13 January 2021 It's been very cold this week so I've not been in the garage in the evenings. Got out today and fitted the fuel/brake pipe clips. I followed Andy's blog and reused the MX5 ones, cutting off the mounting studs and drilling a hole through. Measured up the chassis and marked up the position using a maximum of 300mm spacing as advised in the IVA guide. I think the actual spacing was about 270mm. Once that was done I had a friend come over and help me to carefully turn the chassis over without damaging the floor pans that protrude from the edge of the chassis. Then we set it on top of the skate and with a bit of jiggling about dropped the bolts into place and put the nuts on the end, finger tight. According to the ANC build guide washers need to be placed between the chassis and the rear subframe. I've got 6 bolts in the front subframe but still need to drill the floor pans for the last pair of bolts which should bring it all together and then I can tighten up the bolts. 14 February 2021 I finished bolting the chassis to the subframes today. I drilled through the mounting hole at the front of the footwells (it was covered by the floor pans). Then I was able to drop the last two bolts in place and tighten each of the bolts up progressively. Before they got too tight I roughly measured where the two bolts connect to the subframe by the suspension towers. The holes here are slotted and even with all the bolts in place the was a side to side movement possible. So I made sure the subframe was evenly spaced before the final tighten. For my birthday earlier in the month I got a small media blasting kit and I wanted to try that out. It's a very simple set up, a blasting gun with a tube that you poke into the bottle of blasting media and away you go. I dug out the pedal assemblies, the exhaust manifold and the subframe mounting bolts to test on. I put on all my safety gear, eye protection, face mask and gloves and got to it. Happy to report that it worked well although the drive did get a bit sandy. The light surface rust on the pedal assemblies was no problem. The exhaust manifold took a bit more work but it did a good job of cleaning the mounting flange. The bolts came up like new in a couple of seconds. Back to the build I put the coil/damper units in place so the car could once again support itself. This took a bit of trial and error to get the top struts to line up with the bolt holes. Once they were in place I put the top mounting nuts in place. The next job was to fit the rear subframe brace. It needs to be shortened to fit the new chassis and mounting holes drilled. I offered it up to the subframe and secured it loosely with bolts so I could mark the correct length. I cut the end off and flattened the ends in my vice. I trial fitted it again and marked the position of the holes in the flattened ends. Once they were drilled out I refitted the brace and marked where the holes in the chassis tabs needed to be. I drilled them out with a 10mm drill to match the holes in the brace. I did a final test fit with the rear body mount struts that are part of the kit. The brace will be painted before it is finally fitted. I had a go test fitting the alloy bulkhead panels, they all seemed to fit in place nicely. A tidy up was the last task before finishing for the day.
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AuthorThis is my first kit car although I've messed about with cars all my life. Archives
November 2023
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