15th November 2005

Turned the chassis upside down and started getting to grips with fitting the floor panels. Initial observation is that they are slightly oversize, which is good, but means careful marking of where to cut them down to. In the end, I placed the passenger side pieces on first to get a feel for how it all sits together, then clamped and rather carefully drilled the first set of holes for the passenger seat pan. 40 holes in all and no problems, just need to grind off the powder coating and apply some Wurth, then pop the rivets into place.

17th November 2005

Drilled the mounting holes for one of the long thin triangular strips (used to straighten up the chassis).

18th November 2005

Took delivery of a Dremel today and a few more ratchet clamps. Put the Dremel to good use straightaway and ground away some floorpan GRP to bring it in line with the chassis rails. Makes a hell of a lot of dust though.

Also busied myself drilling the mounting holes for the other triangular infill panel and GRP floorpan. All I now have to do is the middle footwell pieces, though where they meet the GRP floorpan is going to be tricky as there's only 1 chassis rail and drilling 2 rows of holes is a tight fit. I asked Tim Hoverd about how he did this bit and he overlaid the two panels, which clearly makes sense, so I'll get busy doing that tomorrow.

19th November 2005

A beautiful crisp Saturday morning, so first thing into the garage getting to work. As mentioned above, I took Tim's advice and drilled through the GRP floorpan and Ally footwell directly into the chassis cross member. This looks good, so I did the other side and finished off drilling all the mounting holes for the Ally footwell panels.

Used the Dremel to remove the powder coating from the chassis where the panels were to be bonded and also keyed the panels. Did one of the long triangular infill panels first and applied a good bead of Wurth then popped the rivets into place. All seemed straightforward enough and I have a decent line of Wurth spreading out across all mating faces, so should be a good water seal.

Therefore I did the other in-fill panel too and feeling full of beans I also sorted out the passenger side footwell and floorpan. After popping 60 big head rivets, my hands no longer function properly, so enough was enough and up to the study to populate todays internet diary.

A good day.

24th November 2005

Been a bit quiet since the previous couple of days burst of inspiration account of two main aspects:

1. I've been a bit under the weather

2. Speaking of the weather it's about -6°C at the moment

However, managed an hour tonight and trimmed the other footwell panel to fit neatly with the chassis members, but decided not to get the Dremel out to key the panels as it is a little late to make too much noise and piss the neighbours off. Therefore did a bit of donor part restoration on some of the brake components, but nothing to get in a sweat about, or take piccies of. I'm waffling now, so no more to say.

28th November 2005

Finished off the rest of the floor panels tonight. Took a few piccies on the way:

1. Keyed the chassis with the Dremel to increase adhesion

2. Applied a 'generous' bead of Wurth

3. Panels in place with rivets ready for the gun

4. All done

...so the floor panels are now all in place and I'm ready to turn the chassis the right way up. Before this happens, I'm going to need to make some trestles, but this isn't going to happen overnight, so expect a delay of a week or so before further updates....

30th November 2005

Oh well, couldn't wait for the trestles, so decided to temporarily use axle stands to prop the car up, so I could at least do a few things more. Dawn and I rotated the chassis no problem and Dawn tried it out for size - without falling through. Therefore the rivets and bonding appear to have done the job.

Moved my attention to the interior passenger compartment footwell panels which are GRP and the most awfully complex shape. These are turning ot to be a real pig to fit, so I'm going to have to spend some patient time fettling the panels to fit as they should as this will be the first real time for shaping GRP, so I am not going to rush things. On that decision, I called it a day at this point and will attempt some of this work later.

23rd December 2005

Well another long gap, but been away to Canada (again) this time with no car parts to bring back, have also been rotten and unable to get outside for long. Enough of my moaning, today I finished work for Christmas and managed to spend 2 hours in the garage !!!

I concentrated first on fitting the GRP seat cross strengthening braces. These are 3mm thick Ally strips contoured to the GRP floorpan shape which should be rigidly mounted to the chassis members to provide that extra bit of support to the seat. Of course they don't fit correctly, so after some faffing around I decided that they were not going to be perfect, so decided to fit them as they are, but with some spacers to fill in the gaps and self tapping screws to hold them to the chassis rails. Only trouble is, I'm not sure if the seats will now fit well, but am going to have to go with this for now.

I then focussed my attention on the passenger side interior footwell panel. If you remember last month I had a look at these and they were tricky to fit. Anyway, spent some time fettling the panel to shape and managed to get something that will do, but I'm not really happy with it. The top edge is overcut (it was never going to fit properly anyway), so I will pad this out with some Wurth. The bottom edge had varying thickness GRP which I managed to grind down and the two vertical edges onto the circular chassis tubes are just about acceptable. So it's a bit Heath Robinson, bit will suffice.

2nd January 2006

Happy New Year...

Spent a quiet Christmas holiday period with the family. Ventured out to the garage tonight and spent an hour on the passenger side footwell panel. As mentioned earlier, this is a very poor fit:

The gap is too big to get away with padding out with Wurth, so I have decided to manufacture a new piece of bodywork to cover the gap. I have some off cuts of steel sheet (actually the roof from the Sierra donor), and this will do for the job. I proceeded as follows:

1. Made a cardboard template                     2. Copied this to the steel plate and cut to size

3. Bent the plate across the required fold line  4. Drilled holes for pop-riveting to the footwell panel and gave a coat of Hammerite

3rd January 2006

Only a brief period of activity tonight and drilled holes in the bottom edge of the passenger footwell panel to accept the big head pop-rivets. Getting too late to do the other holes.

6th January 2006

Drilled the remaining holes and at last fitted the passenger footwell panel. It looks OK and the good news is that my home made panel fits fine! I should also get a bit quicker at this bodywork lark as time goes on...

7th January 2006

Worked on fitting the passenger footwell end panel tonight. These are supplied by DAX as rectangular Aluminium pieces which you have to cut to shape dependent on your choice of engine as the brace tubes differ according to choice. The engine brace tubes are also in a most inconvenient position and trial fitting the metalwork is tricky. Therefore I resorted to making a cardboard template first which and then cutting the Ally to fit. A fiddly business, but finally got the shape right and drilled the mounting holes in readiness.

9th January 2006

Prior to riveting the footwell end panel in place, I busied myself drilling the mounting holes for the passenger footwell top panel. This allows you to get your G-clamps in place easier and gives more area to clamp. Once this was all done, I spent the remainder of the evening rivetting the above two panels in place.

12th January 2006

Moved on to the drivers side footwell panels and drilled the mounting holes for the end panel and the little top panel to the right of the pedal box mounting area. In the process of drilling the footwell end panel holes, my drill bit snapped, so that was the end of proceedings for the night.

16th January 2006

Bought some replacement drill bits over the weekend and finished off the end panel. Also drilled the holes for the inside footwell panel. I won't rivet these in place until most of the internals of the car are in place (gearbox, pipes, loom etc). Next job will be to do the same for the larger interior aluminium panels and the rear bulkhead shoulder GRP panels.

20th January 2005

Placed the rear bulkhead shoulder panels in place and decided not to drill these for the time being. The reason being they are of an appaling finish quality and I want to call DAX and discuss this with them. In the long run I think these would be covered with the upholstery, but want to check first. Also they need a hole drilled to go round the rear trailing arm fixing bolt, but I want to get this in place first.

Therefore time to move onto the rear axle !