and also......

the filler cap was fitted

This weekends antics - Body work

So this weekends task has been to make the body work a fully permenant attachment, i now hope that the body work doesnt have to go on and off as many times as it has done this weekend.

the main thing with the body work is patience, and making sure every thing lines up, and don't be afraid to cut slots into things like the nose and scuttle to ensure you get the best fit, this will give you the room for adjusment needed, and as you use repair washers to hold the body work making the hole bigger isn't going to cause problems.

the longest time spent was ensuring the bonnet and nose cone lined up pefectly where the pins go from the bonnet into the nose cone, a bit of trimming was needed here and there, and more around where the nose fits into the bonnet. once happy with how the nose and bonnet lined up the holes were drilled off into the nose cone and bolted into place, now with the use of the slots made with the dremmel some fine tuning was then needed to get the front shut lines correct.

once happy with the top the bottom was then secured along the chassis with 20 large headed rivets, now every thing starts to feel very secure and soild.

next stage was to then get the rear secured up onto its mounting blocks, now at this stage the car has been placed back on axle stands to allow room underneath to do the riveting and be able to take the wheels off to align up the rear arches. now the rear needs to come up a fair old amount but this is easily done, with the aid of an assistant and a trolly jack it tends to sit where it wants, and then you need to check measurement between the center of the rear hub to the arch front and rear, now the manual states that these should be within 10-20mm but with a bit of pulling and pushing i managed to get them to within 2-3mm. happy with that the rear was the drilled off and and riveted up with 6 large head rivets. there was a small amount of distorsion in the body underneath but this was not a problem.

now things are starting to take shape and it was time to start hacking some holes into the body work, first up was the exhaust system.
to do this 2 holes were needed, one large one at the front where the exhaust exits the body work and a smaller hole at the back where the mount goes through into a M10 boss on the chassis, now whilst the body work was off i made a masking tape template around the exhaust section, when the body work was placed over and the masking template was used to find the center so a hole can be hole sawed in.
The rear hole was first pilot drilled from the inside out, and then opened up to allow the bush to pass through the body, every thing else was then bolted up with out to much hassle. the exhaust needed to twisting to get it to sit right.

Current standings as of 24th nov

i have lots more still yet to add, but just an update of my current tasks in hand. the body work and arches have been fitted, next step is to get the exhaust cut out in the body work. i have now trimmed the scuttle to fit round the dash hoop, i ended up buying a dremel to do the task, and wish i had bought one sooner to be truful, also done the cut out for the steering column.
currently trying to source some smaller grommets to go through the scuttle with the wiring loom, as the mazda ones are a little on the large side, once i have sourced these i can get one with getting the loom into the engine bay,

other parts currently in the production process are a new intake system for the air filter as i am doing away with the standard air box, mounts to move the front indicators up next to the headlights, which will keep the IVA man happy to forfill the 45 degree viewing angle, these will only be fitted for the IVA then moved back once its passed.

Prop shaft will be shortened next month, and it seems that the measurement that westfield supply for this is correct.

Just a little picture.....

...to show how far out the engine mouting bracket was on the passenger side, and shows where i had to re-position the mount.

Cooling system

Next up, Rad and fan fitting, plus pipe work.

Again this part of the build went fairly easy, first jon was fit the upper rad mounts, these needed to be drilled and rivited, first job was to shorten some dome head stainless steel bolts to fit into the radiator mounts, approx 2 at 12mm and 2 at 16mm, the rad was then fitted up to the 2 lower brackets which are part of the chassis, this then gave me a natural sitting position for the rad meaning i could then place on the top monts and get them rivited into position. once i was happy with its position, i could then fit the fan, the lower fixings needed 2 M6 rivnuts fitted into the chassis, and i then made up some 14mm nylon spacers to place behind them, the top fan mount could then drilled and rivited in the same way as the radiator mounts. now i offered the raditor back up and found that the fan cowling was in contact with the rad, to get round this i used a sharp stanley knife blade to cut away the pastic from the front of the cowling, taking away about 12 mm of plastic meaning that i now had plenty of room but still having the fan close enough to the rad.

Next was to connect up the pipe work, the rubber hoses bends for this are cut out of 1 pipe supplied by westfield, for the top hose connection you have one 45 degree for the connection to the radiator, and a 90 degree bend forom the outlet of the engine, now on trial fitting up these, i found a slight problem, the outlet on an 1800cc engine faces the other way to a 1600cc meaning that the 90 degree bend was not tight enough, as the angle is more like 135 degrees, this meant that as i connected every thing up, the bend just kinked in half and squashed, so to get round this a 135 degree bend in red was ordered from SFS silicone hoses, with a bit of trimming fitted perfectly, now i also had to shorten the ally pipe that connects these 2 hoses and re-swage the end.

the bottom outlet on the rad is in a great position which puts it pratically in line with the lower part of the chassis, now westfield supply a S bend silicone hose, but no matter what you do this will still come into contact with the chassis, to get round this problem i have got my hands on some sticky backed rubber to attach to the chassis rail and hopefully this shouldnt wear through the lower pipe.

Hand brake system

Sorry for the poor picture quality.

With the diff and hubs all fitted the handbrake was next on the agenda, once i had sorted out the mouting bracket issue for the cables ( see previous post under 'issues to date' ) the rest of the job was fairly easy, the cables were fitted through the bracket and clipped in and then run to the brake calipers, a bit of spare coolant pipe was cable tide around the cables to provide protection where they come into contact with the lower wishbone.

The lever was then bolted up onto the mount at the rear which is pre-fitted to the chassis and the front holes were lined up with the brace in the chassis which i needed to drill through to bolt the lever up, to get the hole positions to be able to drill through from the passenger side of the car i took a few measurements and with the aid of a plumb line some pilot holes were drilled which were pretty close to where they needed to be, once happy i then opened up the holes to 8.5mm, now the manual says to drill these holes to 6mm but i prefered to use the bigger bolts, now to get a flush finish within the passenger side of the trans tunnel i then counter sunk the holes to allow the bolts to sit nice and flush, that way i get no horrible lumps in the carpets. then the spacers were fitted and every thing was bolted and connected up nice and tight.

Now reading a few others blogs, it appears that in some cases the cable that connects the 2 cable ends to the lever has been to long, meaning that when the hand brake was applied the cable was not able to fully apply the hand brake tightly, meaning that they have had to shorten this cable, luckily it seems that i dont have this issuse and still have plenty of adjustment left to tighten the cable if needed.

Issues to date.

Thought i would just add a little section to cover a few problems that i have so far found with the build:-

Brake light switch mounting plate missing - this was not welded to the chassis during production (maybe the welder miss placed this, or had decided to use it to prop up a wobbly bench, who knows?!) To over come this a Rivnut was fitted to bolt the swtich, brass T piece too. fairly easy to over come.

Hand brake plate in the center of the chassis with the 2 holes in for the cables is the wrong gauge - The angle thickness according to westfield should be 10swg (3.2mm) but a bit of 4swg (5.8mm) angle had found its way onto my chassis, (the welder was having a bad day so it seems?) so by the time you added the paint thickness it came up at 6mm, this causes a problem as the mounts on the cables do not pass through far enough to allow them to be clipped in. to over come this i had to get hold of a 26mm drill bit, and drill out the holes in the bracket about halfway through the material to create a recess for the cables to sit in, and pass through enough to fit the clips.

Steering rack brackets out of alingment - a common issue it seems, where the bracket centers are to wide enough to allow the steering rack rubbers to fit within the mounts. to over come this, some of the rubber was cut away from from the passenger side mount.

Paint quality - This in general i have found to be pretty poor. i am currently on my second set of wishbones on the rear, second set of headlight brackets, the engine mounts to the chassis i ended up having re coated myself as i have been getting fed up with sending parts back to westfield. Now the bit that really concerns me, is that when the paint has flaked off the parts, none of these parts have actually seen the inside of a blast cabinet, let alone a single grain of shot blast media. as the paint flakes off it reveals unblasted rusty metal, which means the paint has nothing to key to. Now i only bring this up because if you looked in the brochure for the chassis kits, westfield actually charge you extra for 'grit blast and epxoy coating of chassis and wishbones' when clearly none of the parts have been blasted, so i feel this is little bit naughty if the grit blasting hasn't been done when they are charging you for it?? and obviously if the parts have been blasted the piant would stay on?! Just some thing to bear in mind!!

Modified steering column wrong length - this was sent back to westfield for them to modify FOC, when returned to me it turns out the the column is about 50mm too short, this means another part needs to be sent back, now after seeing that Graham during his build has asked for just a plain splined end so he could get his modified his self, i thought this would be easier for me as i could do it myself. After a chat with the guys at westfield, they refused to send me the splined section, and denied suppying Graham with just the spine. it would have just saved a lot of time and hassle if i could do it myself