Seats and Carpets

I spent the weekend carpeting the inside of the car and then fitting the seats.  I wanted to get these jobs finished before I dropped the car onto the ground when access to the underside becomes more challenging.

No problems fitting the carpets, but keeping the glue off them was very tricky.   I think that the winning formula is to start at the bottom and work up, covering the carpets with paper / cardboard once they are in place.

Finished result:

I also fitted the stainless steel trim to the front footwells.  The trim is profiled so that it fits the entire width of the car and fits around the base of the vertical chassis member on the outside edges:

As soon as I had fitted the rivets, I realised that it would look much better if the rivets were fitted from the footwell into the front face of the trim.  Must remember this for next time!

Once the carpets were done, I trimmed the excess carpet edges along the centre tunnel and around the crescent panels.  After this, the aluminium tunnel covers were trimmed to fit:

The adjoining edges needed some attention to ensure that they were parallel and the width of the handbrake slot needed increasing to stop the handbrake microswitch from fouling as the lever is raised or lowered:

Once trimmed to shape, they were all covered with the leatherette material and attached into rivnuts with some black Allen head bolts:

I need to wait until the gearbox is in place before I can cut the hole in the centre panel.

A note on fitting rivnuts: I found it neater to fit them after the carpet was fitted, but the carpet needed trimming to the diameter of the rivnut before it could be inserted and pulled tight.  I did this by drilling the 9mm hole, putting the rivnut into the hole and running a craft knife round the outside edge.  After pulling out the excess carpets, the rivnut can be fitted as per normal.

Before fitting the seats, I fitted the seat belt lower bolts, as these will be inaccessible once the seats are in.  In order to satisfy my OCD, I opted to fit the bolts with the heads under the car and the threads into the adjusting rails (driver's seat) or into the seat (passenger's seat).  There are 25mm spacers under the passenger seat so that both seats are at the same horizontal level:

And a nice, tidy underside:

And now, the car is ready to be dropped to the floor in preparation for the engine installation :)

Disaster Partly Resolved, Seat Holes Drilled

OK, back from work and the back of the car was a mess.  I spent the first hour or so drilling out all of the rivets at the rear of the car and removing the aluminium / tadpole trim.  The photos are too embarrassing to post.  I'm going to clean it up and try again on this one.  Watch this space...

I want to have the seats in position before I drop the car down, so I've drilled the holes using the following method:

1.  Tape cardboard to the floor pan.

2.  Put bolts into the bottom of the seat and put it in place.

3.  Using a heavy weight (my bum!), push the bolts into the cardboard.

4.  A quick check of the measurements and then drill the holes.  Check the seats fit.

It is worth noting that the sides of the central tunnel are not parallel, so I aligned the front and rear edges of the seats with the rear panel.  Next job is to remove the seats and fit the carpets / seat belts before the seats are bolted in properly.

First Mini Disaster

I attempted to glue the tadpole trim onto the back-end finishing strip today and it was an unmitigated disaster! 

I cut the strip into shape using a craft knife:

But gluing it to the aluminium was a nightmare.  I used the same bonding agent as I used to bond panels to the chassis, but it went everywhere and refused to hold the rubber trim in the correct position.  I thought that riveting to the car would make things better, but that's when things actually got about 1,000,000 times worse.  I will make an assessment tomorrow and form a plan...

Odds and Sods

I took some time to complete other odd jobs which need doing before I drop the car down and the underside becomes harder to access.

1.  Fuel sender bolted to fuel tank:

I have the newer GBS tank with pre-threaded holes.  They require 6 x M5x10mm bolts to hold it in place with the OEM rubber gasket - I checked with the manufacturer and there is no requirement for supplementary gasket sealant with this gasket.



2.  Gearbox mounting bolted to chassis:

The newer chassis has the gearbox mounting plate arranged so that the gearbox mount is positioned below the chassis and bolted into place.  This provides the fore / aft datum for the gearbox and, therefore, the engine.  The left / right datum for the engine will be the centre of the crankshaft pulley aligned with the centre of the chassis.



3.  Gearbox mounting bracket bolted to gearbox:

I need to check this with the pros - I've used the supplied bolts but they are very short - the end of the thread does not even clear the end of the nut...

Once I've confirmed this and it's all correct, the gearbox will go into the chassis once I've dropped the car off the stands.

Brake Bleeding

After a weekend visit to fellow GBS Zero owners Stewart and Kay Willsher and a fairly slow week, I have finally finished piecing together the rear brakes.  One of my Spanish amigos came over to help me bleed them using the 'see-through pipe into Coke bottle' method, but it wasn't too successful.

We succeeded in filling the system with fluid until this happened:

It turned out that the nipple here (left rear brake)...

...did not have enough thread to pull the pipe onto the nipple which resulted in a large leak.  The leaking fluid also took the paint off the end of the drive shaft as seen at the bottom of the pic.  I fixed it by removing the inboard washer from where the nipple bolts to the chassis, this freed up about 1.5mm of extra thread and I was able to clamp it tight.

Having done all that, I was not convinced that there wasn't still some air in the system, so I borrowed one of these and did the job again:

And so, the braking circuits are now done and all four wheels are on the car.

Crescent Panels

I only had to fit the interior crescent panels as most of the other panels had been factory fitted prior to being painted.  It took about an hour in total, they are now riveted and bonded in place:

Aux Panel

In an attempt to prove that men can multitask, I managed to trim the aux panel and install switches at the same time as cooking a BBQ.  The finished results:

Some things to note:

-  I have a Ford steering column surround which already has a hazard warning light switch.  I now have one on the aux panel too, as this was designed for a Mazda but I'd fitted everything before I realised.  This means that 2 mods are now required: remove the hazard switch from the steering column and make provision for hazard switch wiring to the aux panel as it is not included on the lower dash loom.

-  The top of the aux panel is designed to mate with the bottom of the dash.  This is unnecessary as there is plenty of support from the bottom attachments...  And GRP doesn't hold rivnuts very well.

-  The leatherette covering has a small amount of stretch.  I made a template from paper and had to put several nicks into it to get it flush to the panel - this wasn't necessary with the leatherette which stretched nicely around the aluminium form.

-  It turns out I cannot multitask after all :(

Dashboard

I did some work on the dashboard over the weekend whilst all the shops were shut and mechanical work ground to a halt. 

Firstly, I made a cardboard template of the dash and cut out instrument holes:

I found that the position for right hand most hole (for the rev counter) is pretty much dictated by a cut out in the aluminium lip which the dashboard mounts to.  The other large hole was cut to be symmetrical about the central axis of the steering column.  The 4 smaller holes are symmetrical about the centre of the dashboard - I've also arranged them so that if the painted stripes are continued down the dash, then the centre 2 instruments will sit nicely inside a stripe each...  But more of that later.

Once the cardboard template was satisfactory, I masked off the GRP dash and transferred the design:

Then started cutting using a 52mm hole saw for the small holes and a router attachment on a Dremel for the larger holes:

I do not have the GBS instrument surround but even with the ultimate flexibility that this affords, I opted for a fairly standard layout!

Engine Prep

I cannot find an engine crane out here, so disassembled a packing crate and made a gantry.  I have managed to source a chain hoist from an amigo which attaches to the gantry:

The chain hoist has a safe working load of 500kg, so I don't believe that it will be the weakest link in this setup...!  I have attached the engine to the hoist using a length of rope quadrupled up and secured it with a clove hitch to prevent the engine from tipping unexpectedly. 

Job 1: remove old oil.

Looks bad!

Job 2: fit Raceline sump.

The Raceline instructions are straightforward.  Raceline recommends adding a bead of silicone sealant to the stepped areas of the sump, but I added a bead all the way around the outside of the sump gasket prior to fitting.  My bicycle torque wrench came in handy for torquing the small bolts :)

Rear Brakes

Prior to fitting the rear caliper, I had to remove powder coat from rear brake caliper mount and gently file the mounting faces so that the caliper straddles the disc symmetrically:

Hand brake cable attaches from above and the brake pipe fits to the bottom of the caliper.  The hand brake cable needs a retaining clip on the hub carrier, the brake pipe has been mounted so that it does not interfere with the moving parts of the suspension.

Rear Hubs

The drive shaft fitted and the hub carrier was fitted to the left hand side first.  Two things that I learned:

1.  The drive shafts are different lengths (left hand is shorter), so no matter how hard you try, the right hand one won't fit.

2.  The left hand hub nut has a left hand thread.  I also found out here that my torque wrench only works on a right hand thread, I nearly broke my back figuring it out, but got there in the end.

The brake disc is fitted temporarily to help align the caliper.  Note that the rear calipers are fitted to the front of the assembly.