Side Panels

I've spent the last couple of weeks fabricating and fitting my side panels.
These are made from 1mm ali sheet (1050A H14 grade, which is fairly soft, so easy to bend).
I cut them out with a jigsaw, and bent them to shape using a combination of clamps, lengths of wood, and a rubber mallet.
They're fixed to the chassis using sikaflex ebt and rivets.
They look green in the pics as they still have a protective film on them.
I'm no panel beater, so the finish isn't amazing, they'll be no doubt that it's a homemade car!

Fuel Tank

I recieved my fuel tank this week.
It was made by K4KEV from the Haynes forum.  It's a bit taller than the standard book tank to give some extra range and should hold about 7.5 gallons if my calculations are correct.
The only downside was that it's a bit of a tight fit, and was a bugger to get in!
I had to trim my rear roll bar mounts down, then persuade the tank in with a rubber mallet.
A nice addition Kev made to the tank was to add a pot to the bottom of the tank where the fuel feed comes from to reduce the chance of running the pump dry under hard accelleration.  It's also baffled inside to reduce fuel slosh.
Overall I'm pretty happy with it :)

A floor in the plan

Last weekend I fitted the floor to my chassis.
I used 2mm aluminium sheet, 5251 H22 grade.
The sheet was glued using Sikaflex EBT sealant, and riveted on a ~2" pitch with 4mm aluminium rivets.

Pause for Thought

Had a new addition to the family this week, so the build has been paused while I'm up to my elbows in nappies, milk, and baby sick!
Hopefully get back on it in a couple of months...

Tranny Lines

I made a start on my fuel and brake line routing through the tranny tunnel this evening.
I've used 30x3mm ally strip riveted to the chassis.
Attached to it are some natty tripple clips I found which are designed for 2x 8mm pipes, and 1x 4.8mm, which is perfect for the two fuel lines and rear brake line.

EDIT: I've been asked a few times where I got the clips from, here's the details:

Manufacturer: Jetpress
Part# CAC446-NAT
Supplier: http://www.comdir.co.uk/

California Reaming

The front wishbones supplied by Saturn use a standard MX5 lower ball joint, which is great, but a Ford Transit drag link at the top, which isn't quite so perfect as it's taper is a bit big to fit in the upright.

The answer is to use a 19mm Axminster Handy Reamer, kindly loaned to me by Saturn:

An hour or so, and a sore wrist, later and job's a good 'un:

Chassis Painting

I've been out in the garage every night for the past week racing to get the chassis painted before the imminent arrival of the pitter patter of little feet.
I'm sure there'll be a few little bits to touch up here and there, but as far as I'm concerned I've now finished the chassis painting stage :)

The paint I used was Epoxy Mastic 121 from Rustbuster.  I bought a 2 litre 'chassis pack' and have used about 90% of it.  I think most of the chassis got 2 coats.
Though I would have loved to spray it on, I don't have the equipment so I used a combination of small foam gloss rollers and paint brushes.  It was very hard to get a decent finish with the brushes, so only used those where the roller couldn't reach.  The roller gave a reasonably good, slightly dimpled, finish.  Not perfect, but good enough for me, particularly as most of it won't be on view!

Time to take a break from the build for a while now, and get stuck into sleepless nights and nappy changes, safe in the knowledge my chassis won't rust away over the winter :)

Chassis Painting Prep

Today I have mostly been preparing my chassis for painting.
I started off earlier in the week cleaning the chassis using various wire brushes attached to my drill.
A bit of a tedious task!
After a tip off from another building I got a couple of these angle grinder paint remover attachments from halfords:

They didn't last long, but made light work of most of the chassis, reserving the wire brushes for the bits I couldn't reach with the grinder.
This morning I decided to degrease the whole chassis using a can of 3-in-1 degreaser, followed by a good clean with a pressure washer.

Once I'd degreased I finished off with the grinder/drill (I was probably half way through cleaning up the chassis when I degreased), then applied a coat of kurust.  A 250mm bottle was just enough to do the whole chassis:

The Kurust stuff is some kind of rust converter and for some reason turns the chassis purple!

This evenning I started the painting, but that's another blog entry.

Brackets for Rear Rollbar Stays, and Rear Brake Pipes

Just a couple of pics of my rear roll bar stay mounts and rear brake pipe mounts.
I widened the rollbar mounts from the book and added two holes rather than one.  The reason being that one roadster failed the IVA for having just one bolt per bracket as per the book. (Note the front corners of my brackets still need rounding off in the pics).

The brake pipe mounts are in a completely different place to the book as the brake pipes enter the front of the calliper on the 5 rather than (presumably) the rear on the Sierra.  I positioned mine on the top diff cage rails between the seat back and the top front wishbone mount.

Handbrake Cable Guide Version 2

Originally my handbrake cable guide looked like this:

I wasn't happy with this for three reasons:

1. The angle of it meant that the handbrake cables were pushed hard against one of the seatback chassis rails as they exited the guide, which could have caused chaffing.
2. I want to bring my fuel and brake pipes down the top left of the transmission tunnel, and I'd have to route them around the cable guide, which would be messy and a pain to do.
3. The guide plate bowed significantly when the handbrake lever was applied.

My solution was to cut the guide plate out, remove half of it, and weld it back in at a better angle with some extra support plates.
It now looks like this:

Welding Complete!

Had a productive evening in the garage tonight.
I reworked my handbrake cable guide, and welded on the rear roll bar brackets and headlight mounts, which <fanfare please> means I've just finished all the welding on my chassis! :D

I can't find my camera, so here's a couple of poor quality pics from my phone:

Make a Wish

My wishbones arrived from Saturn Sports Cars yesterday :)

I spent the evening playing around and making sure they fit.  So far so good!

The only slight issue is that the Ford Transit drag link supplied by Saturn does not fit my front hubs.
The transit drag link is supposed to be used as the top ball joint on the front, but the taper on it is much wider than the holes in my uprights.
Saturn are on the case though, so hopefully they'll come up with something.

Having the wishbones means I can now fully weld my suspension brackets into place (which had only been tacked up until now), and finalise the handbrake routing and flexible brake line mount positions.  I'm getting tantalisingly close to completing the chassis now.

Chassis Progress

The last couple of weeks have been mostly spent fettling the chassis, grinding welds down where required and reworking some of the dodgier looking welds.
The chassis is getting close to being ready for painting now, and last week I purchased the paint to spur me on - a 2l pack of Epoxy Mastic 121 from www.rust.co.uk.
Last week I also added plates for the handbrake cable stop, and diff front mount.  I'm still not 100% sure how I'm going to mount the front of the diff, but the 6mm plate I added should give me a few options.

A while ago I applied for a VIN number from my local DVLA office.  One of the members on the Haynes forum very kindly machined it into a strip of 3mm steel for me:

I cut the front out of one of the chassis members (U6), and welded the plate in flush, then ground/sanded the edges down to blend it in:

Radiator Brackets

Just a quick pic of the mounting points I added to the front of the chassis to mount the radiator on:

The radiator in question is from a 1983-1990 VW Polo.  It has two 'pegs' in the bottom that will sit in the two lower brackets.
At the top I will make two brackets that will fix to the front of the rad, then wrap around and bolt to the two little plates I added at the top of the front frame.

Seat Rails Revisited

A while back I welded some box section rails into the chassis to mount my seat runners / seats on.
Last night I added some crush tubes to prevent them, well crushing, and to keep the IVA man happy.
I got hold of a length of steel tube with an inside diameter of ~9.5mm (which is a nice fit for the M8 seat bolts) and a wall thickness of ~1.5mm.
I widened the holes in the rails out to 14mm, then put a section of the tube through each one, and fully welded them either side:

I then ground them flat to the chassis rails on both sides:

Quick Update

No pics I'm afraid, but just a few notes on what I've been doing lately.
Tonight I removed the engine from the chassis now I have the mounts and steering sorted.
I've also removed everything from the frame except the diff (I still need to figure out the front diff mount).
Recently I've added some brackets to the chassis for the radiator, tacked the propshaft together at a suitable length, and added some extra bracing to the engine bay.

Steering Column, part 2

I've been suffering from a severe case of the man-flu for the past week so haven't done much on the build...
I managed to brave a few hours in the garage today though and have (possibly) finalised my steering design.
After lots of playing around I've decided to keep it much the same as my first attempt, but have managed to drop the height of the steering wheel by an inch or so.  Ideally I would have liked it another inch or so lower (and possibly a couple of inches futher forward) but I can't easily acheive that without cutting a big hole in TR9, or making the steering linkages go through a rather tortuous path.
So basically all I've done is get rid of the gap I had previously left between TR9 and the column, so the column just touches it.
I did that by cutting off the top rail of the column support SW2 and replacing it with another tube a little lower.
I guess I could have just added a spacer, but it wasn't level anyway which would have forever bugged me if I had left it as it was!
Whilst I was at it I also added a little plate to TR9 with two holes in it so I can use a 38mm exhaust clamp to add a little more support for the column:

I've been wondering for a while how to link the mazda column to the escort rack and had a bit of a brainwave this weekend.  It's possibly a silly idea, and a waste of a perfectly good sierra column, but...
I started off with the MX5 steering rack linkage, which I cut down on one end:

I then dug out a Sierra colmn I had lying around, chopped it in half and mated the two together:

The Mazda end mates with the lower part of the MX5 column, and the Ford end mates with the steering rack using one of RallyDesign's Sierra-to-escort linkages:

Gearbox Mount

After quite some time pondering how to mount the gearbox to the chassis, this is what I came up with.
I'm not sure I'm altogether happy with it, but I can't think of a better way...
I started off tacking a 3mm plate into the base of the tranny tunnel, with an engine mount from a classic/original mini bolted to it:

At the rear of the gearbox are two threaded bolt holes (M10 I think).  I bolted a 3mm plate to these, and another 3mm plate to the mini mount, then with the gearbox supported where I wanted it, I tacked a couple of bits of 3mm plate into the gap.
I then unbolted it, added some sides, and fully welded it:

Here it is back in the chassis: