Build Officially Started!

[Tatey]

Quick update before I go on holiday for 10 days.

My mate came round to help me the other day and we managed to get quite a lot done, the new gearbox mount is in now and it is safe to say the new mount is 100% better than the old one, the gearbox moves a couple of mm, compared to the mass amounts of movement in the old one.

I've put another bulkhead bracket underneath the handbrake bracket for my brake lines, I decided on this as I felt it was a neater solution.

Welds were ground down to allow for bodywork/aluminium panels to be fitted.

I finally got round to buying some more steel and I have nearly finished mounting my passenger seat. I just need to profile some spaces so that the runners sit flat against the seats then weld in the mounts. Once this is done then I just need to weld in a few tube ends and then flip the chassis, and fully weld the brackets that have been put on recently.

The chassis can then be primed and painted satin black ready for the floor to be fitted.

I also popped round to NTS yesterday and managed to pick up all of the bodywork for my car for £205 (Nose cone, scuttle, front cycle wings, rear arches, bonnet and a carbon aeroscreen), they are all seconds and require a small amount of work but should look good. As they are all different colours I will be wrapping them in vinyl and have ordered this in tomato red (£65 for 6x1.5m of cast automotive vinyl inc VAT and delivery, which is enough vinyl to do the entire car) as well as some wing stays from ebay (I'm starting to get sick of fabrication and at £43 they were a bargain in my eyes), and finally I've ordered some body filler to fill in a few chips/cracks on the bodywork. The carbon aeroscreen has a few problems like a large air bubble in the top left hand corner and the carbon weave hasnt gotten into the front edge of the mold so there is a large amount of resin there, so I will be cutting the air bubble out and profiling the side to match, and then surround it all in edge trim and then give it all a polish and hopefully it should look quite good.

Another mate of mine has had experience with carbon fibre/fibre glass so he is going to give me a hand with the bodywork and I will post lots of pictures of the wrapping process in case anyone is interested in doing it.

Finally I've ordered of custom Roadster grills from this thread which I think will make the car look really nice:

http://www.haynes.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=8105

Any questions just give me a shout.

[tkpm]

Tatey where did you order your vinyl wrap from?

Terry

[Tatey]

It's been ordered from here:

http://www.mdpsupplies.co.uk/vehiclewrapping.asp

Someone on Locost Builders recommend it as he wrapped his motorbike in it and said it was fine to use so should be perfect for the roadster. I was originally going to go for 3M stuff but at around £200 vs £65 it didn't seem worth it.

[tkpm]

Thanks

Terry

[voucht]

Hi Simon,
Could you post a picture of the bracket you welded under CP14 for the bulkhead fitting of the rear central brake line please? I'm very curious about it :-)
Thanks.
Sylvain

[Tatey]

Sylvain, I will take a couple of pictures of the bracket later on today and post them up.

A quick update on my build, I've been away for the past 2 weeks travelling around Europe covering 2,500 miles, so not that much progress has been made.

However I managed to mount the passenger seat yesterday which was a lot easier than the driver seat since I knew what I was doing, I have welded the end caps to the open chassis tube on the front roll bar mounts. This now just leads me into stripping everything from the chassis, priming it and painting it.

I have got my tomato red vinyl that I will be using to cover the car, it has a very slight pinkish tinge to it, but I guess I'll see how it looks and I can always change it at a later date, being £60 and all it won't be too much of an issue. The body filler also arrived so when I am waiting for the chassis to dry I will be working on the bodywork.

My loom also arrived from Premier looms and it looks very good, I can see now it would have taken a lot of work to get a loom of the quality they have provided.

So at the minute there isn't much I need to buy to make a lot of progress on the car, I've got the next 3 weeks free and then the army is paying me to get my C+E licence (£2500s worth...) so that should be good, then I head off to the Olympics for 4 weeks with the army to provide security, then the weekend after getting back I then go to work for Triumph Motorcycle for 5 weeks then the weekend after I get back I go back to uni, so the next 3 weeks are the only real time I'll have to work on my car so I am seeing that I may ever day count! I've also got a couple of friends who are keen to give me a hand, so that should speed things up somewhat.

[Tatey]

Well I've managed to make a fair bit of progress over the past few days, I have finished welding my chassis, primed it, and painted it satin black, I have cut out the floor and started drilling the holes for it and temporarily securing it using cleco fasteners, I still need to drill quite a few holes and then primed and repaint some chassis members where I have been modifying the floor to fit perfectly against the chassis.

Here is a picture of the mess my garage is in at the minute, the pile of parts that I've been building over the past few months can be seen at the back, all of the bodywork, seats and roll bar have had to be moved into the green house so I could paint and fit the floor to the chassis:



I have been working on my bodywork as well and have sorted out one of the rear wings by filling in chips and removing scratches, I attempted to wrap it however I am still learning how to use it and I think I have it cracked now but I managed to over stretch the vinyl and put 2 holes in it so it will need to come off and I will start again, but here is a picture of it half way through:

[Tatey]

Well the floor is now in place and the engine is back in, here are a couple of pictures of it, it seems very study with minimal flex, I used 2mm 5251 grade ali for the floor with rivets placed every 50mm, I was surprised at how quickly I managed to rivet it in place, it took about 45 minutes from putting the sikaflex on to putting in the last rivet.





Also my mate came round and gave me a hand re-wrapping the rear wheel arch, it was so much easier with 2 people, one to hold the vinyl/use the heat gun and the other to smooth it down, it did take an hour and a half to do though, but I am happy with the results. I think I will be putting some edge trim around the edge of the wheel arch just to finish it off and prevent the vinyl from moving.



The next job on the list is to do the interior panels and run brake, fuel and electrical lines, I am ordering some aluminium strip from Aalco at the minute so I can do lines over the weekend.

[Tatey]

I've managed to put my first brake line in this morning, it is safe to say I need to buy another riveter as my Stanley riveter isn't up to the job of dealing with 4.8mm aluminium (steel mandrel) rivets as it required way too much strength to put those three rivets in, and I injured myself every time it did put them in as one of my hands would smack off a piece of chassis. So the plan is to get one of the lazy tongue riveters later on. I do however need to buy a rivnut to secure the T-piece for the hydraulic brake switch.

But I have to say I am very impressed with the brake lines from Sylvain!



Let me know what you think.

[HandyAndy]

Wow very nice indeed

Your garage looks ..errmmm FULL ...be nice when all those parts get fitted

Nice work Tatey

cheers
andy