26th March 2011 - Rear lights and more cooling

We felt like an easy and visible job to start the day, so fitted the main rear lights.  This was relatively straightforward, as the rear wheelarches have a pre-shaped area, so no measuring required.  It was simply a case of masking off the area on each side, then marking and drilling the four corner mountings and a larger one in the middle for the cables to pass through.  The latter we made slightly larger than suggested, at 7mm, but this was still only just large enough.

Near side lights fitted, off side in progress

Rear lights fitted, Matthew resting!

We then moved onto the cooling pipes.  The water pump to radiator pipes were done a while ago, so we did the next most obvious set - the thermostat to the radiator top connection.  This involved two cut sections of flexible hose and a long J-shaped aluminium pipe which will be fastened to the chassis when all the pipes are in place.

Radiator to thermostat connections

We then got a bit stuck, as it is not at all obvious which bits go on next.  This is not helped by the manuals:  Of the Zetec-engined insstructions the 1800 Zetec is obviously different and the Aerorace seems to vary at this point.  A call to the factory on Monday will be needed to work out where the remaining parts go:

A few cooling pipes left, but not obvious where they all go!

13th March 2011 - Headlights

We weren't planning any car building this weekend due to other committments.  However, one of those commitments involved being where the car is and Matthew wanted to do something, so he ended up putting the headlights on whilst I was drinking tea in the house.  Not much in terms of build time, but quite a big step visually:


Matthew fitting headlamp



Visible progress - looks like you could start it up and go for a drive!

5th March 2011 - Exhaust Manifold

Another short day after a later than usual start, but ending with the completion of one of the jobs we hadn't been looking forward to - the cutting of a big hole in the side of the bodywork for the exhaust manifold to pass through.  Unfortunately, neither of the manuals gave details about where the hole should be, but we found the details and pictures in the "Aerorace" manual (as that model uses the same engine).  We started by masking off the area and marking up an the area indicated in the manual. Then, probably due to our nervousness about the job, chain drilled a hole about half as big as it needed to be.  Several hours of careful filing and trial fitting later, we had a hole which matched the one we drew at the start almost exactly!  With careful twisting, the manifold fitted through the hole, just, but when in place had plenty of space between it and the bodywork.  The gap even looks a little too big, but it definitely wouldn't have fitted through otherwise: