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