Monday, December 19, 2011

Day72 - A fellow builder

I received a call on Saturday evening from Stuart a fellow Murtaya builder who was coming up to see his in-laws and was I available to meet and go over the car build for a couple of hours. I said I’d love to, sent him my address and at 1:30 Sunday afternoon Stuart put his head over the fence.
Stuart wasn’t as far in with his build due to his relocation from Ireland to Bristol. But as he was going to face the same problems I’m facing shortly with wiring etc. we both had questions and solutions we could talk through.  One of the things he couldn’t work out was the steering knuckle.  The modified shaft which was supposed to be extended 90mm but Stuart’s appeared to be longer from the photo’s he had taken.  We compared the photo’s against my steering link and the appeared to be about 50 mm difference.  No wonder he was struggling.  A minor problem the guys at MSC will soon correct I’m sure.
The next question was the rear brake pipes.  I went through Grahams suggestion of mounting the pipe on the inner wing behind the shock and spring and then clipping it back to the Diff nose mount. However my preference was to run the pipe along the trailing arm of the suspension from the diff nose bracket to the shock which has a brake pipe mounting point on the back of the shock and then to the brake calliper.  This keeps the pipe away from the wheel and minimises the range of flex movement in the pipe.  Stuart agreed with my idea.  Both options are viable and secure.  In fact looking at the donor car the brake flexes were in a similar configuration to Graham’s suggestion.  But they were removable flexes on to hard pipes.

We went on to discuss the engine bay wiring loom. The problem with the wiring looms that I had discovered.  I had spoken to Ben at MSC about mating the engine bay connections to the rest of the loom (there are 4 multi-pole plugs to connect) It would appear because I had an ABS variety Donor car the wiring loom in the engine bay was different to anything they had worked on in the shop.  So Stuart and I looked into options.  My original thought of routing it to an existing hole which took it above the exhaust down pipe has a problem the connections on the interior loom were on the other side of the steering column. I thought about extending the rear loom but that would mean the internal fuse board would have to be moved above the heater.  I pulled the inner wings out of the garage loft and clamped them in place to see what space was available.
We decided that a hole would be possible.  The exact location will depend on how the loom is worked around the engine sub-frame and how much spare there is to play with.
A second hole that would need cutting was the accelerator cable now because of the location of the wheel arch and the go faster pedal the cable looks like it would have to go through the inner wing.  Stuart had an idea of mounting and angled plate in a hole in the bulkhead to allow the cable an easier path.

I pointed out a number of things which will be extras that I need to buy.  Because the engine bay fuse board is now in the location where the fuel filer used to be on the donor car I couldn’t find a suitable new location for the filter unit as it is a substantial piece.  A quick check of the CBS catalogue revealed a simpler in line replacement would cost about £12 and make a much neater job.  Other items included pipe reducers for the cabin heater, as the existing pipes are larger than the fittings on the heater matrix.  The relays I was going to use for the hazard warning switch. Trimming the front windscreen frame to allow the screen to fit because the top corner radi needed to be shorter.
All in all we had about 3 hours picking up points from each other, swapping stories and discussing options – I thoroughly enjoyed it.  But by the time Stuart left I was freezing cold and with work tomorrow I tided up and put all the toys away.

No comments:

Post a Comment