Small Things Under the Hood

Finally a morning working on the car!

Sorted the wiring on the dash. After reading my previous post, colleague builder Iain sent me a message saying that his car has a dangling purple wire on the digidash side. Armed with that, I confirmed that the other dangling was a match with the sole one from the loom and the dash is fully wired! THANK YOU, Iain! Can't thank you enough for these helps you give me!

Then I cut two lengths of wire to extend from the loom to where I'll have the brake oil pressure sensors (lids of the master cylinders). My current cylinder caps don't have sensors but I'll eventually get around to get some replacements, so the wire will be needed. And since I was messing with wires...

Third task was to make sure I had hood and scuttle on their final position. Still had to sand a bit the hood near the airbox to get a perfect fit. When I was happy with it, marked the chassis rails through the scuttle and then removed the parts and drilled.

Final task was to get the bulkhead in position and drill a few holes through it into the chassis to hold it down. It was until now in place only with the two bolts that hold the accelerator peddle to the chassis. Removed the bulkhead, enlarged the holes on the chassis and inserted rivnuts. Bulkhead back in and fixed down with bolts through the rivnuts.

Had to call it a day. Very happy with what I did, got rid of lots of small things. Next is fixing the bulkhead to the scuttle, the scuttle to the chassis and dash back at the scuttle. Then clamps for the hood.

Wiring, the Hated

Did I ever say electrics is the least fun part of this? Spent the small session today doing just that. The hour sums up to 3 cables laid down.

The loom caters for indicators on the scuttle. With new regulations (or interpretation of), the indicators must now be on the outside of the front wheel arches. Cut two bits of wire to go from the original connectors to near the arches, inside the engine bay. Then created a "v"-shaped bit that connects to the front indicators earth to be used by the ones on the wheel arches, because I did not have enough cable to pull it from near the scuttle. Placed a couple of tie-wraps and tucked the wires inside the convoluted tube I have on the bay to make it look less messy.

Then I still started looking at the wires behind the dash, but had to leave before archiving anything. The problem is that the loom that exits the Digidash has 2 dangling wires and the car loom only has one dangling. I have to figure out what is missing and what to connect where.

I don't like electrics because I don't understand them well. I don't like because I'm slightly colour-blind and distinguishing tones (pink and purple; black or dark-blue; ...) to make connections is not fun.

Next tasks... Probably in the order I need to sort them... Fix the wiring on the dash; attach the front wings with the indicators and connect them to the loom; get the scuttle fixed on the chassis, the bulkhead on the chassis and the scuttle on the bulkhead; attach the rubber catches to the hood and sides to hold the hood in place. Then, move to the rear of the car!

More Hood and Tunnel Done

Nice work session. First task was to finish enlarging the hood hole to provide clearance for the airbox to come out. Eventually got done. Some trimming and polish on the hole borders and it was time to move on. The more I look to it, the more I want to try to modify the airbox to have a front-facing hole for the air to enter instead of the two original air entries that now sit under the hood.

With the hood sitting as final, marked where on the chassis I need to drill to fix the scuttle. Then removed it and started work to close the tunnel. Enlarged the previously marked bit of the tunnel panel. Tried it and it worked fine. Noticed how much of my foot protrudes into the tunnel. My foot there is safe, thanks to the prop catcher I added on that area. So, I just needed something to prevent my foot going too much inside and water coming in from there. Created a guard from a bit of scrap ally and used rivnuts to attach it to the tunnel cover. Tested it not only to check if my foot moved correctly but also if the part slid into place with the guard or it had to be attached afterwards. Since it slid with the guard, applied some plastic on the area to prevent water from getting in and closed the tunnel.

While closing the tunnel I noticed that there is still one wire under the dash that comes from the loom and connects nowhere. And two from the digidash not connected anywhere. I believe these are related to the indicators, but unsure. Something to tackle later.
But next steps are to put in the wires from the loom to near the headlights, for the front wing indicators. Then fix the scuttle into place and attach the hood catchers to the hood and car.

Hood Continued

Most of today's session was on the hood. But before I trial-fitted the tunel side plate and tested using the peddle with the new hole. It is a lot better, I can accelerate without stepping also on the brakes. The only problem is if I push back the foot too much and then try to move it to the brakes, it seems to get a bit caught. Marked for further cutting.

Then trial fitted the hood. Marked for more cutting and trimming and went through a few iterations of fitting, marking, cutting, fitting. In the end, my time was up and the hood still requires a very small trim on one side. It already fits but not perfectly. Anyway, left the part on the car and first took these pictures. Scuttle is also just placed there, not attached.

Hood and Tunnel

First time on the car in a long time... And with a new year's resolution: to get the car on a track this year.

Fit loselly the scuttle and sticked some isolation sponge on the nose and scuttle so that I could put the hood in place. Then, spent some time measuring where I should cut the hood so that the airbox can protrude out. After some time, it was roughly measured for a first cut. I'm sure after this one I'll be doing a lot of trimming to get it right because it is really hard to mark where to cut from underneath.

Also measured the tunnel cover bit near the peddles, that I had to remove to be able to drive because my feet are too large. With the measured parts, went to the storage room and did some cutting. The tunnel bit drilled the corners and cut the rest with the saw. The hood was done with the cutting disk on the dremmel.

I did not have time to trial fit and check what more needs cutting, that will have to be done next session.

Nosecone Is ON!

As planned, spent the initial period of this week's car time looking into the indicator's electrics. In the end, destroyed 1h30m of work that I was not happy with and will wire the wing indicators from the loom terminals near the scuttle, using long cables. And the nosecone indicators are plugged where they should, in the front end of the loom.

Liberated from that hurdle, prepared the nosecone to be fit. Had to file slightly the holes on the fiberglass to match them with the ones on the chassis and tape the indicator wires so that they would be somewhere I could reach. After that, just fit the thing, a bit more filing and bolted down the 4 bolts. It took the doomed-headed-squared-oddities near where the hood will fit and two that look like wood bolts with washers through the fiberglass and chassis, near the headlight beams.

I'm very happy with how the car ir looking. After taking the photo placed some bubblewrap over the fiberglass, since I cover the car when not working on it and don't want the cover to scratch the fiberglass.
Next week will be attaching the scuttle and marking the hood for cutting (because of the airbox).

Aeroscreen and Electrics

Started this session by fitting the aeroscreen on the scuttle. Not as hard as I thought it would be. Took the time to also drill the four holes on the bottom that will bolt down to the chassis.

After this was done, trial-fitted the nosecone and marked for drilling the chassis near the headlights. Drilled the holes and then spent some time working on the electrics.
I believe I mentioned when I attached the headlights to the loom that it was temporarily done (butchered). These are now correctly connected to the loom with bullet terminals on the wires.
Also looked on how I'll do the indicators but did not start the work. The problem here is that, when I bought the car, there were indicators on the nosecone, the sides of the scuttle and the rear. Since then IVA rules changed a bit and now I need to have them on the nosecone, front wheel wings and rear. This means that the loom terminals near the scuttle must be abandoned and the ones in the front used for both nosecone and wings indicators. Since I don't have a big variety of connector types, I have to be a bit creative doing this. The plan is drawn, just need to do it before fitting the nosecone (for ease of access to the wires)

It was a good session and I'm eager for the next, since I'll end up with the nosecone on the car, if all goes well. Maybe even with the scuttle too!