Filling in

With loins still firmly girded, bloody uncomfortable I can tell you, I’ve been getting the bodywork properly finished. As discussed I’ve made an aluminium panel to fill in the gap at the back of the seats, as in the photo.

That actually fits pretty neatly. As you can see it’s attached to the rear deck with some Dzus fasteners. What I haven’t sorted yet is whether I need to do something about making good access to the plugs. With this panel in they’re just about completely inaccessible. It can be removed by taking out 10 bolts holding the seat backs in, four harness eye-bolts and four Dzus fasteners but that hardly bodes well for speed of access. What I’ll probably do is to cut a chunk out of the centre of this current panel and make a slightly larger replacement which would be mounted purely by some Dzus fasteners. I haven’t done this yet though because I ran out of enthusiasm.

Actually, I also couldn’t figure out what the best approach was. It’s amazing how much garage time I spend just standing (sometime I sit on the bench) thinking about what to do. It’s also clear that it’s often better to just leave things alone and go and think elsewhere for a while.

What you can also see in the photo above is that there’s a socking great hole in front of the rear roll cage hoop brace. I’ve sorted this with a couple of little bits of aluminium as in the next photo. What I haven’t done with these at the moment is attached the rear ends to the brace. I might just tape them on, to be honest, as I don’t want to attach them firmly as that would damage the brace to some extent.

So, apart from fixing up the bashed up paintwork, that means the rear bodywork’s all done. When it comes to the paintwork I’ll do that last of all. When I do do that I’ll have to decide whether to paint these panels I’ve just been banging on about. Would they be better bodywork coloured or should I leave them as is?

With the bodywork “done”, then, I mounted the lights in the engine cover as you can see. Note the artful way that I didn’t actually manage to get both lights into the photo. Intentional, of course.

Of course, there was a certain amount of wiring to do on the inside and you may remember that I was a bit concerned about how to connect it up so that I could actually remove the engine cover. In the event that was solved fairly by making the wires dangle down a little. You can see them in the next photo just under the bodywork.

After that was done I tested the rear lights. After I’d remembered that I needed to put the “switched lights” fuse into the box—that only took me an hour or so to remember—then they worked fine, including the brakes lights. It was on, then, to the front lights. Again I need to work out how to connect up things so that I can take the bonnet off. I haven’t quite done so yet and while the solution to that conundrum gestates in my head I busied myself with actually mounting the lights in the bonnet. While I was there I also entertained myself with sticking the Sylva badge that I’ve got in the middle of the bonnet. Yes, it’s unnecessary weight but it’s kind of fun.

One possibility for the front lights connector is to arrange something that can be reached by grovelling inside the intake duct. That doesn’t seem too good though as I’ll doubtless want to put some ducting  in there which probably won’t be compatible with wiring. Hmmm…