Saturday 25 February 2012

Manufacturers plate

Four months since last update, the main reason for which is explained below....

There are only a couple of jobs left to do, one of which being fitting the manufacturers plate
.
The manufacturers plate is a requirement of the IVA test and has to show the VIN number and the kit car manufacturer, which in my case is MK Sportscars.
I ordered this plate directly from MK as I thought it would look neater than my attempts at stamping my own. When you order something in October, you usually expect the item to turn up in the same year. But after four months of waiting, numerous phone calls and emails to MK chasing up the delivery and still no sign of it and being £20 worse off for the experience, I got fed up with them so ended up sourcing one elsewhere.

Here is the plate I had made, I'm really pleased with how it looks.


Now the manufacturers plate is done, I've sent off the IVA forms and the payment made, just waiting the hear from the test center with some proposed dates. Currently feeling a little nervous and quite excited at the same time!

Misc jobs in no particular order:

The IVA test requires a full tank of fuel so I've been filling up a 5 litre can from the petrol station on my way into work and transferring this in to the indy when I get home. Upon opening the garage door one night last week I walked into a waft of petrol fumes and a puddle under the tank. This turned out to be the thread seals on the pre-pump filter which has now been corrected. After fixing this, the tank was brimmed yet more petrol ended up on the floor, this time for another reason - seems my breather hose isn't high enough. Unfortunately I hadn't any more 8mm hose so I've ordered some more and plan to sort the breather out over the weekend.

I received an OMP steering wheel boss for christmas and have since bought an OMP Trencento wheel from YBracing. This will be installed after the IVA test.

I've also bought some polycarbonate sheet which I'll use to make an aeroscreen.

The engine had developed a slight misfire and it turned out it was dropping the crank signal every so often. After talking to Phil at Extra-Efi again, we identified the tacho to be the main cause. Phil did explain what was happening but I can't claim to understand it! - something to do with earths... A small module which connects between the Megasquirt ECU and the tacho was installed and this resolved the missing crank signals and the engine is now running smooth again.

I bought a 100mm polystyrene ball used for modelling purposes and have been using this in the evenings to check radii over the car and add trim where needed. So far, all I've needed to do is add some U trim to the holes in the side panels where the front wishbones pass through.