I get by with a little help from my friends

Well the time had come to fit the body to the chassis permanently. This involved removing the body again and completing some snags that had been left to the last second, such as handbrake return springs, top up the gearbox oil and other odd jobs. With this being a body lifting task i called up some mates to aid with the removal and refitting.... bacon butty's and tea/coffee was sufficient to persuade most people to attend, so we were ready to go.

The plan was to quickly lift the body tub off, which would allow me access to do the jobs i needed to do, the main job was to seal the body to the chassis using standard bathroom silicon. This is to stop any water ingress into the chassis floor pans, where the water could sit and cause rusting issues in the long term future.

With the body lifted off i was shocked to see that a fair amount of dirt and garden snails had made home between the fibreglass body tub floor and the chassis steel floor. I can only assume that because i stored the body in the garden for over 12 months that a snail brood had made home and then when the tub was put on the chassi 6 months ago they were on route to a nicer home. All cleaned up now and the snail graveyard was removed.

With access now to the stainless steel engine bay cladding time had come to remove all the protective film...... what a ballache. Thankfully Ian was happy to jump into the engine bay and start peeling away whilst i finished jobs on the chassis like coating the floor pans with stone chip and topping up the gearbox oil, amongst other tasks. This was such a help as its probs one of the most tedious jobs ever, and the fact my body was stored outside for a year with harsh winter temperatures affecting the protective film cant have helped the removal.

So with most of the little jobs getting done and a bacon butties getting devoured what better time for a quick visit form a couple of Jehovah's witness.... "What would you say if i said Armageddon??" the only response i could think of was Bruce Willis!! and then a polite "Sod off" to send them onto the next house.
As you can see by the picture which looks like Ian has been eaten by my car, that anybody wanting to enlighten us all into the kingdom of God could have picked a better time....... back end of never sounds good to me.



A sterling job done by Ian, This will look very nice when the paint is done and the engine reflects all round the engine bay. However it also means any tatty areas will also be highly visible, so attention when fitting all engine bay hoses and wires must be paid. I think this panelling will also reflect a serious amount of heat of the engine and keep it in the engine bay, so a close eye on the temp gauges during the first few journeys to make sure i don't cook anything.

Now to go crazy with the silicon, basically a nice continuous thick bead all round the chassis rails to stop any water getting caught between the tub floor and chassis floor, i have given the chassis floor a nice thick coat of stone chip waxoil so this again will help stop any moister eating away at the floor pan along with some drain holes towards the front to play safe.

The body was quickly lifted back on and aligned with all the fixing points then bolted onto the chassis. It was one of those tasks that although a lot of work was done, the car would still look exactly like it did when it was pushed out the garage in the morning so to the passer buy and neighbours nothing had changed since last time they saw it.

All the lifting and shifting was done and the hired help sharply dispatched, which was lucky as I'd ran out of bacon and the coffee was running low. This left me the rest of the day to re-do all the engine bay cables that had been disconnected to remove the body. I was also able to fully connect up my brake lines and clutch line to see if all my hard work was to a standard that it would work correctly.... the short answer to that was no!! no sooner had the brake fluid entered the reservoir and a couple of presses on the pedal saw it empty out through the bulk head unions... very very annoyed. The two brake flares that i did with a cheap tool had failed and were pissing fluid faster than tickling an old person. So the decision to hang fire with the brakes and pressure up the clutch line. Again bleeding the system, suddenly the clutch felt more like a brake pedal and the force required to press was so excessive that you could see the bulkhead wall flexing from the pedal box. By this time i was pissed off clutch wasn't working brakes not sealed and the body fixed to the chassis so removal was a bigger ballache than before to access anything to fix... or worse still remove the engine and gearbox.

I went to bed on the Saturday very very disheartened and annoyed with myself as i had check and double checked everything, twice. I even spent an evening watching the TV practising the brake flares with the tool i had, so that i was confident they would work. Obviously a waste of my time.... or so i thought.

Sunday morning and after a few coffee's i was determined to sort these new problems. Building this car is very much a case of " two steps forward, one step back" My plan of action was to remove the bulkhead brake unions and redo the flares with an anal amount of measuring and checking before the tool was used. This resulted in the brake pipe flares looking the same as they did before, but this time i tightened all the unions with the most amount of force that was possible (access wasn't easy because of the manifold and steering linkage) however this time they did seal and i started to get pressure on the brake pedal. HOORAY!!!!!!

However i soon got shot down again.... this time from the rear callipers. They have a bridge pipe that goes to each side of the calliper and fluid was streaming out of the nearside calliper and weeping out of the offside. Now anyone that has build this car before will know what access is like to these rear callipers and access to the bridge pipes in question. Tight does not begin to describe it. After a while i had managed to tighten the bridge pipe unions, i found that lots of swearing and cussing made the job allot easier, and my neighbour remarked that if he had a swear jar for when i started this project he could have paid his mortgage off by now. oops!!!

Regardless of the language used the brakes were working and holding pressure. This is something i will be testing by holding full pressure on the pedal overnight as when it comes to the brakes i wont take any risks and i don't want issues when driving on the road.

So now time to tackle the clutch. I had put allot of thought into why it was a firm as it was, and concluded that the connections i was using from Speedflow were creating a bottle neck for the fluid at the master and the slave, thus making the pedal rock solid, but allowing some movement of the clutch arm, as it was doing. I thought the best thing to do was to start the engine and try gear selection (the car lifted at the back end obviously) With the engine running i could select first gear and drive was put to the wheels, however i could not change gear and the idle speed was dipping when the handbrake was applied. So the clutch must be engaging but not allowing enough travel to change gear. So various adjustment was made to the clutch pin in the slave to the clutch arm. Then suddenly pop everything was working. The clutch freed up nicely and the pressure behind the pedal was just right. The difference was night and day I'm still not 100% sure exactly how i sorted it, but might have possibly been a sticking slave cylinder and when i adjusted the clutch pin it freed off and started to behave correctly. I'll be going through everything to check that all the lines/connections are holding pressure and if they are all good, then that's a big tick off the list!!.

More importantly with working clutch, brakes and running engine allowed me to do this for the first time ever!!!

Next on the list is to prep for the windscreen arrival and make a start on the dashboard finish.