Filler cap attached



Fog and reverse lights attached - these are just for SVA, the round ones will go on afterwards!



Bonnet clearance - just fits!



Under bonnet scuttle panels cut to shape and bolted in place.



Driver side scuttle cover - single hole for battery cable.



Passenger side panel with the same configuration as the driver side.



Modified Marlin headlight mounts - hole is milled out for the SVC headlights that have a larger diameter mount. The reason for milling rather than drilling was to move the hole back a bit - the damper mounting bolt gets the way otherwise!



Final dash wiring in progress - this is a clean up and tie down of everything.

The final gauge wiring is now complete, everything has been connected.





The dash lights on, at the moment the rpm & speedo lights turn on with the ignition, the light bulb holders will need to be modified so the bulbs can be wired into the same circuit as the other dash lights.  This will allow them to be dimmed from the light switch.






The fuel tank was filled with 25liters if fuel to test the gauge. Success, the gauge shows half full, we need to see how accurate the gauge once we have the car on the road.

Due to the exhaust being really very loud with just the magnaflow boxes we've decided to add a pair of Jetex micro mufflers. The clamping method of holding pipes together proved not to be a brilliant solution so we've decided to weld all but a few of the connections.



Extra Jetex micro mufflers welded on - the bend has been welded as well.



Richard's welds are starting to get good, it was almost a shame to grind down the metal!

Exhaust is finished, needed one more weld on the front of the angled part to extended it a little. On the straight side  the front part of the exhaust need about 8cm chopping off as the muffler was longer than the original pipe.



Only clamps left in the rear of the system. Decided to double clamp these ones to avoid any leaking.


Here it is from the back, left had side still has space for the secondary clamp, driver side will need a modified one round the muffler.



Short video to follow!

Download a video of the reworked exhaust Xvid / MP3 encoded (6Mb)


With it running the in garage you don't have to shout at people you want to at talk to any more, it's still suitably fruity but not just crazy loud!

We finished sorting out P clipping and zip tying the the fuel lines at the back, bolted down the drop links for the anti roll bar and tested the rear lights!



The rings are a bit bright for normal rear lights so I think those will need dimming - a pair of rings wired in series should do the trick!  Or it needs brighter bulbs in the red centres. Needs a bit of experimenting.

Also fitted two stainless hose clips on the steering rack to limit the movement to avoid damaging the brake lines - was an easy task. Take off the rubber boots put the hose clips in place and bolt down tight!

Rear lights in series doesn't work - far too dim! So plan B needed. The brake light bulbs (middle ones) are 21w so they should be bright enough. I'm just worried that its not obvious enough of a difference.

Did a bit more tonight - put some more P clips in on the brake lines at the front of the car and zip ties where I couldn't get P clips in. Also zip ties all the electrical cable around the bottom of the engine bay. Finished off by trimming back the scuttle above the gauges so the fit in properly!

Update to the Short shifter FAQ to include refurb parts and the part numbers for the various gear sticks out there!

Yesterday we did some work on the dash and bought some square steel tube to use as seat frame mounts.

Today we fixed the tank which we found another leak in! After much head scratching Richard spent some more time practising a bit of ali welding - really not as easy as you might think. However the tank only need a blob on an existing weld to fix it. So we gave it a go (after a very good cleaning and a stand overnight)

Here's the problem:



And here's the fix:



Took two goes, first time there was a tiny amount still coming out second time round nice an sealed up!

Also spent time adding nice covers to the wiring for the head lights:







As tub has to come off to take the tank out and seal it up we spend some more time on this cleaning and adding more bolts to hold it on. Also added some sponge under here to reduce any rattles.



The other project that's been knocking about for a bit is the glove box. Would have wanted to weld this but it's just not a viable option for beginners without any training! So we riveted it instead, just don't look to closely as its not really straight ;o) But a bit of material to cover it up and that will hide the imperfections! The glove box will house the fuse box - needs a bit more tweak before it's 100%.



Also spend more time zip-tying wiring in the engine bay and adding extra support. Added one extra P clip to the fuel lines. There was one part where the distance between clips was 35cm - I think I read somewhere it needs to be every 30 at least for SVA - not sure if that right but better too many than too few!

Missed the opening times of metal supermarket and hampshire hose due to silly traffic on the M3.

Anyway spent a little time finishing off bolting the tub up to the suspension towers - stop things flapping about.

Also set-up the up the front camber. No idea what to use so I've got 1.25 negative on both sides. The main thing is that they are now the same. Also made everything SVA friendly with those black tube things.

The bonnet now has all 40 bolts, cup washers, washers and nyloc's in place. Some need to come out again as they need a bit more work with the sinker tool.



Rubber is place round the rear wings - good tip for putting holes in the rubber. Use a socket piece that's the size hole you want to use. Place it on the rubber, put in a vice. Close it up quite tight and pull the rubber of the socket bit. Now you have a nice hole in the rubber!



Exhaust is now higher up and the reverse, fog and number plate lights are wired up and working!



And the first pictures to go into the interior gallery:

First custom piece on the interior taking shape



...can you guess what it is yet?



One finished indicator stalk!





And now in the car:



The indicator stalk as been modified so that it sits further forward to clear the dash This was achieved by bend it straight then putting a new bend in further towards the end of the stalk. The original plastic piece would not fit, but this turn out much nicer than the original anyway!

New dashboard? Not quite...



...nope the, the vinyl covered sponge for the dash is completely the wrong shape. It was the wrong shape before stretching the dash and after it was even further out.



The bolts as per the Marlin item are glued in the metal. We've used fibre glass filler, the bolt heads have extra cuts in them for the fibres to rest in. The original Marlin sponge glued on to the new metal.



The inside edge of the metal is now trimmed out to the shape of the sponge and mounted on the scuttle. The sponge now follows the shape of the scuttle nicely. Dash and trim now in place. As you can see the gauges got very close to the trim so we've made some recesses to match the placement of the gauges.



A side shot of everything in place. The dash itself needs a bit more trimming down. The metal piece backing the sponge has a rolled edge which should cover the dash nicely.

First off the bonnet catches, a price item but look really nice and should go well with the rest of the bright work on the car. These are supposed to be SVA compliant, we shall see! (Got them from Marlin, better price the Europa)



Due to damaging one of the original brakes lines we had some new ones made, this time with a banjo connection for the calliper side. The problem with the original ones is that the cable comes out the top of the calliper and on full lock gets trapped between the wish bone and the front wing carrier. With the banjo its possible to angle the pipe so that there is no contact at any point in the movement of the wheels (there is a lock in place on the rack to reduce movement but experimenting showed that this is enough for slow speed manoeuvring)



Second bit of construction news, the air intake (which will be domed to create a low pressure area around the intake) now has a new much more flexible pipe than the one that came with the BMC making installation much easier:



Finally small bit of interior work. After fixing the sponge / piping for the doors we test fitted them - needs more work but getting there:

After nearly a whole measuring the bonnet catches are now install. They really finish the car of nicely.



Spent a few hours day creating a centre console out of the scrap bits left from making the metal backing for the dash sponge / piping. Not sure if this will be the final piece or not yet!

Another small step forwards - a hole cut in the dash for the glove box. The fuse box will sit in the back of here.

Sorry for the down time, site got moved between servers again. For some reason they managed to break the ODBC everytime its done!

Small amount of progress with the glove box:

Step 1 - measure out and drill 40 holes in one floor

Step 2 - drill 40 holes in the the floor of the other side.



Step 3 - drill 40 holes in the driver side

Step 4 - drill 40 holes in the passenger side after a trip to the DIY shop to get a new drill bit! Despite the extensive use of cutting compound the drill bits just get blunt after drilling 120 holes in hard steel!



Step 5 cover driver side with black goo from CBS and put 40 steel rivets in

Step 6 - repeat on the passenger side, then go and rest hands / arms...



And some more wiring, some more wiring added, the dash is now easy to remove if need by unplugging a few multi plugs.

After many hours of measuring, cutting, getting it wrong and making the holes bigger these steel square bars now fit! Only realising half way that the runners on the seat itself were not parallel! Problem solved though. Did the front holes first and then later the rear ones, which you can't get to very easily!



The steel bars will be drilled and bolted on the outsides through the chassis for extra strength.


Seat in the forward position



Seat all the way back

And then there was two! Driver side seat fitting, it was much easier second time through.



However the second seat needed to line up the same as the first seat, they are not 100% but it's very close.