Well, the tax disc arrived this morning, timed from the beginning of May not
June as requested. I tried to phone Terry Hill about it bit couldn't get through. Perhaps I'll just drive the car
instead. In celebration I went out and bought a motor-bike tax disc holder that I'll mount on the left hand screen
support somehow. (It's always seemed off to put it on the windscreen when that sticks up above the tonneau.)
In the evening I fitted the number plates. The rear one was just stuck down with sticky fixers, but I think I'll probably add some of the plastic number plate bolts when I next have to take the boot box out.
Next I fixed the front one. This was a bit trickier as there isn't an obvious
place to put it. I made a couple of brackets out of some aluminium strip and riveted those to the bottom of the
nose cone. The plates bolts into the front of the brackets using the usual plastic nuts and bolts.
(Sorry about this photo. The reflective number plate seems to confuse the camera.)
After that, Tom and I went out for a bit of a blat, which was fun...
Later on, I taped the tonneaux in place to see if they're going to fit. It seemed
all right so the next thing will be to actually fix the rear tonneau in place. That will have to wait for another
day though.
One other thing I did today was to order some materials to have a go at making some sidescreens with. I ordered a load of polyester resin and glass to make some GRP with, and some trimming bits and pieces. I'm going to try and hunt down some plastics tomorow, assuming I can find the time, for the top of the sidescreen. What I'll need to do is to make a mould for the sidescreen body, but I'm not totally sure how this is going to work yet.
There was something posted today on the Dax mailing list about someone who's made his own hood. He was telling me about it at the Dax open day a while ago and it would be interesting to see how he's done it.
I realised that the tax disc does start at the beginning of June, I was
confused by the fact that it said "05 03" on it, but of course it expires at the end of the month...
I set about attaching the tax disc holder to the car and was quite pleased with the end result. It'll entail a
fairly significant job to change the disc, but as it only happens once a year that's no great problem.
Next up I set about the tonneau. I fitted the rear one first. For some reason the front tonneau has the press stubs attached and the rear one does not. All the same, it was pretty straightforward to attach, it was just a matter of holding it in the right position and drilling straight through the tonneau and boot box and riveting the press stud base into position and attaching the stud itself to the tonneau.
One possible problem is that the rear tonneau nearly overlaps the centre brake
light. However, I think it's just about all right.
The front tonneau was rather trickier, and in any case doesn't seem to fit as well as a
result of the dart that's in it to accommodate the steering wheel, but it all fitted quite nicely in the end.
I always like driving cars with the tonneau half folded away. With luck it'll be sunny tomorrow and I'll be able to see what it's like to drive the Dax like this.
in case you've got to this frame directly and can't get out, go here.