De Dion and Rear Suspension fitted

Rear suspension and De Dion fitted in my absence.

I can't say too much about the events here owing to Dad working on the car on his own, but he has achieved a lot! In two days he's managed to fit the rear suspension and the De Dion tube on his own. Not only that, the brake line that required bending has been done, with no crimps (I believe it was bent around a largish socket to achieve this). Amazing when you have all the parts! 

Throttle cable and pedal arm.

Derek sent us the new throttle cable, however we're still not sure if it's correct. The pic you see above is after Dad was advised to bend the throttle pedal arm rearwards to achieve the correct range of movement of the throttle butterfly valve at the other end. However, coupled with the Assembly Guide picture suggesting routing of the cable around the top of the front of the engine it isn't quite long enough. The reason I say this is because the distance of the sheath between the clip mounted to the plenum (immediately below) and the plastic clip that goes through into the pedal box (further below) defines this length. This says to us that the sheath on the cable is too short and bending the throttle pedal arm is a bit of a cheat. We're going to leave as is for now and take further advice.

Clip onto the plenum

Clip passing through into the pedal box

 One of the outstanding issues is the routing of the lambda sensor wiring to the loom. We're not liking the idea of having to drill holes in the front of the square tubing at the base of the pedal box (shown below, just above the line of rivets covered by the silver heat shielding). This is because of the potential for water to ingress and rot the tubing out from the inside. We'll have to take advice on that however.

Lambda sensor, where to route the wiring?

The wiring for the oil pressure/temp sensor from the near the modine is rather long also, however we've been told that this is normal (probably to account for the dry sump system option?) and just to tie it up.

Oil (Pressure/Temp?) sensor wiring, loads of it, where to route it? Note the primer on the tubing, (scratched in the factory).

That's it for now! Hopefully my next post will include me helping with building the car...

A frustrating couple of days

Looking over the blog it's amazing how much time has passed since my last post and just how little physical progress we have achieved. This has been in part due to my work schedule being hectic (the busy summer season means it’s all hands to the pumps) - meaning I am away a lot and also in part our desire to work on the car together.

As such we've taken the decision that Dad is going to have to come over and build the car without me on some days. I’ll muck-in where I can when I’m at home but it’ll be hit and miss whether I’ll always be there to work the car. It’s a real shame as we’ve had a lot of fun so far doing the build and has been great as a Father/Son bonding exercise, as well as some good banter. However we are where we are. If we’re ever going to finish the project we’ll have to pull our respective fingers out!

Whilst I was away Dad managed to start putting together the DeDion tube and it’s fixings, one thing you’ll note from the picture below is the right hand brake tube doesn’t fit into the hole in the brake calipers (however the left side is bent correctly). We’ll have to bend the tube to the correct shape without kinking it; I’m sure my father’s tin-smithing skills are up to the job!

Going to have to bend the brake line to fit into the caliper (red plug). Fun.

He has also fitted the brake lever 

Handbrake fitted

And the prop shaft.

One thing we’ve noted is that the new throttle cable that Derek has sent us still doesn’t seem to be right. The photos in the Assembly Guide show the throttle cable running around the front of the top of the engine, however this doesn’t do that, but also there’s a rather large amount of cable itself (90mm or so) unsheathed inside the pedal box (see picture below). Derek has assured us that we’ll need to bend the pedal arm in order for it to ensure the butterfly valve is fully open when you bury the accelerator pedal into the firewall. However we aren’t convinced, I’m sure that the sheath is too short, resulting in the issues with the cable’s routing and the amount of exposed cable in the pedal box. We shall have to see.

The final task of the day was to fit the rollover bar. We’ve gone for the FIA approved ‘X’ version and thought it would be a relatively easy thing to fit. However it had some problems fitting into the corresponding holes and mounting points on the chassis. We got it fitted, but only after some jiggling around and tightening some bolts to pull the frame into it’s correct place.

Rollover bar fitted; snug and surprisingly difficult to fit.