Day 34 – 29/4/11 – 1/5/11 Another bank holiday? Really?

Bank holiday weekend and time to get a move on with the car build. I had spoken to Ben earlier in the week who told me that I should be able to hang the front frame on two of the top bolts and then fit the underside bolts.

First of all I need to get the nut plate to fit flush with the bulkhead.  So I am now the proud owner of a Dremel multi-tool with a flexible attachment.  Now the area to cut away is hard to reach with any tool and there is no way I can actually see what I am doing.  So I’m laid flat on my back in the tub with the dremel flex tool fed in the side access hole up to the nut plate area. My hand fills the fixing plate access hole and doing my best impression of a blind dentist.  I’m having feel my way, without slicing my fingers on the cutting bit, and work out in my mind’s eye just what I’m actually cutting.  It took three attempts before the plate would actually fit in line with the holes.

To hold the nut plate in place I put a couple of bolts through the back of the nut plate and put the plate in place putting the bolts through the bulk head and through the front end plate.  Once I had a couple of bolts through the correct way I was able to remove the backward bolts.

With the nut plate now fitting as it was supposed to I decided to have an attempt at fixing the last two front frame bolts on the underside of the tub.  I removed all but two of the bulkhead bolts and slackened them off as much as I dared. Set the bolts in the tub to drop as the holes became aligned (I balanced a lump hammer on the bolt so that it would fall through).  Then with much sweat and applying pressure I finally managed to get the bolts to drop. But when it came to tightening the bulk head nuts I couldn’t get it to line up.  I tried again with more than two bolts but couldn’t get them to line up enough to screw in the nut plates.


It was then it hit me. When the engine is mounted there will be a couple of hundred kilos of weight on the frame.  That should be enough to bring the holes into alignment hopefully.  That in mind I fitted the nyloc nuts to the back of the four nut plates leaving them loose for now.

So back to the roll cage following Ben’s advice I took the seat belts out of storage and presented them to the roll cage.  Now there is a concern regarding the seatbelts.  Regulations state that the belts need to have and “E” rating on the label.  My seat belts are 12 years old so I might have to replace them.  It looked like a tight fit so I figured I will need some assistance.

 

I still had the bushes to fit on the suspension arms and trailing arms.  I popped up to my parents to use the vice in my dad’s workshop.  Six of the bushes were easy and with a bit of soapy water my dad and I were able to press them in with no problems.  I moved on to the rear hub training arm bushes which after a couple of attempts I found was easy enough to use a piece to stub bar, a metal plate, a few spread washers and nuts to “pull” the bushes into place.

The outstanding bushes for the sub-frame car mount have finally arrived.  The bushes weren’t unreasonable but the cost of shipping them over was extortionate and I was still charged even more by the courier for import tax.  But at least I’m not held up anymore.  I will need to press then into place with the press at work though.

 

My brother Drew was up from London and popped in to give me a hand.  He’d given me a set of ratchet ring spanners for my birthday so I put him to work with them tightening the nylocs on the nut plates I had left loose.  Then we went on to the roll cage fastening the seatbelts on to the bar and we realised unless I raise the pads by an inch there was no way these were going to fit.

For the next hour we tried to get the circlip out of the rear differential unit with pliers, screwdrivers failing badly.  We still found a couple more pieces of the mystery spring that came out with the drive shaft.