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Boot Area Wiring
The wiring in this area is now finished. One final job I needed to do here was to fit and lay the wiring for the Fog and Reversing lights. Now these have been tested, I just need to wire them up at the Dash & Gearbox ends. This shows the Rear Lights. I need to set up the rear number plate assembly & light also, but I’m leaving this for later. Just to be on the safe side, I got the top seat belt mounting bolts welded into place. I’m now all ready to line out the boot.

Donnington Show
It really doesn’t seem very long ago since I was last at this show but anyway, I went down there again and bought a few more bits & bobs. I’d heard that Mr SVA Man wanted to see a collapsible steering wheel boss. The standard issue isn’t. After getting one for a Mountney wheel off eBay I discovered, when it arrived, that it wouldn’t fit my Mountney wheel! So, at the show, I spied another wheel and splashed out. I’ve not fitted this yet but I think it’s pretty cool!. I met up with (amongst many others) Klaxon. He’d fitted his Bonnet the same way as I wanted. I took lots of pictures. Thanks Klaxon! Thanks also to Harry for the exhaust heatshield. Here’s a couple of photos I took whilst at the Show - Pic1 & Pic2.

Bonnet & Nosecone
This is the major piece of work I’ve been concentrating on over the last couple of months. I wanted a forward opening bonnet, so the first task was to bolt the two bonnet halves together, then fit the Nosecone to the bonnet. At this point I hadn’t bothered about the scuttle. I needed to get the whole lot in place first before worrying about this. Once the bonnet and nosecone where as one piece, I needed to fabricate a sub-frame for it. I did this using 20mm angle. Hinging was provided by some fabricated brackets. A trip to the scrappies for a couple of bonnet stays was the final part for this phase. Quite a bit of bending and standing on my head then ensued before I asked my pal to finally weld them both together. I’m very pleased with the outcome. The stay holds the bonnet quite securely and clears everything (just!) when the Bonnet’s closed.

Scuttle
Now that everything was in place and the bonnet was opening & closing OK (with a little adjustment of course) I could then mark out for ‘The Dreaded Cut’ for the separate Scuttle. I was a bit nervous about this but actually, it all went quite well. I’m now left pondering exactly how I’m going to secure this to the frame. I guess it’s going to be done by fixing numerous brackets to the frame and then securing the Scuttle to the brackets with bolts & rivnuts. I think I want to do it this way so that I can have the option of removing it later if necessary. Like the fabrication of the boot area, this is another job that I can have running in parallel in order to not stall on the build should problems crop up. Believe me, they do!

Cycle Wings
I then started out trial-fitting the cycle wings. I soon realised that there was no way I was going to fit these without cutting into the GRP. I really didn’t want to do this. I therefore decided to butcher the brackets in order to move the tubes outwards. This (again thanks to my Pal for his welding prowess) has now been done. I just need to get a couple of extra brackets welded in place to make them solid. More in the next update on this, as I’m going to have a go at doing this myself!

Headlights
I’d already trial-wired these, so it was a fairly straightforward job to conclude. I say straightforward because whilst initially, everything seem to light up as expected, suddenly it started blowing fuses. I traced this (I think) to a section of wiring that seemed to be shorting. I’m not 100% sure about this but anyway, I replaced and re-soldered some lengths of the circuitry and all seems well now. Really starting to look like a car now.

So, that’s the progress to date for the last couple of months and I’m still aiming for a Spring 2007 completion date. Fingers crossed.

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