lines to the copper brake lines - all pretty straightforward.

For brake bleeding,  I bought the Eazeebleed system that others have used and it was very good,  although I'm not sure how much I needed it. I assumed it would take forever to manually pump the fluid through the system but after only a minute of pumping the pedal by hand,  fluid had got to the calipers. How did I know this? Because I kept hearing a squirt  of liquid every time I pumped and I ignored it for several pumps before it suddenly dawned on me that I may have a leak,  which I did - a large puddle of fluid on the front nearside junction of the copper and flexible brake lines. Tightened up and seemed OK.

No other obvious leaks, so on went the Eazeebleed system - nice and easy,  fluid in the bottle,  connected up to a tyre with pressure reduced to 20psi. Small plastic tube on each bleed nipple in turn,  loosen and wait a few seconds for the fluid to come through. Done in minutes although,  like  I said,  wouldn't have been much longer doing it the old fashioned way (but I guess I would have needed my sons help to make it easier, so maybe not that simple).

At first,  there didn't seem to be any leaks and then I noticed a tiny leak on the front offside join - and then all went a bit pear-shaped.  I won't bore you with the details - suffice to say I went through 4 pairs of disposable gloves,  I had to bin a rag and there are several large puddles of brake fluid dotted round the garage.

I think it's all OK now but I couldn't test it because I can't bolt the rear calipers back on as I've run out of thread lock.

One issue with that Eazeebleed system is that it leaves the fluid reservoir full to the brim and the cap on this GBS system has a large float on it which means you have to get some fluid out of the reservoir before you can put the GBS cap back on. You might be able to see how full it is even after getting some out:

Suspend belief

With the arrival of the IVA covers,  I was finally able to finish off the nearside front suspension:

I was all prepared to bolt the calipers on but,  shock,  horror,  I haven't got the right bolts!

I wanted to put a cable tie over the clutch cable end,  to help keep it in the slot on the clutch arm. This is not absolutely required but seemed a simple job - until,  of course,  I went and bolted a bloody great sheet of metal underneath the bellhousing,  obscuring the clutch lever! I spent 30 minutes  trying to get my clodhopper arms down to the cable but couldn't manage it - will try with my sons help at the weekend,  maybe.

Skid mark

Well,  finished the skid pan/bash plate (whatever its called) and,  to be frank,  it's poo.

This is what I was trying to cover up:

But without being able to get the car high up in the air,  it's very difficult to get the holes drilled in the right place. The result doesn't actually look too bad:

But it singularly fails to do its main task - there is still 5mm or so gap through which debris can get to the bellhousing gap. OK,  it's better than it was and it feels very solid so might help if I do hit a speed bump but still the worst piece of work I've done so far. Fortunately,  it is out of sight and it isn't a critical part of the car in any way.

Front suspension mostly complete but just need the IVA cover for the tie rod (ordered from GBS).

Not my Finest Hour

Spent the last couple of garage sessions trying to make a skid plate. Not normally needed but I bought a sump from Tiger,  which leaves the bellhousing an inch or so lower that the sump itself,  with the flywheel visible and,  in my eyes,  susceptible to road debris. No-one on the Tiger Owners forum seems concerned and there are no reports of issues but I don't like it.

I ordered a sheet of ally 3mm thick but that was a mistake - it's too solid to work easily. I've made a right pigs ear trying to get it to work; left 2 extra holes in my chassis rails I really don't want (although they will eventually be covered by the plate but it grates on me). I've re-ordered a 2mm thick sheet so I'll try again. I got this far:

You can probably see the extra holes... I'll use this as a template for the thinner sheet. I don't want this to protect the bellhousing but more as a dirt shield and for that,  I need to bend the edges. This 3mm sheet is just too thick to bend,  even with a hefty lump hammer.

Added most of the front nearside suspension but,  as usual,  halted by lack of nuts and washers. I need to find the elf in my garage that keeps stealing them...

Taming of the Snake

Couple of hours of work to turn this:

... into this:

Great stuff,  loom tape...