I haven't done very much the last few days, as a consequence of being ill. However,
having struggled back to the computer, there are a couple of things to mention.
First of all, the instruments I ordered from Greengauges arrived. They're not quite as I envisaged them, but rather nice all the same. I just have to figure out what to mount them on now. I'm coming round to thinking that it might be best to get the Dax dash as a starting position, although I've been dismayed at how flexible it is in the past.
One thing I did do at the weekend was move the Westfield back into the garage. It's a bit
more cramped now, but surprisingly OK. At least the Westfield isn't just sitting there filling up with water anymore.
I've also been reading the bits in the Rush manual about fitting the rear and side bodywork. The manual just says to put some sealing foam on the uprights of the sides (right at the very left of this photo) and press the side GRP panels against this. I'm not sure about this as:
- I can't see that it's going to be very watertight and keeping the grot out of this difficult to get at space seems rather sensible. (Long term readers may remember the sealing panels on the Westfield.)
- It seems a good way of putting some additional stiffness into the chassis, although at the cost to the late lamented ACBC's dictum about "adding lightness".
I've been told that Gary at Dax does this so it is probably a good idea. It might be sensible to do the inside of the propshaft tunnel at the same time, as part of the strategy of putting the rotating bits in a box.
Having sorted out where the steering column is going to go, although there's lots of opportunity
for fine adjustment, it was time to fit the pedals. As a lot of other people seem to do I decided to block up the
hole between the footwell and the engine compartment by making an aluminium plate that the pedals themselves would
fit through. Here's a photo of the plate after cutting it out.
This plate was fitted to the scuttle area and the pedal box mounted on top of it and bolted
down. I'm going to have to figure out in a while where the throttle cable will need to go.
Before that I'll need to trial fit the carburretor and before that I'll need the inlet manifold. Luckily, Simon at Real Steel phoned this week and, as promised, told me that they had, finally, received some Edelbrock manifolds. So, I ordered one and with luck it should arrive soon.
Today I carried on with the pedal box, and fitted the master cylinders. There's about a
million things to adjust here, most of which will have to wait until I've got everything piped up. One thing I
haven't got yet is the pipework for the clutch link, I'll need to sort this soon.
On a visit to Dax today I bought a battery and a boss for a Momo steering wheel. I have
a Momo wheel sitting around that I used on a car I sold a while ago, so I fitted that for now. It could probably
do with being a bit smaller, but I can sort that out in a while. For now it looks quite good. To go with it I refitted
the column stalks so that I could check if the indicator cancelling works, which is does, even though this is the
stalk that I messed up a while ago by cleaning it too enthusiastically.
The big problem with this wheel is that I don't have a horn push for it, which I would need as the donor Sierra used a steering wheel horn push
in case you've got to this frame directly and can't get out, go here.