Friday 25 November 2011

Mirrors

The mirrors were fitted last weekend. The centre mirror from cbs uses three M4 screws to attach through the scuttle, I used some stainless cap heads. The side mirrors are fixed to the scuttle through a single 8mm hole each side. When running the engine, I noticed the side mirrors wobbled quite a bit. To try and improve this, I drilled an 8mm hole into a small square of aluminium plate, about 1mm thick, and this was then bonded to the inside of the scuttle with tigerseal inline with the existing 8mm hole. The result is mirrors which are a lot more rigid.

Monday 21 November 2011

Stripes

Should be good for another 10mph!


Wednesday 16 November 2011

Boot panel

The boot panel is now completed. I used a few aluminium tabs fitted with rivnuts to act as supports for the centre section. I needed a support between the seat belt brackets as the centre section sagged otherwise. The panels rattle a bit when giving them a tap, maybe some sticky foam will stop this, not that it'll be that noticible over the exhaust note.


Not related to boot panel but first photo on the blog showing the front wings on.


Up until now, I hadn't seen any sort of reading on the Koso's fuel gauge and also wasn't sure exactly how much fuel was left in the tank since getting the engine running although I knew it couldn't be much. I put another five litres in tonight and the fuel gauge increased up to 50% so I'm not sure how accurate this reading is. At least it'll give an indication of when the tank gets low which is good enough for me right now. I can play with the float arm on the sender at a later date.

Saturday 12 November 2011

Handbrake gaiter, tunnel trim & boot panel

The Corsa hand brake gaiter and trim surround arrived in the post yesterday so I was able to get these installed today. The leather gaiter took a little trimming so that it didn't get jammed in the handbrake mechanism when taking the handbrake off. I also tried to clip it under the surround but due to the thickness of the leather, the surround wouldn't sit flat so I opted to bolt it through from the underside of the tunnel panel.



Top view with surround attached

Tunnel top attached to car and hockey trim installed. I used some carbon look vinyl wrap to cover the hockey trim, pleased with the result. Now that all the wiring is done, this panel can remain attached.


I then set to work on the boot panel which is now nearly finished. This has also been covered with vinyl wrap. To finish off I need to fix in some rivnuts to some some webs which have been glued to the underside of the two outer panels.

Thursday 10 November 2011

Gear lever surround

A friend had made me a surround using part of an RJT pipe fitting welded to a disc of 3mm stainless (cheers James!). When I offered it up to the tunnel area, I could see that part of the surround would need to be cut away to fit within the hockey trim that runs down each side of the tunnel.

The edges of the disc were marked up and cut away and then the edges of the fitting were chamfered. I drilled four holes so that the surround can be attached to the tunnel top.


The gear lever gaiter has an elasticated skirt so this just clips around the edge of the RJT part of the surround. I also got hold of a pool ball to use as the gear knob, it not a perfect colour match buts its close enough!


I've also ordered another surround and gaiter to use for the handbrake and hoping these arrive for the weekend.

The indicator stalk I was having trouble with was taken apart earlier this week and the contacts inside were given a good clean. These were found to be pretty gunky which, considering the stalk is 20 years old, was to be expected. However, after re-assembly the relay clicking issue had gone - phew!

Sunday 6 November 2011

Cycle wings and more brake work

Both front cycle wings are now on. Rather than use bolts, I chose to use tiger seal to bond the wings to the brackets. The brackets themselves took quite a while to bend, making sure the wings didn't sit too high or low and I had to put in three 90° bends in order to get the wings central to the tire. Before bonding the wings on, I'd riveted on a square of aluminium to each bar to give a larger surface area to bond to, the surface of the aluminium roughed up to give a key. I'm pleased with the results and using Lee's industry standard "wiggle test", they feel stuck on pretty solid. I then went round the edge of each wing with U trim, bonding this on with some strong adhesive.

After the tiger seal had cured, I turned my attention to the front flexi hoses. Releasing the connection to the front brake pipes, the flexi on each side was then given a slight twist so that the flexi stays out of the way of the wishbones, tire, cycle wing bracket etc.. I noted that I'd need to restrict the steering rack movement as the flexis start to come into contact with wishbones at the extreme end of the lock. Once this was as good as it could be, the flexi hoses were then reconnected to the brake pipes. In order to restrict the rack movement, I put a jubilee clip round the rack under the gaiter but when turning the steering wheel to check whether the clamp would slide, the jubilee clamp actually snapped in half. After a rethink, I made some c collars from a 21mm I/D pipe, each approx 25mm long. These collars were clamped to the rack using a new jubilee clip and now when turning the wheel, the collars take the force of the movement and the jubilee clip just holds the collars in place. I can also feel a nice solid stop to the movement through the steering wheel - another job done.

Up until this point, the brake pedal seemed to have a lot of travel before any sort resistance is felt through the pedal. Reading up on this, I thought there may have been air trapped inside the brake switch or the master cylinder could be faulty. With some help, each corner was bled manually using the pedal and opening/closing each bleed nipple in turn. There were quite a few air bubbles in the system which came out during this process. The pedal itself needed minor adjustment on the stop as some of the travel was just slack before the rod makes contact inside the cylinder. The combined result is a much more positive feeling pedal.

Whilst working on the car, I noticed the flasher making a click noise ever few seconds. This only happens with the ignition on and all indicator and hazard switches turned off and when the click noise is heard, all bulb remain off. I'm going to try some contact cleaner in the indicator switch to see if this helps and also check the earth points. If this doesn't work I really hope I don't have to start stripping the loom out!