Mac - Thanks, I am really hoping that the rear frame and arches will only need to be removed one more time.
( To seal the underside of the hand brake panel and floors once I've fixed them from above. )
Once I have bolted this lot to the chassis for the final time I will definitely be heading in the right direction.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Normal service is resumed...
Had a great Father's Day with my wife and daughters yesterday.
The restaurant even gave me a "daddy goodie bag" with a beer, baseball & money off voucher in it.
OK, the meal was expensive, so the "free" gift was included in the price, but it was still a nice touch.
No matter how hard I try not to worry about all the work ahead of me, it does keep getting me down.
But thankfully I looked back at what I have achieved over the last few months and I have made solid progress.
So I will continue to do what I can, when I can, and try to remain happy with that.
I started today by fitting one of my seats into the driver's side.
The good news is that I think I can make this work, so I will stick with these seats for now.
Notes:
- Neither seat will have seat runners fitted as there is just no room.
- But I fill fit the supplied spacers between the seat and the floor which will lift them 1cm (ish).
Then I climbed in and checked the driving position which allowed me to check a few things:
- I can reach the back of the bulkhead with my feet, so pedal operation should be OK.
- I can also see over the top of the Spitfire bulkhead, which for some reason I was convinced I was going to be too low.
However, I will be too low to see
over the top of the standard wind deflector.
I went back through
Mr T's build thread to find a photo with him sitting in his car.
I couldn't get a decent self portrait, but my eye line definitely lower than his.
I'd bought one aero screen a long time ago.
And now I think I will commit to using two of these for my build.
That way I can simply remove them completely when it is MOT time.
The other thing I will need to do is build a wind deflector for the base of the screen.
Something like this.
Which means I need to finalise the body shell / bulkhead arrangement so I know how / where all this will fit.
In addition to the front of the cockpit I will also need to sort out the back of the cockpit area too.
The back of the seats sit very tight to the rear frame work.
So I think I will need to fit the plywood panelling
inside the frame, rather than the traditional
outside approach.
Previously I had a problem with the back of the bodywork getting pressed out by the framework.
Part of this problem may have been due to the fact the front of the hump is fitted at an angle.
But it was the lip of the door openings catching on the door opening framework that prevented any forward/backward movement.
This is no longer a problem since I removed the lip to seal the doors.
Although you can still see the angle of the door gap pointing upwards along the bottom.
But I intend to brace and cut the bulkhead this week to see how things can be aligned.
Back to today and I welded the feet back on to the rear frame work.
I fitted my mini crush tubes and then bolted the feet into position.
However, this "pulled" the arches down a fraction, so the frame no longer touched the feet for welding.
This was an easy fix, as I simply sat on the frame which brought it back in contact and I could start welding.
Thankfully after the initial welds were done, I could get back on the ground to finish the welding off.
Driver's Side:
Passenger Side:
You will notice that the feet are in different positions relative to the "legs" of the frame.
That is because the Sammio frame work is not exactly symmetrical.
These are the gap between the frame and the wheel arches.
Driver's Side:
Passenger Side:
The only good news is that with these feet welded & bolted in, the whole structure is now really rock solid.
I will still have a look at fitting extra brackets between the arches and the framework.
Although this may be a bit OTT and everything should be fine without them.
At this point, the rain returned and I called it a day.
Until next time, take care, Paul.
