Off the road for winter and some tweeking

 Took the car off the road as December is too cold for me and Cobras,

Just because the car was done wasn't finished as needed to tweak a few bits 

1 -  I  wanted to swap the speedo and rev counter over after IVA so the rev couter is my side 

Original fitting of speedo 

2 - I have an alarm but no visible light so want to add a flashing led somewhere

3  - I would like  an aux socket behind the drivers seat in case i fit a dash cam 

4  - Andy says the ECU can have a switchable second map which reduces horsepower and throttle 

       response which will be an advantage for cruising and when the wife is driving

5 -  I need to do something with the indicators either alter them to self cancel of fit some kind of buzzer so  I don't  leave them on  

further to follow  

Roof fitted and back home

 Picked up the car From Andy's 

Roof all fitted and suspension set up and ECU all set up with cut outs etc 

Looks great 

Hood fitted ( side screens still in the boot) 

Going for the roof fitting

 After the GD  owners open day it became apparent that most owners let Andy fit the roof  as it has the potential to go horribly wrong .

With this in mind I was allocated a slot to have the roof fitted and at the same get Andy to set the suspension up for me .

Car was booked in on 14th November wooly hat and gloves and off I go in convoy with my son who is going to bring me back .

Stayed dry but a little bit of road spray caused me to stop off at Macdonald's for a windscreen clean and a coffee .

Outside Lincoln Maccies 

On the Road

 Paper work arrived this morning cant believe it .

Straight out to buy my plates , already insured 

Plates fitted waiting for the boss to come home from work 

Sat out on the the front getting loads of attention got to wait till 2pm Now 

And we are off 

5 years of work finally becomes a realty Yesses

Now just got to arrange a date for roof fitting 

 

Wind wings, grills and sun visors

Now the car has passed I can fit the Bits that were not allowed pre Iva 

Brought the sun visor kit home with me .

fiddly screws 

Seems quite straight forward just had to remember to fit the brackets pointing down or the roof wont fit 

The way the bracket fitted seemed to be a bit too big so i placed a washer on the pivit nut other than that  no issues .

Wind wings were the same idea but the brackets are different lengths

long one at the bottom and plastic washer between glass and hinge 

  

Bottom hinge 

IVA Test Date confirmed 13th Sept

After Quite a bit of hassling on my part managed to get an earlier date (just( now set for 13th Sept and Andy could do it fantastic > 

I drove down to Derby to meet the car and the test was on 

Was so the right decision to let Andy Take the car as when the tester queried something Andy had the answer straight off the batt .

IVA man measuring the height of the indicators
Note the extra headrests  
and the exhaust noise meter 

Test passed huge thanks to Andy .

Gold dust !!!

Car then back to Andys 

Waiting to be brought home by Jason 

What a bloody great day . 

Ready to go GD

 The IVA people ring you up with a date for the test and as I wanted Andy from GD to take the car there were quite a few phone calls to set a date that Andy could take it,I had been assured that Andys has a very high sucess rate and that was good enough for me 

Date finally set for 11th August .

Ready to go complete with fake number plate 

Andy wanted the car on the Monday before to give the car the once over and to place on the kit that is needed to pas ( square fog light extra silencers etc)  

Contacted a guy called Jason (  got the number from Gd )  and he came to pick it up in a covered trailer 

Very professional highly recommend  

It got there ok and everything all set for the 11th until ......... I recieved a phone call from the IVA booking tem telling me my test is cancelled because one of there machines has broke down !!!

Gutted  even worse the only day they can offer me is 26th Sept WTF !!!

Doors

 On to the back door finishers ,not straight forward from pictures from other cars they seem to be bent round the door ,expecting issues with this as stainless doesn't like to be bent and has the potential to look rubbish 

as supplied from GD 

After consultation with Steve we decided to cut the excess off and shape it round the door 

tail cut round to fit door 

Doors

Time to finally fit the doors already had the doors on so knew they would fit however need to fit the door cards first ,stuck the supplied clips to the card first 

Then made a cardboard template  to know were the hole want to be 

note circled hole more on that later 

then transferred this to the door to drill the holes 

holes drilled 

Had some spare sound deadening  left so put in on the back of the door as it might make a differance ?

On to the other door figured i could just turn the template round and it would fit but no the holes are similar but not the same hence the circles on the card so i kew which ones to avoid on the second door 

once done came to fitting the door handle couldnt find anything to fit the thread not metric nor unf ,call to Andy and he tells me it BA !! and advised me to tap it out 5mm .

Put the handle on first to stop the square spreading and tapped out

tapped 5mm 

then realized that the hinge covers will be easier to fit now so fitted them with self tappers ,found that the return edge caught the hinge so had to shorten it slightly 

one on 

then its time for the door finally 

one door 

I had bought the door finishers from GD and set to to fit these (well Steve did) 

They fit at each end of the door trim ( no surprise there then) 

the front one is straight forward .

fitted 

But the hinge pushes the carpet when shut and catches this ,going to have a think about this but one thought is to shaape the bracket like the mark but more on that later .

The second one seems a bit more complicated so enough for today and a beer 

Speedo check

 Didn't  think to check the Speedo but a quick call to Andy advised me that i should ( Steve  did say as well but ignored that advice .

Jacked the car up ,easier said that done as no space 

ended up making a set of low rise ramps out of some decking wood .

make shift low rise ramps 

once car jacked up and on stands into first gear on  tick over  35MPH ! works but maybe a bit fast  .

Easy enough to set by holding the trip button and then powering up goes in to set up menu 

currently set at 8000  Andy from GD said its wants to be at 28000  and now runs at 9MPh at tick over which is close enough .

Pain to do but one more job ticked off .

speedo working

Wipers

 Easy job i thought just fit the wipers  however they needed some fettling to make them follow the contour of the windscreen 

First job was to confirm that the wipers still parked the right way ( just in case ) and they did 

they are also adjustable but mine did not adjust far enough so had to cut off 25m and bend in the vice 

looks  good  

just need to bend the tab over 

IVA Paperwork

 Time to fill in the IVA paperwork quite straight forward with the help sheet from GD , just need to remember to include all the bits reqd which can be easily missed 

1 amateur build declaration

2 application form

3 copy of major item invoices (chassis, body, engine, gearbox suspension and steering ) 

4 Copy of Driving license 

5 2 pages of pictures showing i built it 

6 all pages signed 

7 Declaration of newness ( from GD)

Planning on the car going to GD week before to have the IVA pack put on and for Andy to have a look at anything that could make it fail .

Indicator Stalks

 wanted to trail  fit the stalks and the housing before sticking the leather to it and realized that i had left the stalk cables too long and had loads of cable to lose but hey ho .

All fitted on the steering coulomb so happy ,fitted the leather with the join at the bottom and pushed the front on and left to dry ,leaving the leather long at the moment until i see what its looks like on 

waiting to dry 

When we offered it up it didnt fit as well as we wanted ,biggest issue was that the surround it cut out for a key and i dont have one .this tends to make the leather crumple in ,solved with a piece of plastic from a paint tray to fill it out now looks better 

final fit 

  

Seat final fit

 The seats are supposed to have a 10mm spacer at the front to lift the rake up a bit and becomes very fiddley to fit came up with the idea to weld 8mm washers together to give me the 10mm and use a 6mm washer for the last one so I could tap it out 8mm 

This held the bolts in place and made fitting the seat a lot easier 

washers welded 

this made fitting the seats a lot easier because the washers held the bolts captive ,tightened up and left 2 threads showing for IVA .

Oil change

 I kept the original running in oil in the engine and they recommend changing after 30 mins running .Figured i had easily done that so changed the oil 

Put fully synthetic Dex2 5W30  and changed the filter as well surprisingly couldn't get the filter form any local suppliers so ebay to the rescue  .

No pics as too messy a job but very straight forward .need to change again at 1000 miles .

Oil filter PF48 

undertrays

 Now the dash is in and all the gauges are also in speedo was really fiddly time to final fit the undertrays 

I have quite a lot going on with the trays as on the left one i have a aux socket and switch  floor light speaker and a switch for the usb charge point behind the seat all fused from a cable from the battery 

a lot going on 

Try as i might i couldnt get it to fit and line up ,i knew it fitted as i had already pre drilled the holes in the frame for the self tappers . 

After a lot of cursing it transpired that i had fitted the USB switch ( just in the picure on the left ) right in the way of the dash bar .

I moved this and covered the hole with plastic and voila fits .

Fitted note the whoops hole 

Reflectors

 Realised that i needed reflectors to pass the IVA and didnt want the expense of buying another 2 standoffs so copied another users blog and made a bracket to support the reflector off the indicator s ,a bit of a fiddle to make but hopefully worth it 

found a piece of stainless hanging around 

The slot was there on the metal i acquired but will be hidden by the reflector ,once i got the indicator to fit I spaced the refector with a 5mm drill spryed black and fitted .

look better than i thought might even leave them of after IVA 

 

Ops propshaft

 Completely forgot to grease the propshaft before the body went on and kept putting it off , Bribed Steve with a Subway and he "volunteered!" to grease it ,apparently not easy according to the swear words  sorry Steve !

 

Half a Steve 

 

Last bit of leather

 Fitted the leather and the back of the seats found the easiest way was to use velcro 

straight forward 

finishes off nice 

Headrests

 Fitted the head rests   for the final time didn't want the leather to look trapped so made sure the head rest was in the right place by filing  the socket until they were level 

tight and screws level 

I then pushed the cover past the sockets and once the rests were ight and Loctite in slid the cover back happy days  

all fitted 

 

Brake bleeding ( bleeding Brakes !)

 Big day today as set to to bleaad the cluth and brakes .

Bought myself a vacuum bleed kit as thought it was the best way to go 

There is a choice of brake fluids on the market DOT 4 DOT 5 and DOT5.1 

Dot 4 is what is said on the lid but looking into it DOT 5 has a higher boiling point so figured that might be better  however Dot 5 can not be mixed with anything but Dot 5.1 will mix with Dot4 

Dot 5.1 it is then .

Started out fine with the ki and got the fluid all the way though to the bleed nipple but couldn't get all the air out , moved on to the brakes and encountered the same problems

Vacuum kit 

No matter what i did i always seemed to have air bubbles coming though  after an hour and god knows how much brake fluid  resorted to the old and trusted method of bleeding with the glass jar and pipe 

This worked a treat so for some reason the vacuum system was sucking air in and the joints ,

now all blead and working fine good day in the garage .

Also adjusted the handbrake as didn't bite until 4 clicks up .

Surprised how easy the clutch pedal was to press expected it to be a lot harder .

Brakes Clutch pipes

 Was never totally  happy with the way the brake and clutch pipes went from the chassis to the body  as seemed to be in the way and just attach to the reservoir  but couldn't see an alternative 

That is until i got talking to Global Hydraulics  who told me they could make new pipes with an elbow on each end .

Three  things i had to be careful of was 1:- the angle needs to be spot on ,2:- the length needs to be spot on and 3:-the treads are different  so had to identify the right thread .

Had a selection of elbows to work with and used my pipe as reference for length and angle.

Old pipe with new elbow used as templete for new pipes 

The new pipes were made and then fitted by Steve ( the perfectionist )so happy with the result  bleeding is the next job but time for a beer now,

Pipes in and secured with metal bracket courtesy  of Steve
flex pipes secured with "P" clips  

New pipe elbows really neat job dead happy 

Huge thanks to John from Global Hydraulics ( Grimsby ) 

Storage pockets

 After trolling though other peoples blogs I noticed that a lot of owners fit a map pocket for the passinger .

I ordered these from e bay and 3 came instead of 1 .

with 2 spares in hand came up with the idea to fit them behind the seats as bit of  extra storage .

Also put one behind the drivers seat as well 

Cold

 I have heard all about these cheap diesel heaters so fed up of being cold so bought one 

quite easy compared to building kit cars  2 brackets 2 holes for intake and exhaust  plus a battery 

took us about 3 hours and really impressed and a lot cheaper to run than propane heaters ofrelectric fan heater 

can feel me fingers at last .

cheap to run and warm