24th April 2010 - Brake Pipes

Fitted the brake pipes today with no real problems. Slightly nervous about the task having read tales of kinked expensive-to-replace pipes, but they bent to shape quite easily with just thumb pressure. The most difficult was the short pipe from the master cylinder to the brake pressure switch t-piece, the most time-consuming the long pipe under the car. Still managing with the chassis the right way up and now can't see it being necessary to turn it over..... although we may yet come unstuck!

Also fitted the loom attachment points (rivetted on hooks to tie cable ties to), except for the ones at the back for which the pictures in the manual are rubbish and taken with the chassis upside down. I'll have another look at it next time as there aren't many places to run the cables.

Couldn't resist jumping ahead slightly and trial fitting the front wishbones to make sure they fit (see picture). Proper fitting of these will be done by Matthew in the next session even though the following (in theory, preceeding) tasks are still to be done:

Fit rear chassis loom mountings, fit loom (unpacked it to see what it looks like and quickly put it away again!), bend and fit rigid fuel pipes, fit aluminium panels to the sides of the car.

April 9th & 10th 2010 - Panels & Pedals

Starting to make really good progress now. All the panels are on except the sides (left off to allow easier turning over of the chassis if necessary) and tunnel top (to allow access to fit the propshaft). As suspected, we did have to cut a tab each side of the rear panel to accomodate the "new" chassis tube and then bend the panel in an S-shape to get it in. The build manual said that the chassis should be flipped to fit the floorpan, but we managed ok doing this from underneath. We may even attempt the brake and fuel lines (the next job) with the car the right way up thanks to the access afforded by our adjustable trestles.

Matthew also fitted the remaining pedals, along with the clutch cable (we worked out it is a cable clutch!) and throttle cable. He also fitted the three brake union "T" pieces and the brake pressure switch with no problems, although we had to guess the tightness for the latter as our torque wrench doesn't have a setting low enough.

2nd April 2010 - More Panels

MUCH better progress today. The new tools, and particularly the harder drill bits (5% cobalt from Amazon) and right-angle drill attachment made a huge difference. Both inner tunnel panels were fitted, along with the drivers footrest panel (once I'd realised the footrest protrudes into the tunnel). Matthew fitted the brake master cylinder and pedal. Spent about 20 mins looking for the clutch master cylinder, but now suspect the car has a cable clutch (this is not made clear anywhere, and even seems amibiguous when reviewing the list of supplied parts!).