Drive shaft, Differential Rear Mounting Bolts and Gear shift mount. This weekend I need to cross these jobs off the list if I’m to get the engine in place. And I need to get everything in place and tighten it all up before that. All these jobs concerned me.
I had a cracking piece of luck I was digging through a box of nuts and bolt left over from the build of the garage. There were a few 12mm bolts. I took the one of the rear mount bolts out. They are not really bolts but studs with different gauge threads at each end. The Differential end of the stud was standard M12 thread. The collar of the bolts was exactly the right length to fit through the bush. They could have been made for the job. I tried one on the car the thread was about three turns too long. So it was out with the grinder, chop three turns off and touch it up to clean the thread. Repeating the process on the second bolt I had a sudden thought. Was the bolt made of the right stuff? Obviously bolts of different types of material can take different loads. I looked at the bolts used for mounting the engine and gearbox. The heads of the bolts carried two markings 8.8 and L. The bolts I had were 8.8 and DFL. A quick check online told me the 8.8 was the hardness rating so at least they are the same rating as the rest of the car.
I took a set of pipe grips to the second stud bolt and it came out no problem. Both bolts fitted I moved on to the drive shaft that had popped out after a slightly bodged differential rebuild where they tore the oil seal and crushed it in to the shaft splines.
I had tried numerous times to refit the shaft with the differential off the car. The circlip that should be on the shaft was still inside the diff and the advice Graham had given was fit the differential to the car and hit the hub end with a big hammer (via some wood). Now I am not a mechanic and having sheared an number of bolts dismantling the donor and belting some key parts
together has me ....hesitantly cautious.
I unbolted the suspension arms leaving the coil unit to hold the weight of the hub. Then with a block of wood on the hub I checked the alignment and gave it a couple of medium whacks with a lump hammer. I checked the diff. To my surprise it looked good. The outer cases of the shaft and diff looked as if it was in position. I gave it a couple of turns and it popped back. I tried again this time a fair bit harder, a couple of turns to check it was secure and then a final tug back. Done! Phew! With a fair amount of relief I put the suspension arms back on the hub.
Now I turned my attention back to the tunnel. I adjusted the marks I had made for the hand brake. Now happy that they were now correct I turned my attention to the hole where the pinch had been. I made up a small batch of the resin filler and pressed it on to the hole and smoothed it over. With the remainder of the resin I touched up one of the roll cage pads that I’d missed. Then while it was curing I drilled the handbrake holes and fitted the handbrake hooking in the handbrake cables and pressing in the handbrake cable grommets.
With the resin cured I looked at the gear shift rear bracket and the gear shift hole. The bracket holes weren’t a problem until I realised the brackets holes were 6.5mm and the holes on the diagram were 6.5mm but the nuts and bolts supplied were M8’s. So I opened up the bracket holes and drilled 8mm holes in the tunnel. Next was the gear stick opening. Now here checked the measurements against the drawing and noticed my centre line was drifting. There is a fixing plate that clamps the gearshift gasket to the tunnel. I put it on the tunnel in the marked positions but it looked like it was drifting off by a few millimetres. This, I suspect, is down to my measuring of the centreline with the pinch causing an obstruction and manual layup. On this occasion after a bit of debate with myself I lined it up by eye and marked out the cut line. I’d borrowed my dad’s jigsaw to do the job and after drilling a start hole managed to cut out. Towards the end it started to get a bit tough. It wasn’t until I took the blade out that I realised why. The fibreglass had literally stripped the blade of its teeth.
I spoke to Graham earlier I had laid the rear brake lines in place but there were 6 grommet on each pipe and I didn’t know how many I would need at each end before I clip them all the way down the tunnel. It turns out that I would only need 2 or maybe three all together. He also informed me that my bonnet and other GRP parts is in manufacture and hopefully he will be able to arrange a delivery date soon.
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