Steering Assembly

 Tackling the steering which seemed straight forward ( o silly me )  

There are three bits to the steering  so started with  the lower section  removed the nut slid it over the spline and re fitted 

Lower section ( courtesy of Dales blog )  

Then to the middle section which has a rose joint that needs to be pushed on and fits in a pre drilled hole in the frame .

It soon became apparent that the heater isolators that I had fitted earlier were now in the way and had to be removed .

So not to be beaten Steve came up with the idea of moving them to the stainless steel pipes that go across the body so that's what we did  just in case i get too hot .

front section so close to the pipes had to remove the isolators 

isolators now in the cross pipes 

The last section fits on the bracket but can be adjusted up and down as well as in and out .

the issue here is that once the column is secured it can no longer move.

This will have to be left  until the dash and seal is fitted so i can see were the wheel wants to be  

I bought  a steering wheel from the scrappy so i could see were it would sit and my nice sister in law supplied me with a "cute" cover for it !!!

No words are necessary 

Heater Vents

 This was going to be a bigger job than I thought .From a previous blog i have decided to fit Bluetooth speakers for use when the engine is off !!! .this has made a tight space even more tight .

The first issue was that there didn't seem to be enough room for the pipe coming from the screen vent to turn with out kinking or sitting on the tray which i didn't want  .

Second issue was that I wanted most of the heat to be in the footwells so had to devise some way to do this 

Third issue is i have a aux socket on the passenger side so want to put fuses on the undertray for the reverse lock out the Bluetooth and the aux socket.   

After brainstorming with Steve and buying a selection of fittings we (Steve !) came up with a plan . we found out by chance that the solvent plastic fitting are smaller than the push fit ,

First we cut the screen heater pipe as short as we dare .

heater screen cut down 

and then a male /female bend just went in with a bit of persuasion  .

 self tapping screw to hold in place 

next was the floor vent again using solven fittings 45 deg this time it gave us a sweeping bend 

the final challenge was to try and get as much air to the floor, idea was a equal tee on the pipe with the straight though going to the floor ,so if screen was required I can shut the floor vent .( if it works )   

finished  and repeated for drivers side 

 

Think this has gone in really well considering the room we didn't have .

Fuel Bleeding and leak checking

 After looking at Dales blog realized  that bleeding the fuel and also flushing the pipes was a sensible idea  so made a fused wire to go from the battery to the fuel pump and released the pipe from the engine ( avoid using the bleed screw on the fuel rail as any dirt may affect the seal  started the fuel pump to bleed the system .

I was amazed at just how much fuel coms out the pipe the pump was only running for a short time and my container was full .

Re attached the pipe and pleased to say no leaks . 

Door carpet and Door

 After the Bathroom replace its back on the car !

In order to fit the door properly figured the carpet will need to be in as this might alter the fit of the door 

fitting the door carpet is quite straightforward with a bit of pulling and stretching to make the carpet sit right with the rubber ..

door carpet fitted 

Could only fit partially as needed to adjust the hinges so a bit of a mess about but happy

moving on to the door card and it comes pre drilled with the hole for the handle  

hole cut were the cardboard was pre cut 

when trying to fit the door card to the door the hole seemed to be in the wrong place and would make the door card sit wrong when the door is shut .

solution was to move the door handle to fit the card .

door handle fitted on the bracket also drilled/ tapped the sliding bracket to stop it moving 
 

door handle moved to fit the door card ,

now it fits the card and the card follows the contour of the door .the door card sits on the door with the normal push fit door fasteners so fitted those and then mad a cardboard template so i can tranfer this to the door .

card template 

door masked out ready to be marked 

Bits and Bobs

Bonnet 

 Fitting the Bonnet catches next again measured on a recent trip to GD and using the wiper arms as a reference marked the bonnet and made sure both sides were the same before drilling and fitted with self tapping screws ,The bonnet is double skinned and the handles carry the weight of the bonnet so might change to button head bolts yet .

Handles fitted 

Moving into the engine bay marked a parallel line from the catch and measured down 25mm and that was the first hole for the catch , then made sure that the catch followed the curve of the body ,fastened with button heads.

drivers side fitted 

Moving on to the transmission tunnel needed to fit the gear cover ring again had to be careful not to snag the carpet so went for drilling backwards which seemed to work .

Like button heads better than the usual self tappers 

Fuel Tank 

Needed to fit the fuel flex pipe as not long away from needing fuel .Had already taken the tank to have a earth stud welded on courtesy of  Mirus Engineering So after socking the pipe in hot water to make it forgiving fitted that together with an earth wire from the filler to the tank .

pipe and wire fitted ( thanks Connor ) 

Undertrays 

There are two undertrays that fit under the dash and i know its probably a complete waste of time but i have decided to fit Bluetooth speakers so needed to cut out for this and the reverse lock out button .

Drivers side cut out and sprayed ( both sides because i sprayed the wrong side first )  

Centre tray 

After fitting the center tray  could finally fit the ecu  this was not as easy as i first thought as there is not enough room when the dash is fitted to fit the ecu to the panel .I overcame this by only securing the ecu with the front screws and making sure that it was pushed back as far as it would go . now i have enough room .

ECU fitted

The pink wire hanging down needs to connect to the bared white wire above it as that is the fuel pump supply .

Doors Part 1

 After initially fitting 1 door early on and realizing all it did was get in the way it came off again until now 

The door has an internal handle only which struggles to return on its own so as with other bloggers I attached a spring to the mechanism.

Spring fitted 

 Next job was to fit the door rubber to see if it fitted snug all the way round the door recess and found that it didn't out with the drum sander to smooth out the ridges and good to go .

door seal uniform 

Then its a case of assembling the door which is straight forward and then fitting which is not .After messing about for a while unable to get the door to shut realized that the cap heads holding the door lock were catching swapped those for countersink and getting on a lot better..

Just a case of trial and error moving the hinges about and the door lock in its mountings and then taking it off as not enough room to move the lock etc .

Eventually got the door right with the exception of one bolt that has to be left loose sa will need a spacer under that .

Door fitted (will it still fit with the carpet in ??)

Seatbelts

 Using a four point harness needed the two bottom brackets fitting next .looking at other blogs noticed that I had different brackets to everyone else  as one had a return on it 

Handed brackets that could go in multiple places 

Again using past pictures sorted out were they go and drilled them accordingly 

Applied sealant to the underside of the plate to keep it in place and stop any water rising up 

also had to buy the nuts as none came with the kit and they were 7/16 UNF  ( e bay to the rescue )

drilled and fitted in the correct place 

 Cut the bolt to length ensuring 2 threads showing  after the carpet was refitted 

eye bolts fitted though the carpet ( back carpet laid in ) 

At this point had to see what the harness would look like to fitted it in to see love it .

looking more like a car every day 

Carpet Part 1

 Was dreading fitting the carpets but couldn't go much further without starting  so panicked a bit and bribed Steve with beer and we tacked the transmission tunnel .

Placed the carpet were it need to be at the back and found that this was too far forward for the lay of the carpet to match the transmission tunnel and need to be back about 25mm 

happy with that cut the hole for the gearstick .hovered out all the area and covered the cables with carpet tape

carpet tape on the cables both sides 

Then is was showtime sprayed carpet glue on the transmission tunnel and the carpet and waited for it to just go tacky to give us some working time .

any excuse to get high 

carpet had to come back 25mm 

carpet smoothed out and fits the transmission tunnel 

Fitting the 2 screws that hold the bracket to tunnel were a challenge as didn't want to drill the carpet in case it pulled ended up knocking a 5mm bolt through the hole as a makeshift punch rough i know but worked ,

Handbrake

 Thought this would be easy should have learn by now .using pictures from a trip to GD figured out were the handbrake bracket should be .

taken while on a trip to GD 

using this we decided to fit the handbrake in the same place ,first drilling a hole in the rear for the cable and then fixing the handbrake bracket. First problem is that the handbrake is that close to the side its impossible to use .initial idea was to bend the handbrake to fit but Steve expert welding services came to the rescue again and the braket was "modified "  

Back stud shortened to give the angle and then the cable retainer had to be moved   

found that it fits a lot better was not sure weather it would go on top or under the carpet and the pics are a bit out of sequence as we settled for on top of the carpet .

Steve happy with his work 

  

Fuel pipes and Wiring

 After refitting the fuel pump after wiring it up was able to fit the pipes on to the tank fittings 

fuel pipes fitted 

The strainer does not have any arrows on it but on one of my camera happy visits to GD i have taken a picture of this and that's' the way Andy fitted it so works for me ,happy with the gland to fit the cable as allows me to "lose" the spare cable in the boot but should I need to take it all down there will be enough slack cable.

Reversing light 

Been putting off fitting the reversing light for some time as marked  it out while the body was on the stand and just wasnt happy that it looked right ,due to the shape of the car so difficult to get datum marks .

Once the boot was on and fitted using the handle gave me another reference so at least it would look right .

measured from each side on the boot handle and each side of the lights and eventually was happy so fitted finally .

Again using the stand offs supplied by Andy I have opted for the lights to have the screws up and down so using the stand off i could use the existing screws just had to extend then with 5mm barrel nuts .

finally happy  looks good 

flushed with success decided to finish the wiring in the boot . The loom naturally goes to the 2 sides of the car and everything is duplicated .My wiring loom had 2 earths each side instead of the 1 shown on the diagram .checked with a meter and they were both good ,so used the Bullet joinerfor 1 earth and brake/tail + indicator and a straight joiner for the other earth and reversing light or fog light .

once the wires were all conected set out to try and tidy it up a bit ,using a p clip to the indicator fixing made it look a lot better ( get covered with carpet anyway .

wiring with p clip and tie wraps