April 21st 2012 - Moving Day

It finally arrived - the day to move the Westfield back to our house from the garage where it has changed from a pile of parts into something resembling a car.  Hopefully, this will mean faster progress on the diminishing but still significant list of jobs.  I'll let the photographs tell the story of the move:

First time out of the garage this year

Luckily, the rain held off

No brakes & nowhere to attach a winch = push!

Loaded easily into a ideal trailer

In the garage at home - looks small next to a mini!
Note "mezzanine" floor for Matthew's go kart

Not quite as much space, but should still be easy enough to work on

March 24th 2012 - Getting ready to move

We've decided that we stand a much better chance of getting some momentum going on the build again if we move the car to our house.  Using my parents large garage was invaluable in the early stages when there were loads of parts, including the body, to store, but now the effort of getting over there (25 miles each way) and constant requests to run errands once there has made it unworkable.

The task for today, therefore, was to prepare the car to be moved.  This meant:

• Fastening down the scuttle
• Removing yet-to-be-fitted parts from inside the car
• Securing loose wiring
• Cutting the seat mounting bolts down to a reasonable length (for ground clearance whilst being moved onto a trailer)
• Cleaning the dust off the bodywork (not strictly necessary, but made me feel better!)

That done, and still some daylight left, I decided to fit the passenger seat, partly so there's some visible progress and partly because the seat's a pain to store.  It also adds to the deception that its almost finished!


"Sport Turbo" seats look great!



Seats in, bodywork looking shiny, car ready to move.

December 24th 2011 - New Seat Belts

The kit came with the standard inertia reel seatbelts which we'd already half fitted, but we quickly realised the upgraded seats with the cutout below the headrest would look far better with some four-point harnesses.  These duly arrived for Mark's birthday and are ORANGE TRS items from Great British Sportscars at little more than half the price of Westfield-supplied belts.  No real work on the car then, just five minutes away from a family Christmas-eve lunch to fit the driver's side top mounting bolts:

The orange colour was Matthew's choice - we think it look s good

December 3rd 2011 - Indicator

This time last year there was deep now on the ground, but we didn't manage to take full advantage of the fine weather as we only go about an hour's work in amongst the distractions associated with the car being in the garage of elderly parents!

We did manage to get one of the nosecone-mounted indicators on though.  It was, for once, a straightforward task involving marking and drilling three holes in the same way as we did for the fog and reversing lights: a big one in the middle for the grommet, smaller 5.5mm ones either side for the mounting bolts.  Once done, it was simply a mattter of bolting the housing on and riveting the light unit to it using small 3.3mm rivets. Easy!

Riveting the light unit to the bracket

Finished!

November 19th 2011 - Reversing and Fog lights

Having added the remaining connectors at home, we returned to fit them.  We'd worked out that the grommets supplied with the kit would be too big to fit between some of the mounting lugs, so bought some 25mm versions from B&Q, which turned out to be ideal.

Having seen the "A Racing Car is Born" DVD, where the guy doesn't fit his SVA/IVA stuff until after the build and regrets it, we dug out the brackets to make the reversing at fog lights sit vertical (a legal requirement).  We had to enlarge the central hole in these as they were not designed for the connector to pass through (and were starting to wonder whether we'd made the right decision on pre-fitting the connectors).



Rear of reversing light showing IVA bracket, grommet and new connector

That done, we masked up the area where the lights were to go and measured up (several times) to make sure the lights would be level with the main rear light units and symmetrical with each other.  We then chain drilled and filed the 25mm grommet holes and the smaller ones for the mounting lugs.

Masked (hurriedly), marked, drilled and filed ready to accept the reversing light

Then followed 4 or 5 trial fittings to cut the right size slot in the to of the IVA bracket to prevent it fouling the grommet.  It seems like a lot of effort to avoid the pain of fitting the connectors in situ, but should make it a lot easier should they need to be replaced.

Reversing light viewed from above. Cut out to provide clearance for grommet clearly visible



The finished job is pleasing, but belies the amount of effort put in!



October 2011 - Lighting connectors

To make some "easy" progress, we connected up the headlights.  This involved fixing a connector block to the metal spade-like connectors on the end of each wire - easy enough.  Spurred on by this, we decided to do the same for the rear lights, but this was more difficult because it involved removing an existing connector, adding the spade-like connectors (which need crimping) then pulling them into a connector block.  This was not easily carried out within the wheelarch and with an old set of pliers, so a different approach was needed. 

This approach was to take the light units (including the fog light, reversing light and front indicators) home and fit the connectors there.  This has the advantage of being sure of a good connection (things are usually easier sitting on a sofa than when hunched under a car), but has the disadvantage of needing larger hols in the bodywork to fit the connector through.  We did manage to get one light unit wired up OK though:

Rear near side wheelarch showing cable coming from rear lights

September 2011 - Gearbox filler

I'm sure we did slightly more in September, but it must have been fairly unproductive, as the only photo I have is of the hole we made in the passenger footwell to allow easier access to the gearbox filler plug/hole.  We'll make a hinged cover for it later.  Unfortunately I didn't have an allen key big enough, so had to buy a "proper" set.  However, the plug still wouldn't undo - reading up on this afterward I found that they are typically VERY tight - I'll have to use a longer bar to turn it.