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July 2005
July was an odd month for working on the car. I went on holiday for a week, got a new job that meant less time available to work on it, then lost that job within 2 weeks.. ho hum! :-( FUEL TANK FITTING 2 'straps' were made by strips of aluminium. unfortunately I didnt get any pictures of this part! The sender was fitted by drawing around the inside of the rubber collar and using a suitable sized hole saw to create the hole. I used 5 5mm rivnuts to screw it in place. i wanded the pivot of the potentiometer to be dead centre of the depth of the tank so I cut an inch or two off the the adjustable sliding part to shorten it. HANDBRAKE Just drilled the holes for the handbrake. Oddly the rear mount on the handbrake seems to be higher than the front, yet the chassis plates are level, so i've just put a nut on the underside of the handrake tab to support it.
BODYWORK #2 - FITTING SIDE AND REAR PANEL
its quite a tricky job to get the curved lip over the chassis rail at the top, and get some of the lower lip under the chassis. its a VERY snug fit, and in the end i had to use 2 large screwdrivers (with masking tape over the tips) to get leverage under the lower lip and get it under the bottom floor panels so it could all be pushed back into place. BATTERY TRAY
ENGINE 22nd July - I picked up a 2001 '5JJ' Yamaha R1 engine from a chap called Darrell in Birmingham who was selling because he was emigrating and couldnt build the striker he was planning. It came with a box full of pipes, loom, airbox, Exup servo, coils. etc. it took some working out what was what.. :-)
For the time being its just sitting there looking pretty. BODYWORK #3 - REAR HOLES
Marc's build diary has a good method for going about it. looking at the inside of the bodywork, draw a line 75mm down from the upper chassis rail. and draw 2 lines 20mm in from the 2 diagonal chassis. Then draw a circle to 'round off' the hole. Cut the circle out first, and then drill a tiny 5mm through the lowest part of both diagonal guides. Now you can draw a line from the outside edge of the large hole to the tiny holes you have just drilled. (now you have the guide lines you drew on the inside, on the outside. makes cutting much easier!) |
With the help of a 2nd person, the single rear/sides bodywork was walked onto the rear of the car, over the top. put some masking tape over the inside of the bodywork to prevent scratches. Id also highly recommend taping the outside edge of your rollbar as the body rubs it as it goes past and fibreglass seems to have a remarkable ability of scratching powdrecoating. my rollbar is slightly scuffed on the outside egde... not to the metal thankfully but its visible as slightly lighter scratching. :-(
Sitting the battery in the centre of the upper bulkhead panel, I drew around the base of the battery to know what to remove. Using a large drill bit I drilled the corners out and then using a jigsaw i removed the centre part. Using a strip of aluminium I bent it into a flat bottomed 'U' shape with outwards tabs on the top to be able to secure to the underside of the bulkhead panel. Using another rectangular section of aluminium this became the bottom 'tray' and I just put some closed-cell foam on for the battery to sit on. Unfortunately by the time i came to pt the battery in properly, I noticed that there was a VERY slight taper to the battery so the more it went in, the tighter the 'hole' became, so it ended up getting stuck in the rubber outer. bugger! so it had to come off again, a grinder enlarged the hole a few mm all round (ruining the curved corners..bah!) and the rubber outer now looks a bit naff. I'mm going to redo that later with diagonal corners rather than just trying to get a single strip round the whole thing...
Because the side panels are entirely flat and filled, you need to remove a section to get the suspension on. This was the first fibreglass I had to cut so it was a bit daunting, but thankfully this is all hidden under a rear arch so it doesnt have to be perfect!