30 January 2023
Back to the rear bulkhead, I decided to open up the harness slots by removing the piece above the harness to make it easier to get them in and out. I also added some trim to the holes to check there was clearance all round, I made up a spacer from steel flat bar to go between the 2 harness brackets to stop them binding on each other. The first ones I made were too thick, so I made some others out of some thinner flat bar. I drilled out the rivets on the front scuttle seal plates and redid them with some Tiger Seal as well as the rivets to ensure they didn't rattle. I used some Tiger Seal to glue the rubber trim to the top. I riveted the the seal plates to the top of the scuttle. I drilled out the mounting holes for the rear bulkhead panels ready to fit them. Then I removed them and started stripping the plastic coating off them and removing the burs from the holes. 4 February 2023 Finished off removing the burs on the panels. Cleaned up the chassis rails and applied some Tiger Seal to it. Put the panels in place and rivetted them in place. I applied some additional Tiger Seal to some of the edges and to seal between the top rail and the back of the panel. Put the trim back on for the harness slots and along the top edge. Did some tidying up in the garage, took some measurements from the blocks supporting the dash as I want to 3d print some replacements. Did some CAD work to draw up the design for the 3d prints. 5 February 2022 Printed off the dash mounts in a carbon fibre reinforced plastic. 6 February 2023 Took the body off and fitted the new dash mounting blocks. Put the body back on and rolled the car out, connected up the dash plugs, put some fuel in and started it up, seemed to be running a bit lumpy, I suspect it is missing on a cylinder but it perks up once it gets some throttle. Swapped the cars round so it is on the ramp which will make fitting the doors easier. Also noted a slight oil leak from the sump, which will need to be investigated. 8 February 2023 I've been think about how I can make a badge for the car. I've got a simple design I've made. My plan is to etch some brass with the design and then paint in the etched area with black. I bought some brass plate and after a trip to a maker space that I'm a member of I had my design cut into some vinyl. It took a couple of attempts to get the vinly applied to the brass. I am using a car battery and salt water to etch the plate so I connected it all up and let it go. The principal work but it seems what I thought was a solid plate of brass is a copper plate with a thin layer of brass on it. Some of the small letters didnt come out great so I think I need to change the design slightly and find some solid brass plate but it seems the theory works. 18 February 2023 Put some petrol in the tank and started the engine up but it was running very rough which was very annoying as it was running fine the last time I started it up and nothing has changed. Spent some time checking over everything, I noticed that the ECU was reporting a very high MAP value and even without the engine running and so did some testing and while the MAP sensor was getting the correct 5v it was only putting out 0.5v without the engine running. I don't understand how the MAP sensor can be faulty, it's not had anything done to it. Tried running the ECU with the MAP input disabled and using the TPU for load which seemed to work at idle but would die as soon as any throttle was applied. Very frustrating. I've got a replacement MAP on order so I can rule that out. 20 February 2023 Got the doors out of storage and spent some time adding some padding so I could tape them in position ready to mark up the hinges. I've abandoned the idea of internal hinges and I'm using the classic Mini hinges. Added some masking tape to the door and body and played around with hinge positions. Each of the Mini hinges is slightly different and they are marked for the position they need to go on the car (RH top, RH bottom, LH top, LH bottom). It's importnt that they are put in the right position to avoid issues with the doors opening. 25 February 2023 More messing around with the hinges trying different positions on the side of the car. One of the hinge stud holes is off at an agle so I had to modify the gasket slightly. Then I offered the hinge up to the door and drew around it. I position the gasket over my outline and carefully marked the holes on the body shell. I drilled those out slightly over size so I had some room for adjustment. Then I marked the position of the hinge on the door but wasn't happy with how close it was to the edge of the door. Can't see any way it could be positioned so I plan to drill and tap a new hole. The inside of the hinge is hollow so I applied some JB Weld to fill the hole and provide something to tap into.
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16 January
I put the body on and started to make templates for the pieces that would rivet to the angles and bridge the gap between the scuttle and the body. I took the dash out as it was much easier to do this from the cockpit side. After a lot of trimming and checking I had 3 pieces I was happoy with. Not sure why, but the body seems to be sitting on the dash slightly so the body is not coming down to the brackets like it used to, so that will need resolving. 21 January 2023 Bolted the body in position on the brackets so it was positioned as it should be and roughly aligned side to side. I then cut out some aluminium sheet, using the cardboard templates as a guide. I temporarily attached them to the angles so I could trim them accurately and after some fuirther trimming it seems to fit. I'll need to find a rubber trim to on the top edge to seal to the body and stop the aluminium wearing the fibreglass. With sub zero temperatures I didn't stay in the garage long. Came inside to warm up and order some edge trims. 29 January 2023 Tried one of the trims I bought on the suttle panels and with a minor bit of shaping, they fitted really well. I refitted the dashboard to see where the body might be touching the dashboard but it looks fine. So I moved on to the rear bulkhead panel, which needed a bit of trimming to make room for a trim strip on the top. I think the top edge of the panel needs to be pulled forward near the middle of the car to keep a consistent gap. I looked at how the harness needs to bolt to the chassis and where I needed to cut a hole for it. I marked up the panels and then cut one of them, I've got a hole that the harness plates can bolt to the chassis, but it's a bit tight and I will need to add some trim on the edge of the hole. I would also like the top of the panel to be a bit further forward to be closer to the edge of the bodyshell, which will affect the size of the hole. 7 January 2023
Had a nother go at fitting the air filter with the shortened pipe but it's still not working for me. It fits, but is very close to rubbing on the body and in use I expect it will knock on the body. Need to find a better position for the filter. Finished off adding loom covering for the immobiliser wires and the USB charger. I've been thinking more and more about the body to sill fixings I want to use. I've ordered some flat bar aluminium some countersunk rivnuts, bolts and some flat glazing rubber. I plan to mount the rivnuts on the aluminium sills plan, between the sills and the body some 1mm rubber strip. The flat bar will be glued to the outside of the bodyshell and then drilled through to the rivnuts, the bolts will go through the body, rubber and into the rivnuts. 9 January 2023 Back to the air filter mounting. I tried various positions for the air filter while the body was on to see what the options were. I settled on a having it in front of the radiator at the top corner. Luckily in the kit of parts I bought was another rigid pipe That would work, the only problem was that it didn't have a braket on it. I made one out of a small bit of steel angle. I cut a slot in one end that would bolt to the chassis using the mounting I had put in before. The rigid pipe was made of aluminium so I decided the easiest way to join them would be with epoxy, the loading is relatively light so it should be fine. I ground down part of the tube to give me something flatish to glue to, and after several tests fit trimmed the angle iron to the length I needed. I grit blasted the angle iron to clean it up and then used Araldite to glue them together. The epoxy will be tidied up and then the whole thing will be painted. Thinking about other jobs to do before I can fix the body down I wanted to checck the seat belt fitting as that will be easier to do without the body in the way. I ordered some long (4 1/2”) 7/16s bolts for the top mount. I did some trials and they seem ok with the belts running bettwen the headrest posts, one of the belts just touches one of the headrest posts. Checked on the forum to see what other people experienced when doing the IVA. I did some test fitting of the rear bulkhead upper panels with the body in place. I first trimmed them lightly so I could get them to line up with the holes I had drilled before (a long time ago). Once they were sitting correctly I ran a marker pen around the inner edge of the cokpit to mark the edge on the panels. Then I trimmed aproximately 10mm above that line. This left me with a nice gap above the panel that doesn't show as I intend to fit a small edge seal on top of the rear bulkhead. The panels as the come from ANC overlap in the middle but I want them to butt against each other an not overlap. Some careful marking and cutting will be needed to do this. But that is for another day. 14 January 2023 Applied more primer and top coat to the air filter tube during the week in preparation for fitting today. Tried to fit it and promptly snapped off the bracket! Back to the drawing board. I decided to modify the bracket and cut a slit in it so I could strap it to the tube with a large jubilee clip. However I had to clean up the tube and bracket to remove the epoxy and repaint it. Marked up and drilled the holes to secure the top rear bulkhead panels. I've decided to overlap the panels, they will be covered in carpet or vinyl so the join won't be visible. Also made a start on make a panel to seal between the body and the bulkhead, I've some aluminium angle to length, It will get rivet to the top of the bulkhead and I'll cut some aluminium panel to shape to close the gap between the body and the angle, it will be sealed with a rubber seal on top. 15 January 2022 Fitted the revised air filter arrangment, which fits nicely in the nose of the car, it should get lots of cold air but not lots of spray. I drilled the aluminium angle so it could be held in place on the scuttle while I made a template for the panel to fit on them. Time to look back over 2022. On the outside there's not much too see other than the driving lamps, front and side indicators. Underneath the wiring is 99% done, the exhaust is fitted, there's a minor leak to fix on one of the joints. The dashboard is pretty much finished, Trying to think of all the jobs I should do before I start getting the body fully bolted down. 22 December 2022
I couple of hours in the garage so I made up a bracket to support the air filter on the upright next to the radiator. I put in a rivnut to allow me to bolt the bracket on and bolted the filter tube to it. I ran the flexi hose in and cut it to the correct length then did a test fit which looked OK. I took it apart and primed and painted the bracket. While I was waiting for the paint to dry I cleaned up the top of the scuttle and then added Tiger Seal and pop rivet my scuttle panels in place. I cleaned up the excess Tiger Seal. Then I lowered the body down, the air filter tube cleared the bottom of the body nicely but once the body was in position, there was not quite enough room to get the filter on the end. I think if I cut a 20-30mm off the end it should give me enough clearance. The filter will be tucked up by the secondary lights but not directly behind the grill so it's not visible from the front. 30 December 2022 Lifted the body off and removed the air filter and marked where I needed to trim the pipe. Cut it off with an angle grinder and then smoothed it off with a sander. There is a hole in the side of the pipe which was designed to hold a sensor in the original fitment but I don't need it. I had applied some tape temporarily but wanted to fix it permanently. I misxed up some GRP filler applied some tape on the outside and then applied the GRP on the inside and left it to dry. I made a start on making up the loom to power the USB charge point I added a connector to the wires on the port and a longer piece to connect to it. 2 January 2023 Happy New Year! First day in the garage in 2023 and I drilled out a larger hole in the glovebox so I could fit the connector through. I wrapped the loom and fed it in to the area behind the fusebox. I mounted the dash panel so I could check the electrics, I needed to remake the immobiliser connection as it had come loose. I tested the immobiliser and spent some time thinking about where to fit the aerial. I found a location that is convenient which wil be hidden behind some trim. During the testing I found an issue with the multiplug connectors on the dash I had created when extended the indicator wiring. I had to remove the pins and reterminate them that took longer than it should as I struggled to extract the pins. I then had to remount the dash panel and retest again. It all seems to work correctly. 14 November 2022
I cleared up the glue and felt inside the glovebox with sanding blocks and die grinder attachments. I worked on the glovebox door which needed sanding down to accommodate the vinyl on the glovebox and the vinyl that will be on the door. Once I was happy with the fit I glues the vinyl to the door and trimmed it back. I plan to flock the inside of the door and the inside of the glovebox. I drilled out the hole so I could fit my USB charge-point. I cut out a shape to accommodate the bulkhead USB connector I've got. The ECU cable will plug into the back and then I can plug a USB lead into the other side. I worked on the removable bulkhead panel and countersunk the holes to accommodate the Dzus fasteners and then pop riveted it in place. I had countersunk the rivet holes on the back so I could flatten the backs with a hammer. I smoothed everything off with a sanding disk. I still have to fix the springs to the fixed panels for the Dzus fasteners to lock on to. 19 November 2022 Got ready to do some flocking. I cover the glovebox door with tape all over the vinyl and the edges. The dash I covered in some carpet protector I had left over from some decorating (the cling film like stuff). I taped around the opening of the glovebox as well. I applied the coloured glue and applied the flocking fibres with the applicator to the door panel. I tipped the excess off and then went over it again. I had laid the door on a plastic sheet so I could reuse the excess. I repeated the process with the dash, this was more awkward because I had to manoeuvrer the dash around to get into all the corners. I also made a bit of a mess of the glue application so the finish wasn't completely smooth, particularly on the side of the glovebox. I left the glue to dry overnight in the utility room where it was a bit warmer than the garage. I attached the spring retainers for the Dzus fasteners onto the panels and then test fitted everything on the car. Before I fixed them permanently I finished off a few bits of wiring for the Speedo sensor after I had spoken to John who had recently wired up his ETB speedo successfully. I had to unwrap part of the dash loom to route the correct wire to the plug and I had to extend the body wiring out to the corresponding plug as well. I took the opportunity also to document the pins of the dash connectors for future reference. 28 November 2022 Connected the second speedo wire to earth which also required -rewrapping and re-positioning some wiring. I cut the vinyl on the dash to uncover the mounting holes and remounted the dash on the car. I covered the dash in my protection film for now. I put the bulkhead panels in place with cleco's and also put the fusebox panel back in place. I replaced the bodyshell on the chassis and fitted the front mounting bolts. I want to check if there is anything else I need to do before fixing the bulkhead panels in place. 5 December 2022 Had a look around the car and rewrote my list of things to do before fitting the bodyshell for good (hopefully). This is my list
I also spent some time going through my master list of jobs and organising them by area of the car (cockpit, rear of car, front of car etc). 17 October 2022
More playing about with my badge idea. I played around with a simple design in OnShape and printed out a test piece to see what it would look like painted up. The problem I have is how to get a nice smooth surface, I can sand the tops surface easily enough but the recessed parts are a bit tricky. I'm going to try flooding it with paint to create a smooth surface. I've also been looking at trying to make some thing in metal. After watching a lot of YouTube videos I think I might be able to do something with an etched piece of brass. The tricky part is getting the pattern on to the metal. I don't have a vinyl cutter nor do I have a laser printer which seem to be the most often way to put a resist onto the metal. However I have found some self-adhesive vinyl sheets which I can print on with my inkjet and I should be able to cut out the design with a craft knife. The etching is quite straightforward with some salt water and a battery charger. I've ordered some vinyl and pieces if brass to try it with. 19 October 2022 I'd been to see Ridgard seats who are very near me, they make some really nice custom built seats, however they are quite pricey (double the cost of Intatrim). So as much as I like them I can't justify the cost. I ordered the Bad Boy Classic BB1 Clubsport seats. They are half the price of Intatrim, but are light and well made. I plan to take the covers off them and fit heated seat pads which I found on ebay. I will also need to make the headrest taller as it is just a bit too low for the IVA requirements. 23 October 2022 In the garage I took the brackets off the dash and primed and painted them to match the chassis. I decided to get on with making the scuttle panel covers done. I spent a bit of time checking what I access I might want to have through the panels. I made some templates from some board to check where to cut holes. I cut holes in the templates to accommodate getting to the body mounts, I'll slide a second piece over the hole to cover it when it's finished. I also needed to create access to the screw that holds the battery strap in place so I decided to drill a hole and fit a grommet for that. I also wanted to be able to access the wiring behind the dash so I will have a separate panel in the centre held in place with some Dzuz fasteners. I cut the panels out of aluminium sheet and transferred the cutouts from the templates. I made up the panel for the centre out of the same aluminium. I'll seal the gap underneath the panel with a self adhesive seal. I also want to create a seal between the scuttle and the body to stop water/dirt coming into the cabin. 24 October 2022 A few hours spare, so finished off trimming the bulkhead panels and smoothing the edges. Then I made up the plates to cover the holes by the body mounts, these were simple squares with a slot to accommodate the upright of the mount. I found that my air nibbler cut a slot just the right width for this. I took the gear lever panel off and trimmed the paper template (that has been on there for months) to the correct size. Then I cut out some heatproof cloth and glued it in place with high temp contact adhesive. I covered the edges in aluminium tape to tidy things up. Once it was all dried I put it back in the car and screwed it in place and put the gear lever gaiter on to see how things are coming together. Happy with how it's looking. My thoughts are turning to how to cover the dashboard and also the gearbox tunnel. I ordered some Dzuz fasteners for the bulkhead panel, counter sunkets and bear claw locks for the doors and some bonnet pins from CBS. 31 October 2022 I did some final trimming on the bulkhead panels and then I marked out where the rivets would go and drilled them out. I offered up the panels to the bulkhead and clamped them in place. Iused the holes in the panels to drill the holes in the chassis and fastned in place with Cleco's as I went round. Then I spent a bit of time measuring the centre panel to get the holes for the Dzus fasteners in the right place. I drilled out the centres for the holes on the top panel and transferred them to the fixed panels. Then I rmeoved the centre panel and drilled out the clearance holes. The top part of the Dzus fastener needs to be counter sunk but I didn't have a big enough countersink bit so I had to order a set. 2 November 2022 I decided to return the BB Classic seats, I spent more time measuring and I decided the back was just too low. So back to looking at the Intatrim site, butI am going to the NEC in November so there might be something to look at there as well. I've been doing some testing with the vinyl I ordered to mask my badges. It printed well on my inkjet printer but I wasn't able to get a nice cut out with a knife, the glue was also too strong meaning I wasn't happy with the result. I will see if I can find someone to print out the design on a vinyl cutting machine. 5 November 2022 I decided to make a start on covering the dash. I'd bought the vinyl last year, it's a 2-way stretch vinyl so should conform to the curves with a bit of persuasion. I started by wrapping some paper over the dash to make a pattern. I transferred the pattern onto the vinyl and cut it out with a generous allowance around the edge. I spent a bit of time positioning the vinyl over the dash and deciding what order to glue it in. I started with the left side top part of the dash as it was fairly flat. I clamped the vinyl in place on the right and folded back the left hand side. I applied contact adhesive to the dashboard and the back of the vinyl from the centre, doing about a 10cm strip at a time. Once the glue had gone off a bit I lay the glued sections together, smoothing out with my hand and a soft roller to get it smooth. I repeated this so the top left was complete. I did the same thing on the right hand side, the hump around the instrument cluster was a bit tricky but with a bit of stretching and manipulation I got it to conform nicely. I left that for a couple of hours to let the glue cure and then glued the vinyl over the front edge. Again the hump around the instrument cluster was awkward and it took a lot of repositioning and manipulation until I was happy. The main thing was to get it smooth around the front edge. Wrinkles around the rivnut would be hidden by the panel when it was reattached. I glued the vinyl to the front face on the left hand side and left it to cure over night. I put some clamps around the hump area to ensure it didn't move while it was curing. At this point the vinyl covered all the rivnuts and the glovebox. I'll cut those out later on. 6 November 2022 I trimmed the excess vinyl all round and the folded it round and glued it on the rear of the dash. Around the opening for the dash panel I trimmed it flush to the edge. I cut round the rivnuts to expose them. 7 November 2022 I cut out the hole for the glovebox and trimmed and glued that around the edge. I tried to glue some felt inside the glovebox with my contact glue, but I found it difficult to get clean edges and joints inside and in the end pulled it all out. I've ordered a DIY flocking kit which I am hoping will work better. 3 October 2022
Fixed the immobiliser unit in place. Wrapped the loom behind the dash with the immobiliser wires. Had to spend a bit of time de-pinning parts to untangle wires and also extended the indicator wires to the dash plug as they were a bit shorter than the other wires to the plug. Spent some time wrapping and clipping the loom behind the dash. Took out the fusebox mounting panel in preparation for doing some work on the interior. Next thing will be to finish the cover for the transmission tunnel around the handbrake and finalise the dash mounting, I want it to sit a little bit lower and the brackets need some work. 8 October 2022 Out to the garage and lifted the body off again (thank god for the electric winch)! I removed all the clocks, switches, lamps, switch guards and the wiring loom from the dash panel. Previously I had fabricated some mounts for the dash but I was not completely happy, the dash needed to be secured at each end and I also wanted to lower it down a little bit. I removed all the existing brackets and spent a lot of time trimming down the wooden blocks I had used to support the dash ends. I checked the fit and position by dropping the body down again. I spent a lot of time thinking about how to secure the ends, finally I decided to keep it simple and drill down through the dashboard top through the wood and then through the metal rail the wood was sat on. It needed to go through at a slight angle to match the tilt of the dashboard top. After some carful measuring and clamping, I drilled the holes through all 3 bits in one go so I would be sure all the holes were aligned. This went very well and I used some coach bolts to secure the ends. I then had to adjust the brackets I had made before to match the slightly adjusted position. I moved one of them from the middle, closer to nearside of the car, and added an additional one on the nearside. I modified the bracket onto the steering column and the bracket securing the lower edge of the dashboard on the nearside. I'm pleased with the way the dashboard is held now and it should not shake too much. Dropped the body back down and lined it up and checked the fit. All looking good, I might trim the offside edge of the dash. 10 October 2022 A chance remark on one of the Facebook groups got me thinking about adding a glovebox to the dash. It would be a good place to hide some of the modern bits on the car like USB charging ports and the ECU diagnostic socket. With that in mind, I measured the dash and mocked up something from some foam board I had. The glovebox is going to be about 200mm x 100mm x 100mm. I spent a long time thinking about and researching how to hinge the door of the glovebox. I want it to fit flush when it is shut and ideally I wanted to hide the hinges. In the end I settled for a simple hinge which would show the pivot pin on the outside when it's shut. I plane to cut a hole in the dash to accommodate the box and bond it in place with fibreglass then I can sand the front edge so it is flush. 13 October 2022 Out to the garage again and I found an off-cut of MDF about 6mm thick. I cut out the boards on my bandsaw and glued and pinned then together. I cut the door to side but it will have to wait until I can get the right hinges. The door will be covered,on the outside, in vinyl like the the dash and the box and door will be lined with some sort of felt or thin carpet. 14 October 2022 Spent some time thinking about how I could make a bonnet badge for my car. I played around with a design idea, I will probably do a 3d print of it and see how it looks, not sure if that will be the final iteration, I would like to make a metal/enamel badge but that might not be practical. 15 October 2022 I positioned the glovebox on the dash where I wanted it to be and checked it was fairly level, in the car. I marked the position then took the dash onto the bench and roughly cut out the shape with a multi-tool. Then I trimmed it with a combination of files and sanders until the glovebox fitted snugly. I taped the glovebox into position then used some P40 to hold it in place, on the rear. Once it was secured I sanded the front flush with the dash. I also spent some time smoothing out some imperfections in the dash from previous work. I had seen on the Facebook group someone using a a sander and WD40 to achieve a nice satin finish on aluminium and I wanted to try this on my dash panel as an alternative to anodising it. I set to with some P100 paper and my random orbital sander until the worst of the scratches were removed, it took several passes. I went over it again with P320 and P400. Very pleased with the resulting finish. I bolted the dash back in place, I had to alter one of the dash brackets so it attached to the the glovebox instead of the dash. 24 September 2022 Rolled the chassis out on to the drive and set about getting her running. Pulled the spark plugs and got the new ones out and checkked the gaps. Laid them out on the top of the engine connected up to the leads with some noid lights so I could check the sparks. Turned the car over and they all seemed to be firing OK. Put them in the engine and torqued everything up. Added a small amount of fuel to the tank and tried to start it up. First few times it caught but then wouldn't run, I adjusted the throttle stop as I remembered fiddling with that the last time. Then eventually it started and settled into a nice fast idle, a bit of adjusting on the throttle stop and it idled nicely and a few blips on the throttle and it seemed to respond nicely. I let it run until the fuel ran out which got it up to temperature, I was able to check around the car and everything seemed good apart from a small exhaust blow at one of the clamp joints so I'll need to tighten that up. Feeling a lot happier now that the engine is running properley, hopefully now I can move on and get on with the jobs to finish the car. 30 September 2022 Spent the evening putting the rear lights back on the bodyshell now the inside is painted. Took most of the evening getting the pesky trim rings in! Took the dashboard off, as I plan to do some work on that shortly. 2 October 2022 Fitted the front indicators and lights. It seemed a good idea to get the immobiliser fitted so that I could finish the wrapping of the loom. Found a position for the immobiliser unit and ran the wires into their rough position. Figured out where to terminate the wires and where to splice into the loom to immobilise the car. I won't go into details or post pictures for this as it is a public page. It took longer than I expected, I did a fair amount of testing the unit before I spliced it into the circuits, but it is now in and working correctly. I will need to position the aerial in a strategic place as the range of the fobs is quite short. It's over a month since my last update. Free weekends seem to be in short supply at the moment!
10 August 2022 Ordered new spark plugs and an O2 sensor. I also ordered some bits to make a smoke generator to check if there is an air leak on the intake of the engine. I ordered some plumbers smoke pellets and an empty paint tin. I've got a airline connector I can use to pressurise the tin, just need a bit of hosing to connect to the intake. I'll 3D print something to connect the hose to the tin lid. 13 August 2022 A few weekends off with TVR related activities, it is currently about 32C in the UK, which we are not used to. Back in the garage and the first job was to reassemble my lifting frame and get the body off. It took a few attempts to get the balance point right but it came off, I wheeled the chassis outside and lowered the body down on to my saw horses with some wood to take the weight. Broke open my tin of sealant to paint the inside of the fibreglass. I'm using a product from Car builder Solutions called Wunderseal. It's a very thick rubber like paint. I got to it and slapped it on. I got through the 2 tins I have and there was still more to do, I think another 2 tins will do it. It covers well and leaves a nice grey finish. I got on with what I should have done at the start and removed my lights so I could paint around those areas too. I found that a couple of the rings I'd printed for the rear lights had cracked which was a bit disappointing. I've been playing with a new filament recently impregnated with carbon fibre which makes for very sting prints so I will give that a go. Ordered some more Wunderseal and pipe for my expansion tank. 14 August 2022 Too hot to work in the garage today so spent a few hours printing off new rear lamp mountings. I used a carbon fibre impregnated filament called Apollox. It needs quite high temperatures which is pushing my printer to the top of it's limits. Happy with how they've come out, I've done a bit of clean up on them to remove some sharp edges. I am going to sand down the rear of the car where the lamps mount to remove any unevenness as the way the originals cracked looks like the inside is not very flat. I might add a thin layer of rubber or foam to cushion them a bit. 21 Aug 2022 Took the bodyshell off this afternoon, sanded the backs of the lights to make them smooth and flat. Applied more Wunderseal, found it was easier with the body shell hanging from the winch, dropped it down on to the sawhorses so I could get to the bits where the frame was lifting the shell. Got through another pot of Wunderseal and just started a second, so in total that's just over 3 pots. I've still got the boot and bonnet to do though so it should be enough. While I was waiting for the Wunderseal to dry I got on and fixed the coolant overflow bottle in place. I'd already made up some mounting strips from aluminium. I trimmed them to the final length and cleaned them up before drilling mounting holes. I marked the chassis and drilled holes there and used pop-rivet to secure them in place. I could then bolt the tank in place. I ran some 8mm id rubber hose from the tank then around to the tank. I clipped it in place with some p-clips. While I was there I also added the last few clips for the wiring harness and sealed up some of the joints with tape just to neaten things up. After putting everything away I rolled the chassis back in the garage and rested the bodyshell back in place. 29 August 2022 Made start on checking the engine prior to starting it up again. Previously when I had run it it was running very rich. I wanted to make some checks to see if I could fix that before firing it up. First up was to check if there was an air leak in the intake. I made up a smoke generator to test it. I got an empty paint time and drilled a couple of holes in the lid to screw in a pair of air line connectors. One went to my compressor, the other I slipped some rubber hose over and taped it into the intake with gaffer tape. I ran a test by connecting everything up and running some air through at very low pressure and sealing up any leaks on the pipe into the intake.Next I dropped a plumbers smoke tablet in the tin and lit it. I placed the lid on the tin and applied a very low pressure to it and checked for leaks. I could not see any smoke and I could tell there was pressure being held when the lid blew off the tin. So test number one passed, no air leaks. I won't be able to work on the car for a while as I am away on holiday until after the 13th September. 14 September 2022 I painted the underside of the bonnet and boot panels with Wunderseal and left them to dry. Next up on my engine checks were the injectors. I removed the intake top so I could get to the injectors and pulled them out and checked the resistance on each. The required resistance according to the Mazda manual is 12-13 ohms. All of them were 12.9-13.0 ohms so all good there. One of the injector connector plugs had a broken tab making it awkward to remove so I released the pins and replaced it with one from my spare engine. I also gave the injectors a quick spray of brake cleaner to clean them up. I bolted the fuel tank and filter back in and connected up the fuel lines. I made up some leads to allow me to connect to the injector and trigger them manually as per the Mazda test procedure but I had to leave it there until next time. There are a couple more checks I can easily do, one is to check for leaks with the fuel system pressurised and the other is to measure the volume of fuel ejected in 15s. 15 September 2022 I positioned the fuel rail so it wouldn't spray fuel all over the engine, I had to unclip the injector wiring to do this. Then I used some tie wraps to hold the injectors in the fuel rail. I hooked up the battery and put some fuel in the tank. Then I turned on the ignition and let the fuel pump run to pressurise the rail and watched the injectors to see if there were any drips or leaks. According to the Mazda manual less than 1 or 2 drips per minute is the limit. I could not see any drips so that was a pass. Next I rigged up some wires that I could plug into an injector and put some tubing over the end of the injector and ran that down to a cup on top of some scales. The test described by Mazda requires the injector to be opened for 15s while the fuel pump is running. On my aftermarket ECU there's no option to run the pump continuously so I changed the time the pump runs when the ECU is turned on to 20s. I ran my injector wires down to a spare battery and the by turning on the ingnition and touching the wires on the battery I could get the injector to open and collect the fuel in the cup and measure the weight of fuel. I used the timer on my phone to measure 15s. Then I went through each injector in turn and recording the weight of fuel delivered. I did a couple of tests on each injector to get an average but they were all pretty close to each other at 50-52g of fuel. It's by no means a definitive test but was good enough for my purposes to check they were delivering approximately the right amount of fuel and weren't leaking. Later I used some values on the internet and converted these weights to volumes. Fuel density varies so the values given had a range of values but 50-52g fell within the range stated by Mazda (66-82ml). I reassembled the fuel rail and connected up the loom and other connectors. I then spent some time programming my fuel gauge with the Fuel Gauge Wizard adapter. The process is to set the dial positions (empty, quarter, half, three quarters and full) with the Wizard. I found this quite tricky as the gauge is heavily damped so I had to wait quite a while to see if the needle had stopped moving. Then set the sender to each position and record the resistance, I did this by pulling the pump/sender unit out of the tank, laying it on it's side so I could move the float to each position. I used a piece of paper and marked the position for empty and full then divided it up for the other positions. Then it was a case of moving the float to the correct position and saving that value in the gauge wizard. It doesn't need to be precise as long as it the most important value is empty! I can always adjust it later on when I actually fill the tank. I think I've tested and checked everything I can so I need to have another try at running the engine. I have a new O2 sensor and spark plug to fit so I'm hoping that should be enough. |
AuthorThis is my first kit car although I've messed about with cars all my life. Archives
November 2023
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