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.