Pedal box Fitting

Fitting the Pedal box is a two person job at best .Took the pedals off to try and get it lined up right



Fastened with 1 bolt so I can get it level and check the holes still line up  

Read on other blogs that the cylinders need to be spaced off with washers so as I had some ally plate put that on the back to try and compensate !?
Still didn't work as I still had to cut 3mm off the clutch cylinder thread but worked a treat for the brake cylinders


Fitted finally

 Some confusion with which master cylinder goes were as there are two different sizes
0.75 and 0.625 I was convinced that the bigger one should go to the front but was labelled up the other way round  a call to Andy and I was wrong the smaller one goes on the front !!

Fitted with 2 mm of free play and the bias bar fitted the right way round
 



Seats Arrive

Exciting day as finally finished with the garden decking, extension and fence so no can concentrate on the important things like building my Cobra!

My seat (with My mate Steve's foot in shot )

 

Courtesy lights

 On the wiring loom there is the facility to have Courtesy lights operated by door switches so figured if its there why not .
Bought the door switches from Amazon via China at two quid the pair.

Holes drilled

Then fixed with 4mm countersunk nut and bolt my first idea was self tapping screw but the switch will need earthing to work and the bolt will provide a better and easier earth

Fitted with bolt (free advert for Aldi Butter ( keep bits and bobs in them )

 

Front wiring loom

Took the front loom out of the box and tried to make sense of it ,wiring loom in one hand and the GD manual in the other and all the wire in front of the engine grommet made sense ( worry about the back bits another day .
First job is to fit the fuse box and it matters which way up it goes ( fuse 1 needs to be at the top !)
again the hole was already cut out for me except it was bigger than the fuse holder in places secures with the bolts and black Silastic

Fuse box fitted the Silastic can just be seen

Secured the wiring loom with 10mm "P" clips to the bulkhead

Part of the loom goes thoughh the left inner wing (used a 25mm grommet) and then doubles back on itself for the indicator repeater so used the same bolts ( less holes!)

Wiring loom doubling back

The rest of the loom then goes across the bonnet stay to supply the drivers side lights secured with 2 5mm rivnuts

View from the nose cone the slack is to accommodate the engine air intake
and the wire hanging down is the feed to the rad fan  

The wiring loom then mirrors the left hand side to supply the drivers indicator repeater .



Boot light

Attempted to find the hidden wire in the boot today as the number plate light wiring is put in before the boot is made and just coiled up  read other blogs and didn't think this would be very easy but found it first go well pleased



Wire found and pulled though
 

 However fitting the unit wasn't quite so straight forward as it comes with studs already on and the boot is double skin so studs are a no no


Light unit with studs



Solution was to drill the studs out and fit 4mm rivnuts to the door sorted. 

Repeaters

Just managed a bit of time after work to fit the repeaters.
10 minutes thinking time as they come with a chrome surround but the rubber is stuck to the light .
Worth running a small screwdriver between the rubber and the light to break this seal smoothly in order to get the chrome shield on first .
The first one took me nearly 30 mins armed with Vaseline to try and get it in .
Second one 5 mins  ..Put the rubber insert in the hole first and then the repeater just slid in .
Point to note wiring here is reversed white is earth and black is live

Repeater ( didn't plan for the selfie )

First Door

Only have the Drivers door as there was a problem with the passenger door so it has to be re done .I have been looking at it for a while and thought today I am going to try and fit it .
First thing was to score a line 12mm all the way round the frame .
Followed Dales blog again on this and used a nail in a piece of wood


View of my scored line
 

Out came the Dremmel again with the mini cutter (found the chuck of the dremmel works loose and the cutter sods off !!!) so plier's tight sorts that .

Now on to the door famous last words again the holes were already drilled for me to accept the lock except the lock didn't fit.
The solution was to cut off the part of the opening bar that is not used and then it fits easy ( picture to follow as I was so engrossed in the moment never took a picture)



Updated picture  showing the cut off bit

Got the door fitted but not quite happy with the closing as the handle does not return so like other builders will need to source a spring to help with this.
Door closes and is close but not spending any more time on it as it will be coming off to fit the spring .

First door well pleased
 

Front lights

Tackled the front lights so at least it starts to look like a car
found this easy as the holes were already cut for me by GD .
All I had to do was drill another hole to clear the horizontal adjuster ,I opted to use 4mm Stainless nuts and bolts instead of the supplied self tapers

Now it starts to look better

View from the inside showing the bolts

Throttle cut out

As mentioned on a previous post decided to cut out the double skin next to the accelerator like other cobra owners as things  are a bit tight down there .
Copied Dales measurements from his blog and went for 50mm up from the floor and went 220mm up 140 across at the top and 205 across at the bottom .
Didn't use a hole saw as I was scared that the pilot drill may go though the outer skin so went in "cold" with the dremel mini cutter .
It was easy to tell when I was though the fibreglass as the cutter goes easy .
This has left me with straight corners instead of rounded ones which I think I like but may regret this at a later date when it comes to carpets etc


View of the cut out from the clutch cut out

 

View from the drivers position
 

Need to get hold of some west system figre glass now to tidy the area up .

Update ++
Went to a local Fibreglass dealer (Ian Flockton ) who told me I could use their  resin instead of the west system as it is compatible with foam (blue in colour).VERY sceptical was I so he gave me enough to use as a test o the foam I had cut out and it is fine and less than 1/2 the cost result ,well happy 

Lights

Set to fit the back lights expected this to be a simple job as the holes were already drilled for me by GD .
Decided to fit with the mounting screws vertical as I found a locating peg on the lens and I wanted that to be on the bottom.

Once the holes are filed out to accommodate the earth connection its a simple job to fit .
As the car is not quite level on the trestles I have made the holes slightly larger so there is a bit of movement for the final fit once I have a level platform to work off .


Pedal box

Looking at blogs I realised that it was not just a simple job ( what is ?) of fitting the pedals .
Sitting on a make shift seat (2 bits of wood and a quilt )guessing the height as no seats yet , figured I would go with the recommended height suggested by Andy from GD .
Next was the pedal spacing as everybody else seems to bend them apart a bit ,can see why with all that power catching the wrong pedal would be interesting to say the least .
Comparing the pedal centres to my Insignia
That had 6 cms between the clutch and brake and 6cms between the brake and throttle .
On the pedal box I had 5 1/2 and 4 1/5 respectfully .
I set to to bend these in the vice with a large adjustable spanner moving the brake 15mm to give me 6 cms and the clutch 20 again to give me 6 cms .

Hopefully this will make sure that my size 11 shoes will only touch the intended pedal.
This is still a bit of a gamble as know it is rather snug in the foot well .should know better when I fit it .
While the pedals were apart I drilled the top of the throttle .
It requires a 6 mm hole 1mm from the top in 8mm bar so a bit tight .
I have cheated a bit and drilled a 5.2 mm hole and taped it 6mm
Also plan to follow other cobra guys and cut out the side wall to give me a bit more throttle space more on that later dremel out again .
 

pedals after adjustment (can just see the 6mm tapped hole in the throttle)

Undersealing

Next big job to tackle was the under sealing . It is important with GRP cars that under seal is applied to reduce the risk of star crazing, caused by stones flying off the wheels and hitting the underside of the wings. I used IsoFlex (bought from screwfix as it was the cheapest when I looked), as others had used this product. - it goes everywhere! It has the consistency of black tar and has to be applied 12 to 24 hours apart .
So 3 days spoken for two coats on the underside and three coats on the wings as others had done .
first mistake painted from the tin so by the end of the first day the "tar" was that thick it was unusable.



Undersealed front wing with the "frog" masking tape still in place .

Second day and another tin later poored into a take away dish much better enlisted help of (un)willing son.
If I hadn't made the first mistake I would have got away with using 1 tin,  lesson learnt.
At least its done now.


and it just started to rain !!

All done now finally




 

Doors

Tackled the door hinges today wanted to make sure that they fitted before I painted them ,they didn't .
had to remove the top corner off the hinges to give me enough adjustment to get the two easiest screws in (the top one looks a challenge) .
GD manual says that the hinges can be fed in from the inside of the car after assembly .mine didn't so had to put the locking pins in after (long nose pliers and trusty adhesive tape to the rescue.
The hinge holes were already cut out by GD but still needed a bit of "fettling"

Hinge from inside the car (note the top hole in the gods)

 

Once I had the hinges swinging then fitted the rest of the door metalwork so i knew were it went ,the was a bag of bolts in the pack and its a bit of a guess what goes were only time will tell

Door metalwork fitted

 



 

once happy marked all the bits using saw cuts 1 for left and 2 for right marking the top of the top hinge and bottom of bottom hinge (pinched this idea from Dale !)

and then painted them with Hammerite

Needs to dry before the wife walks into it

 

 



Rear wiring loom

After reading the GD manual it recommends doing the rear loom first Andy was kind enough to point out to drill the hole at the bottom near side of the boot .I did this and then opened the hole out to accommodate all the wires .
The loom has to be fed from the cockpit . I was lucky as I could spring the top part of the mould with a wooden wedge to allow the cables to go in without having to drill a second hole

Hole from the boot

Cable coming down from the cockpit

Footwell extender

Decided to cut out the foot well piece  today to give me more room for my size 11
marked out the cover from the outside and then cut 2 inches inside that mark so I didn't cut into the wheel arch space .
one I could see in the hole I cold open I up to the pattern .


foot well cut

I have left the hole 1 inch to short because I originally wanted the bottom of the hole to be level with the floor but this would mean the top of my shoe would not slide in the hole

foot well viewed from the engine bay

 

Heater

Thought I would tackle the heater fitting as my first job  .After reading Dale's blog realised that the "wings" need to be cut off .angle grinder made short work of those .
Problem then is nothing to fasten the heater with .
Again Dale's blog sourced the answer 4 6mm Rivnuts . Note heater internals need to be removed before drilling to stop the drill going into the matrix




Heater shown with the wings off and the 4 rivnuts 

Heater fitted but then realised that there was no space for the pipes to connect up so first mistake
refitted after elongating the heater outlet holes and drilling new securing holes
good job its covered by the dash

heater from the passenger side showing the extent of my error



Body arriving

Momentous day to day as the body is carefully lifted out of the box van and onto the trestles cant wait to get started.

lucky the trestles were so high Thanks Mark C  for these .
Big thank you to all  my helpers Bob ,Steve, Adam and Connor . 

 



Found a picture of the first time I saw the body so thought I would put it on here

first time we met !!!



My inspiration

On my way to choosing the way my GD would look, I saw the Gardner Douglas demonstrator and took a ride in Larry's car. I liked the black of both cars, so that is what I chose. Black, no bonnet scoop and a Euro chassis. The finished car will have an LS3 6.2 litre engine producing around 430 bhp and 425 ft lb torque.

GD demonstrator (this has bonnet scoop, mine will not)