I like the dash, the graphics look good and cover up the fuckup. Would it be worth glassing/gluing the hole back in to give it some strength behind the graphics.

Here's the final design. I dropped the artwork off at a trophy shop today, where they will laser engrave this onto a brushed aluminum looking plastic. Should be less then $50 for the piece. Not ideal, but I think its the best fix, and if it fails I can't switch to the glovebox option.

Might I suggest a matt finish for the trim, I know of a Robin Hood with a stainless dash insert that can't be driven on sunny days unless you like arc eye.

Good point, didn't really think of that. Don't think it will be an issue as its a pretty dull finish.

Been busy working on the car so sorry for the lack of updates. I've officially reach the tedious stage of a million little things to do with minimal visible results.

So here a list of things I completed in the last 2 weeks.

Hand Brake COMPLETE


Radiator Mount COMPLETE


Dash Plate to cover up my massive F'up on the carbon fiber dash COMPLETE


Finally I have started working on the wiring harness. Probably should have started this sooner as its now getting pretty cold in the garage and a tedious job in the cold kinda sucks. Better get a heater for the garage.

cold! haha you dont know what cold is :D 50f is t-shirt weather

Its below freezing right now... But yeah not really that cold. Still like to to be comfy while i work.

In Poland it's freezing too. But in my steel-made shed there is still electrolysis ;) I wonder when I get ice block in place of my electrolysis bucket ;)

Working in garage with two doors wide enough to drive an artic through and no heating,you don't know you are born ! :p

Usually 3 to 4 degrees colder inside than out .

Thermal undies-----gotta keep the wedding tackle warm:D :D :D

Under Armour cold gear ! dogs bits :cool:

I'm building mine in an old air-raid shelter, half buried in the ground, it's the same temp all year round :-)

Up where Ayjay lives they don't count daylight hours they have daylight minutes.

Arfon

Hey lowland bog dweller
Hi from a hillbilly mountain man
Whats the weather like down there-done any more welding?

Sorry Dave for side tracking your thread

Been to that place near Wrexham that begins with C that I cant pronounce and ROR is there,they make wagon parts.

The sun was shining !

As long as there is current, it will not freeze over. You're feeding several dozen watts into that bucket.

Rubery Owen Rockwell was in LLAY:eek:
I think they have folded:(

It's officially running!!!

http://youtu.be/BsJ5NiP1bqs

Harley man is about to be upstaged and blown away:D
Tidy looking build;)
you'll soon be feeling the wind in your hair:o

All these bikers are the same aren't they Ayjay

Arfon

That was the place Ayjay ;)

It was a locost christmas this year.

ooh a spool gun, are you planning on doing some ali welding with your MIG? It will be interesting to see how you get on with that, best of luck!

well cool Dave ....looks like you are going to have some fun over the coming weeks:D

Thats the goal. I want to fabricate a proper intake so that I can get the filter to the cool side of the engine.

well done on the first start dave, merry christmas

Finally after weeks pruning the damn thing the wiring harness is totally complete. Removed a few more things from it and shortened it to a decent length. Still a bit clunkier than I would have liked but it would have been a real splice job to take it further.

This weeks task was to create the header. My original plan was a caterham style exhaust with the collector on the outside. However after receiving my tubing kit from columbia mandrel, I realized that I would not have enough tubing to complete it, that it was going to be a pain to run it and clear what needed to be clear, and since I was using stainless it was going to cost me another $100+ for the additional tubing.

So i started looking at the miatas header, and since that is generally considered to be the optimum config for that engine, I went about replicating it with my requirements. The main requirements being that I wanted it to move over the steering shaft, so that I could remove it without taking apart a good chunk of the car. It needed to pass underneath the supercharger with enough clearance, so that I could wrap the header to prevent heat transfer to the supercharger. And that I could get the collector high enough that I could get (2) 2.5" 90 degree mandrel bends out the side of the car without coming in contact with the chassis and without have the side exhaust pipe sitting to far from the chassis.

Here what I made. Cylinders (1 and 4) and (2 and 3) are approx equal length. Which is how mazda did it.







What I learned from this adventure:
Stainless Steel is harder to mig weld. Not drastically, but enough to be slightly be off putting with the visual quality of the welds. In hind sight I should have tacked and had someone tig them. But since the header will be wrapped it doesn't really matter.

You really need something to mock these up. The method I used here was to make the center 2 tubes first since they were more or less straight shots. This allowed me to get the collector into its position, then I worked 1 and 4 to clear the supercharger. I used some wire loom to figure out the direction needed on 1 and 4, which helped a little.

In the end I'm happy, mainly that it's done and doesn't look like a disaster, I may still need to take it to someone to weld up the center of the collector as I have some concern that the slip fittings may not have been tight enough, and I can't get the mig in there to do it myself.

Thats very nice work Dave and nice to see another 3";) exhaust coming out of the side panels.....looks like you are on schedule for this summer, keep cracking on bud

Not quite done for the day, with the completion of the header, I went ahead and built the exhaust. Only thing left to do is attach the muffler to the body somehow. Exhaust pipe is actually a 2.5".

Been jumping around on various parts this week due to the cold. Tried to do stuff that I could bring inside and work on.

- Finished the mounting and welding the exhaust...although I'm going to have to add a resonator or another muffler. Its pretty friggin loud.
- Wrapped the header in DEI Titanium header wrap. I think it turned out really nice and did a great job of hiding my terrible looking header welds.
- Installed gauges and the AIM MXL Dash. I ended up going with the MXL Strada as it was $1000 cheaper without the data logging, and since I was using a megasquirt I could grab all the sensor data from the can bus on the megasquirt. So no need for extra sensors. As for my physical gauges, they are auto meter carbons, and I'm using fuel level, oil pressure and boost. Boost is probably not necessary with the supercharger, but between those 3 and the digital dash, I can cover just about everything.
- Vinyl wrapped the scuttle, I'm going with an metallic anthracite colored car, with a gold racing stripe. Vinyl showed up this week, so I decided to give the scuttle a go since it was the hardest part.

Pics:

That Anthracite grey looks great, you going for a stealth roadster?
Also a very nice looking dash, blends nicely with the scuttle.

Got a video of the engine running with the new exhaust in place?

If you think the scuttle is hard wait til you try the nosecone:eek: :eek: :eek:

Wrapped up most of the engine, exhaust and intake. Or at least enough to rev it a few times. Enjoy.

http://youtu.be/g3pdb6p3J54

What can I say it sounds the TITS!!! And a very tidy build fella

Here's a shot of the completed engine. As far as I can think, there is nothing left that need to be done on the mechanical side of things.



So I moved on and started putting together the roll bar from kinetic. While I will probably never race it, I will be tracking it so I went ahead and gave myself a bit over 2" from top of the bar to the top of my helmet. So this should comply with the majority of rules out there.

Heres the final roll bar configuration. The lower stays are 2 brackets with 1/2" bolts run through the tubing.

Cracking job ! You must be really pleased with your car. I bet your car is costing a fair few thousand to build isn't it ? I think what you paid for your supercharger, Is my budget for the entire build :eek: misses has told me a grand tops, I said of course babe no problem. In true bloke style we are marching on to the mighty 2k ! Lol;) it will be our little secret. :D

Yeah I kinda stopped keeping track after buying the supercharger. I believe I told my wife $5000 US when I pitched the idea to her. I think I'm now closer to $8000... not including tools and welding equipment.:( For the most part now I'm done with major purchases. I need a aeroscreen and switches for the lighting. My bigger problem wasn't really the cost, as much as it was the time frame. I was expecting this to take closer to 2 years to finish thus spreading the cost over a longer period, I am on track to finish in the next 2 months which is 12 months total. Anyway, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel now, and since we really have no formal inspection I really look forward to the coming months. Should be able to test drive it this week and then move on to skinning the body.