Fluids

I’m not sure if it’s really true, but I feel as if I’m getting into the endgame of this build. I think that means that there’s loads of bits and pieces to do, although there’s a couple of large things that I don’t know how to do yet, notably the gearchange and the exhaust.

Here’s a small bit of progress in that I’ve got the new fuel tank. As usual, I drew it out and ordered it from Bryn Jones at Allyfab who did his usual superb job. At the top is the tank sitting in the chassis. That was a bit of a relief as I’d tried to get the tank as big as I could, but was worried that it’d come out just a little bit too big.

You might well be able to see that the tank isn’t on the bottom of the chassis in the photo above. That’s because the fuel pump sticks out of the bottom of the tank, here’s the bottom view for you to see. Hopefully, this little bulge on the bottom of the tank is enough of a swirl pot, together with the foam in the tank, to avoid any fuel surge problems. One thing I am intending to do this time, which I didn’t do on the Fury, is to wire up the low fuel warning light from the pump. I don’t really know that it’ll be enough useful warning, but it seems as though it could be useful come Birkett time, assuming that it isn’t held in a monsoon again as it was last year.

Having finished sticking the bodywork back together, I’ve mounted the central parts properly on the chassis. However, I’ve got to fill in all those rivet holes and flat it all down properly yet. After being prompted by Al (another RGBer), I’ve bought one of those new orbital sanders that you see advertised on the TV. I’d always assumed that they were useless but that appears not to be the case. Hopefully, that’ll mean that getting a decent finish on the bodywork, and flatting off all the flash lines that are on it, won’t be too hard this time.

One thing I’ve wanted to do for a while was to mount the radiator. In fact, this was really why I started consolidating the bodywork as I need to know where the front cover is going to be and in order to do that, I need to know where the central bits of the bodywork are positioned. So, with the central tub in place I positioned the front cover, using some lumps of wood G-cramped to the chassis, as in the photo. Of course, I’ve got to work out exactly how this is all going to be held in place, I’m not intending to hinge it, but for now this is good enough to work out where the radiator is going.

On the Fury I started off using a cheap VW style radiator. They’ve become pretty much de rigeur in the kit car world as they’re amazingly cheap from one of the pattern suppliers. However, on the Fury it never really cooled the car properly and I eventually bought an expensive aluminium radiator which did the job really well. However, I’ve always thought that the VW radiator would have worked well if there had been anywhere for the hot air to go after it had been through the radiator. Hence the position in which I’m holding the radiator in the photo. This radiator, by the way, cost me the grand sum of £26-88 from Advanced Radiators. Compared to roughly £200 for the aluminium one you can probably see why it seems a good idea to use this one.

So, the idea is to mount the radiator at this jaunty angle, and the arrange for a diffuser on the inlet and a nozzle on the outlet so as to manage the air flow. I’m intending to exit the nozzle out of the top of the bonnet. I think there’s enough room there to make something that will work without bashing into the front suspension.