Another build day was scheduled but this time it felt a little different. With the chassis returned it was the first day that the we would actually be building the car rather than demolishing it or welding seemingly endless pieces of steel to it!
So Paul and I were the first to get going as for some unknown reason we had decided to start at 0930 on a Sunday morning…
Paul managed to waste at least two hours being prised away from his cups of tea…
But finally we got under way and decided to take the easy pickings first. The front suspension setup had been removed in one piece so we thought we would just bolt that all back up, et woila… We had not planned for the powder coat factor!
So we found that everything that came apart originally no longer went back into the same hole as it had about 2mm of powder coat on it…Â Cue some frantic sanding of mounting brackets.
After all the powder coat was removed on the mounting faces we tried again, still problems of unfathomable resolve. Then the eureka moment, some of the top hat inserts were smaller than others, see:
Blink and you wouldn’t notice, so we got the calipers out and measured all the mounting bracket widths, china-graph pencil in hand they were all marked up and the smallest ones has the smallest inserts used on one side. As if by magic the whole thing was assembled very easily everything falling into place correctly. Front roll bar was also assembled and everything left loose.
The car has front suspension again!
By this point a couple of the other guys had arrived James and Chris F. After the resounding success on the front suspension they embarked on the rear bushes. More powder coat removal needed. While this was all going on I though I would give the new press ago to get the main rotor bearings out. The bearing tools from pineapple racing are great bits of kit and a fraction of the price of the Mazda SST.
Wasn’t really expecting 10 tonnes to be needed but they did let go in the end, pressed the main bearings out of the stationary gears as well. More than happy with the press even if I did need to get it out of the autosport show in Toby’s pram! Sorry Toby…
The guys were hard at work on the rear suspension.
While Chris F had embarked on making the templates for all the carbon panelling we needed on the chassis. Never have I seen such a happy chap armed with nothing more that an old cardboard box and a sharpie marker pen!
Templates in hand Nigel and Chris F got the jigsaw out and started chopping up the home made carbon sheets. The first attempt left a lot to be desired but they soon go the hand of learning top from bottom and churned out the front bulk head sheets. One thing we did notice is the carbon sheet we have manufactured is about twice as thick as the aluminium panels that came off the car… The layup I used was carbon, carbon, foam, carbon, carbon and was really stiff but maybe a bit too much for the panelling. We did however do a comparison with these sheets:
And discovered that regardless of the over engineering the carbon panel with the large grommet was 150g compared with the ali panel at 190g. So no problems although doing it again I would not use the foam core in the chassis panels just floor pan.
As you can see the new panels look a million times better that the battered old ones that came off. More panels where made and we have most of the front end done and ready for gluing… No rivets allowed here ;)
While this was all happening I thought I would take the easy job and re-assembled the pedal box.
It was a long old day but the progress was massive, the quality of the work everyone is doing is great. Things are coming together…
A special mention must go to Jonny Mac who did turn up although spent the whole day dealing with support calls for work on my dining room table!