16th April 2011 - Roll bar

Tried to follow the Westfield helplne's instructions on how to fit the cooling system pipes today, but there's still a point where the flexible pipe would have to go at too tight an angle - we'll have to find a way of bending the pipe (another day).

Following this disappointment, we felt like doing something visible, so decided to fit the roll bar.  This was simply a matter of positioning it on some masking tape, making sure it was central and drawing round the ends.  Then came the hole saw to cut through the fibreglass, which worked well apart from creating loads of dust!  The hole through the centre has to go through the metal chassis plate as well and needs to be 12.5mm, but unfortunately ours only go to 10mm so a considerable amount of filing was needed to open up the hole.

We also repositioned the driver's seat slightly inboard as it was fouling the bodywork.
Hopefully, we'll be able to move the car to our house soon so we can make faster progress.  Only being able to work on it on the occasional Saturday, and then only getting a maximum of 4 hours actual working time out of a whole day is getting a bit frustrating.

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:

12th February 2011 - More bodywork

Not much build time today, but we did get the nosecone fitted:  Two bolts into captive nuts just in front of the bonnet (making sure it all aligns still) and another at the front lower edge onto the bracket we fitted when the radiator went on.  We bent the bracket up a bit to align better with the lower edge of the nosecone.  Nice weather then prompted a photoshoot:

Whilst the car was outside we moved things around in the garage (now there are far fewer parts to store) and vacuumed the carpet (!).  Not much progress, but while ever it keeps moving forward it WILL get finished!

5th February 2011 - Bodywork part 3

Good progress on the bodywork today.... although the photos look as though it hasn't advanced at all!  First up was the offside rear wheel arch, which seemed to go on even quicker than the first.  We then had another look at the bonnet-scuttle panel gaps and decided that any remaining misalignment would be sorted by fastening the body tub properly.  On starting that task we quickly realised that the outer bolt for the steering column bracket was preventing the off side lower edge clipping around the chassis properly, so we had to make a cut-out:

Front offside lower bodywork in place

The bodywork seemed to sit much better after that, so we fastened the upper edges in place using countersunk rivets. 
The next, time consuming step was to attach the scuttle:  The first part of this was to "find" the four rivnuts to fasten it to..... which isn't that easy when the bodywork's covering them!  Luckily we'd foreseen this problem just before attaching the body, but making the 20mm cutouts without damaging the rivnuts was a bit of a challenge.

Scuttle rivnut locations - off side

Then came the just as fiddly job of making corresponding holes in the lower edge of the scuttle and bolting through to the rivnuts - again done largely blind with a bit of guesswork thrown in.  Worked out OK in the end though, even though it was a bit time-consuming:

Offside scuttle mounting bolts

Another day done and the car looks little different, but somehow more "together" for being held by bolts and rivets rather than gravity and g-clamps!

8th January 2011 - Back in the garage - but not for long!

It doesn't seem like almost two months since we were in the garage.  The coldest December on record followed by Christmas has seen to that.  Talking of Christmas, Santa brought a set of bonnet locks, a brake bleeding kit and some Westfield goodies - good old Santa!

We eased ourselves back into car building with a nice simple task - fitting one of the rear wheelarches.  These are self-locating via blocks in the GRP and although there were fewer of these than the build manual said there should be, this didn't cause a problem.  We just spaced he fasteners equally:


Rear Wheelarch Fastenings

As suggested on the Owner's club forum, we used plastic number plate bolts purchased on eBay.  The theory is that if you bash the arches they just shear off rather than damaging the much-harder-to-replace bodyshell.  I suppose it might be true!

That was just about enough for the first visit of the year, although we did get the bonnet to align better by filing down the return edge at the rear side edges.  It may need a little more removing yet, but at least our worries about having to completely re-align the body were unfounded.