So near but so far

I’m getting closer to the end of all this, but there’s still a long way to go. I’ve got a few things to say, though, which is quite good considering I’ve been out of the country for a week recently. A consequence of getting closer to the end is that there’s a whole lot of more bitty things been going on. Hence this is going to be a bit fragmented.

First up, and with its own photo, is a better strap to hold the battery in place. Told you it was going to be interesting, didn’t I?

I mentioned last time that I was trying out instrument layouts and here’s what I ended up with. There are two components here, the Dash-4 that I bought last year and the original shift lights with a couple of special lamps, including two of the brightest automotive LEDs I’ve seen that serve for the oil pressure warning. The second panel is just transplanted from the J15. The two things are set up so that the shift lights should be visible above the steering wheel.

You should also be able to see that I’ve added an extinguisher release at the top right, near to the brake balance twiddler.

Also, you can see that I’ve modified the gearchange paddles. The previous arrangement was getting in the way of my knees. What I’ve done here is cut down the original paddles from Andy’s setup (which seem to have been designed to look good rather than addressing any issues of leverage that would have been familiar to Archimedes) and welded (in Aluminium, natch!) the original J15 gearchange levers on. This photo (note that it’s now in a lightbox!) all looks a bit busy, but I don’t think it is really.

Andy’s made me a rather nice looking exhaust system. Well, it’s just the headers really but it looks pretty good. Of course, it’s not actually fitted yet. One of the reasons for this is that I really need to sort out the sidepods before working out where the silencer is going to go; I’m a bit confused, to be honest, about how the silencer and the oil cooler are going to miss each other…

After a not inconsiderable wait I’ve finally got the handbrake caliper from Andy. I’ve mounted the handbrake disc on the diff (although  there’s an unresolved issue about one of the grease nipples on the diff; I might just blank it off as there are others) and constructed a mounting for the caliper as you can just about see in the photo.

Since taking this photo I’ve installed the cable and the brake does actually work, although it needs careful adjusting. The cable does stretch a bit too much though, I think I’ll change the lever slightly sot that the cable’s got more travel to fix that.

A couple of really minor things I did today were to wire in the transponder and, gasp, the horn. (We need one as the car’s are supposed to be MOTable, although that’s clearly nonsense.)

With  that, though, it was on to the momentous issue of fitting the bodywork. First thing was to add make a sidepod floor. Initially, I’m going to make this out of plywood but I suspect I’ll be looking for better materials later. Using the wood, though, is easy for getting things in the right place.

The plan is to construct something using aluminium above this what will support the bodywork, as featured here previously. In order to start work on that bit I trimmed this first bit of bodywork, removing all the bits on the edge and smoothing down all the sharp edges. This is a huge improvement, actually, as you can now move the part without fearing that it’s about to cut your finger off. The one observation of fitting this against the chassis, though, is that I’m going to have to put the front part of the bodywork on first as it’s not clear where this bit goes exactly. The front clip has got a flange that goes over  the front hoop and that should make it easy to locate properly. And, with that in the right place, I can locate the side parts.