Such fun

A 2 week family holiday has got in the way of driving my car but I've managed a few more runs and several commutes to work,  bringing the mileage up to 680 and so time for a first oil change.

Got oil pretty much everywhere, slightly damaged the drain plug (new one ordered) and discovered that my dipstick has snapped off at the max mark,  making it tricky to see how much oil is in my engine.

I've not heard back from Softbits yet about my roof and it's been 4 weeks - I'll chase them tomorrow. I've lowered the drivers seat in  preparation:

I might do the passenger seat but I'm not going to have a regular passenger and none of my family are tall enough to be a problem.

Other issues:

1. Wipers still not working.
2. Windscreen glass has moved a bit and come out of the frame by a few mm on one edge.  I need to get some more gunk and seal it back in.
3. Slight design flaw with my light switches; high beam rocker switch right next to the dipped beam so when driving at night on dark roads, I keep missing the high beam switch and turning off ALL my lights! So I spend a frantic few seconds in pitch black,  trying desperately to find my light switch again! Cars coming the other way must think I've gone into stealth mode :-)

Also added a bit more bling to the bonnet:

I've got runs planned for the next 4 Sundays in a row (weather permitting) - cashing in all my brownie points with the wife! New video camera on order so I'll try get some videos up...

Eyelashes

So,  I've had eyes,  ears and now,  eyelashes:

I did have to trim the arms a little in the end but they are adjustable so I just trimmed the adjustable end so they could adjust smaller (if that makes sense). I also had to twist them slightly to make the blades sit perpendicular to the screen. Despite all this and even with some water on the screen,  I can't get both wipers to move (it worked with one).

I've also contacted Softbits to order a hood,  which is going to take 4 weeks or so. For the hood to work,  however,  I'm going to have to lower my seat by removing that extra bar I added a few weeks ago to get through IVA because my head is just above the rollbar and will be up against the roof when on. Softbits tell me it vibrates at speed and will drive me nuts if it's vibrating against my head. Sounds bad so seats to be lowered....

The Fat Lady's Singing

... and that,  my loyal fans, after almost exactly 700 days, signifies the end - well,  up to IVA anyway.

The last job,  fitting the seats, is done:

Some engine tuning help this week and then an MOT (sort of) and IVA in 2 weeks.

Going up in the world

Well,  my wobbly seats were simply because I hadn't put a washer between nut and floor - doh!

However,  I had a much bigger problem - the seat was just too low,  so that the harness run was not straight. The IVA manual clearly states that if the harness touches the seat slot,  that becomes the mounting point for testing purposes and there is no way the plastic harness slot would be considered strong  enough for the job.

So,  I ordered some huge,  hefty steel bar to run across the width of the seat,  raising it by 50mm. Lucky I didn't pay for the lowered floor option (GBS gave it free for ordering at Stoneleigh) otherwise I would have wasted that money!

So,  bars cut and holes drilled:



(note I ordered the wrong bolts - they need to be fully threaded so I can put bolts up inside the tube. While I wait for the right bolts,  this was just to confirm it did the job).

Seatbelts runs much better now - before:

.... and after :

After the seats are done,  the only thing left is a rubber cover to go over the exhaust clamp spring and that will be that! Feels weird to write that...my last 2 years have been spent agonising over something I need to do on the car and now... Nothing.

Hoping to get online with Emerald a week on Tuesday (half term this week,  got to do family stuff) to try improve the engine map,  then book a session at a garage with the gas analyser (and to setup the headlights,  I guess).

Only 3 weeks to IVA...!

Hard and sparky

Finally got my VIN plate welded in - many thanks Bob! Turns out that years ago,  we both worked at the same company on the same computer system,  although our time didn't overlap - small world!

As Bob himself admitted,  it's not the neatest job but considering the tight space he had to work in,  it's fine. I'm just in the process of painting the bare metal and I'm going to try make the digits clearer with red paint - the engraving isn't very deep.

Started on the passenger seat,  fitting the runners:

And, amazingly, fitting through the floor went really easily. I stuck some paper down and placed the seats in the right place,  pressing down to make holes in the paper. Removed the seat and just drilled through the holes in the paper. With my drilling history,  I expected to need to spend hours filing the holes to get the seat to fit but no,  put the seat back in and it dropped straight in! Miraculous!

However,  after tightening the bolts, the seat is a bit wobbly.  This must be because,  effectively,  the runners are sitting on the 4 nuts and are not flush to the floor but I don't know how else to do it. I'll have to think about it...

Tightened the seatbelt bolts with threadlock and fitted covers for the deadly sharp edges:

Soft and squidgy

Spent an hour putting IVA trim on the bits that need it; front hubs,  bottom of the rear panel and steering wheel:

Looks  pretty horrible and I hope it's enough.

UPDATE: Yup, it was.

Put numerous nut covers on but,  annoyingly considering I bought the covers off GBS and you'd think they know how many I'd need,  I've not got enough! More on order...

Good news is that I've got my laptop talking to my ECU and I took the excuse to go for another little drive.  Bad news is that I still don't have any self-centering going forward but I do have it in reverse - I wonder if I can persuade the IVA guy to do it that way :-). Not sure whether I should be loosening the rack even more - I loosened it by about 2 turns of the nut which felt like a lot.

IVA plate to be welded on Wednesday and I'll try arrange a remote session with Emerald sometime next week.

Seat runners here BUT the bolts I've got are too long. I ordered more,  along with nuts and washers,  so seats won't be done this weekend.

Target locked - engage panic stations

So, the IVA date is booked - June 19th at Yeading (west London).

About 6 weeks away...I could have booked Gillingham on June 6th but I'm not 100% sure I'll be ready. However, if I find I am, they said I could phone back and try get an earlier date.

Outstanding jobs:

1. Seats - new runners should be with me tomorrow so I can hopefully get that done on the weekend.

2. IVA trim - cover all those vicious edges that will cause a scratch on the already-mutilated body of any pedestrian I hit.

3. VIN number welded on to chassis. I've got the steel tab back from the engravers and I should be able to get this done one evening next week.

4. Steering self-centering - I hope the loosening of the steering rack has fixed this.

5. ECU setup - the biggest worry. However, some good news; I called Emerald today and they offered to remotely connect to my laptop and help with the setup! Genius (provided I can fix the problem with my laptop connecting to the ECU). Once that is done, I will take the car to a local garage to do an MOT - well, the headlights and emissions parts of the MOT (I've spoken to the garage and they are happy to do this).

Looking at that, 6 weeks is easily enough time BUT item 5 is the concern.

Getting excited...

Low Life

Continued with the seat preparation by sticking paper to the floor,  putting the seats in position and marking on the paper where the runners were. I then removed the seats and measured as best as I could the locations of the holes:

I can almost guarantee the holes won't match up so I've drilled them with a 9mm bit rather than 8mm, to give me a tiny bit of leeway when it comes to bolting them in.

I then added the runners to the passenger seat:

... but I've not done the floor yet because I haven't put the tunnel panel in yet and that will alter where the seat goes.

While the seats were out,  I decided to do the rivnuts for the top tunnel panels:

Again,  that rivnut tool I mentioned a few posts ago came up trumps - took 15 minutes to do 12 rivnuts. Drilling the holes took far longer...

Finally for today,  a minor Milestone - time to get the car off the high trestles in preparation for fitting the engine,  hopefully next weekend.  To do this,  I made use of the engine crane to support the rear of the car:

... and with the help of a friend,  raised it enough to pull the trestle out (not before time,  it was looking very wonky),  placed axle stands below a couple of suspension points and slowly lowered the rear of the car onto them.

The front,  being lighter,  was much simpler - I held the front of the car up and my trusty assistant,  Dave,  pulled the trestle out and placed the other axle stands in the right spot and I lowered it down. Job done and it feels SO low:

Best of all,  I could,  for the first time,  sit in my car and make vroom-vroom noises:

The seat isn't fully in position,  so hopefully my head will end up below the rollbar :-)

I'm a saddo - help me.

No,  my blog hasn't been hacked - I asked my son to suggest a title for today's post and that's what he came up with. Obviously,  he's very impressed with my work...

To be honest,  he may be right as I spent large parts of the holidays talking/thinking/researching about my car (I worked 3 days this week and it was dead,  so I spent most of my time on the web).

I've been concerned about my seats as I realised that in the IVA manual,  if the seat belt rests on the slots,  then that becomes the load bearing point for the tester to check and a piece of plastic and vinyl is probably not up to it. As my seats aren't the GBS ones and are a bit higher,  the mounting points are below the level of the slots and the belt will rest on the seat. Panicked (as usual) and then learnt that it should be OK because it depends on how they sit with you in the seat and they should be clear of the seats in that situation.

My biggest worry now is the electrics. I'd love to save the money and do my own engine loom but I'm not sure I'll be able to work it out. GBS have kindly sent me pin-out details but at the moment,  they aren't helping me. If a pin says 'tachometer signal',  I'm assuming that's for the rev counter but where does it go to? On everyone else's blogs,  the electrics are an hours work to plug the marked up connectors together. Doing it manually is going to be much longer but it grates on me to have to spend £500 or so on the GBS looms. I'll have to think about it a bit longer...

Back to some actual garage time - I was going to make up a blanking plate to cover up the gap between flywheel and sump but then I realised that there's also a bigger gap higher up,  so for £23, I ordered a dirt shield from RetroFord which goes all the way round the bellhousing. Obviously being this time of year,  it hasn't arrived yet so I can't consider putting the engine and gearbox together.

All I could really do was the seat runners,  so made a start on them. For some reason,  there are no instructions about how to fit them anywhere and everyone's blogs seem to skim over it so I'll try be a bit clearer.

I decided the best way was to attach the runners to the seats,  then put some masking tape on the floor,  put the seats in (mine are such a tight fit,  there's no sideways movement possible) and mark on the tape where the runners are. Then remove the seats,  measure where the holes need to be and then drill through the floor.

Great plan but hit a slight snag when it took me an 2 hours to screw in 4 bolts.  Or,  to be precise,  just one bolt. One runner went in ok:

... but the second one wasn't playing. Firstly,  the holes didn't quite line up so it took 30 minutes with a small file extending it a few mm. Then,  the thread was rusted and I couldn't screw the bolt in. And did I have an M8 tap? Nope. Amazingly,  most of the shops were open and I finally found a branch of Toolstation that had a cheap tap and die kit containing an M8 tap. Short trip out,  tap bought and thread cleared,  second runner in. But now it was too late to do any more -  kids wanted my attention,  so maybe more tomorrow.

Sitting comfortably?

I got a text saying I was getting a delivery and I assumed it was the small dowels needed for the gearbox,  so told my wife to expect a padded envelope - what turned up were 2 huge boxes containing the seats!

They look great,  I think:

... but they're a tight squeeze.  In fact,  so tight that I'm going to have to remove the plastic handle on the reclining unit and possibly the plastic cover as well. Hopefully,  it will be OK because I really like them.

The consensus is that my concern over the flywheel being lower than the sump isn't a problem. There are no reports of anyone ever having destroyed their engine that way and Tiger suggest making up a simple blanking plate to keep stuff from getting into the bell housing. I could actually buy such a plate from a company called Retro Ford but it's a bit big so I'll probably just make my own.

Very annoyed with myself about the thrust bearing which I put in the wrong way round. If I hadn't been browsing a couple of other blogs,  I might have left it like that and Gawd knows what would have happened when I came to try using the clutch for the first time. Very worried now about what else I could have done wrong...

The only local place I know about that sells 8.8 strength bolts is now shut until Jan 4th although I might try getting them off eBay - see if that's any quicker.

With in-laws here for Christmas,  I may not get much chance to get into the garage,  so Happy Xmas and New Year to whoever is bored enough to be reading my waffle.