Spring into action.

   Well another productive day today in the garage. First on the list was to finish of the bonnet locks. I've been meaning to do this for a while, but with the onslaught of more snow and negative temperatures still in mid march, i had not been keen to get back in the garage. However this required a couple of brackets to be made up to give the cams something to hold on to rather than just the fibreglass of the rain channel. These were easily made out of an off cut of strip alloy i had lying around. A simple 90 degree bend and a couple of mounting holes for some rivet's and job was done... now onto the cams and locks.

  If you have been following my progress you might remember the initial fitting of the bonnet locks was too far back so that when in the open position the back of the cams caught the rubber bonnet seal when the bonnet was open. I did initially remove them fill the holes, re-position and fit which was fine up until the fitting of the gas rams. They pushed the bonnet a little with the pressure from them and made them catch again (but only by 2mm or so)
 This time rather than fill the hole and move the handles again (weakening the fibreglass further) it made better sense to grind the backs of the cams down a little and shorten the then protruding grub screw to sit flush with the back of the cams. This has given me more than enough clearance and the bonnet opening is as it should be, silky smooth and proper job. With the cams fixed i could cut short the bar and give a neat finish. I'll look into making some finishing plates to fit around the bonnet rib to hide the tops of the cams/bottom of the lock. That will look very smart, and give a better look to the finish when the bonnet is open.

On to the feature presentation of this update. I have since day one, had an idea in my head regarding the boot lock of the car. With the AK kit the space between the bottom of the number plate light housing and the lower lip of the boot is marginal. And when the rear number plate is fitted you (on most AK's that i had seen) had to cut into the bottom of the number plate to allow the boot handle to be mounted to the boot lid.
  I was more than happy to do away with the boot handle altogether, but this left me with a problem of how to lock/unlock the boot. The first plan was a electric solenoid to pop a catch from inside. This would have been fine, but security was an issue. I don't have a glove box so i had no secure place to have the switch. It cant be in plane view as the car is then not secure in the slightest. Also with the car potential hibernating through the winter (all 364 days of it) their is a risk that the battery could go flat and then i wouldn't be able to open the boot. I could have concealed some croc clips in the wheel arch to stick a battery on if this happened and pop the boot that way, but again security issue and not very practical. The battery going flat is probably not going to happen.... but if it did = Mr Cockup paying a visit.

 The best solution for me was to fit a small bear claw lock to the inner skin of the boot that latches down to keep the boot closed. And opening is provided by a small glove box lock and key which is just wired to the claw latch on the inside. The picture above shows how it will work. I need to remove the boot and tidy up all the filler and smooth off some edges, but overall functionality is perfect and is now secure with a key.
 With the lock fitted it leaves me with a situation of how to mount the numberplate and leave access to the lock. I thought a couple of small spring hinges allowing the plate to hinge down from the bottom, but finding a suitable spring hinge was quite a challenge. Plenty of hinges about but they were all so bloody big and would have looked ridiculous.

I started a thread on the CobraClub forum regarding my lack of progress finding a suitable hinge, and was advised of a company in Holland that make spring return numberplate houses for fitting LPG conversions. It allowed an LPG filler to be mounted on the car and concealed with the numberplate. I ordered the said bracket which was a bit expensive at 50euros, but was essential to the build and offered a solution to the problem. When it arrived it looked perfect and was basic to fit. However upon a trial fit it stood far to proud of the back of the boot and looked a little weird, but the functionality was there and that was one good point. (the video below shows the initial fitting and you can see how weird it looks)

Some fetteling was required to allow the plate to sit flush with the boot skin, this was firstly achieved by removing two great rubber bump stops they were a good 8mm deep so that made a huge difference to start with. I have also bent the bracket slightly to follow the curve of the boot and this again looks 100 times better.

I still need to adjust the bracket on the pivot point just slightly to allow the bottom half of the plate to go further back but overall its starting to look acceptable and less of a bodge job.

I haven't had time today to do the bottom of the bracket, but its added to the list of little jobs to finish off. It shouldn't be to hard to do, just drill a couple of holes further back in the pivot lugs to bring the plate back a touch. Just 3-4mm would make a massive distance. Although the two rubber stop mounts have been removed i can just stick some thin protective pads to the bracket to stop any paint damage when finished..... if i ever get finished (fingers crossed for a lottery win)

The picture here shows how much better its fitting now than the initial fit in the video below. The numberplate was the only one i had to hand for a trail fit, I'm aiming to get a pre72 reg number that would be silver letters on black backing (i have to check legality's) this can then be printed on to the old fashioned tin plate and will be simple to mount on the bracket, once registered. The bracket itself is just held on with a couple of short bolts into rivnuts, so can be removed for IVA test which the bracket itself would fail due to radius edge, but ironically not when a numberplate is fitted.

Fog on the Tyne!!!!

This update is dedicated to Mr Richard Dixon, who has been bitching my arse on facebook because my updates are few and far between... this one is for you Dicko you fuckwit!! ha ha

Before i start on the fog and reverse light, i though i would show you my knob, its very pleasing to hold in the hand, but my shaft is a little bent as you can see (so many puns available, but I'll leave it at that)  This was the style of gear knob i wanted from the start and this one was a eBay steal, and allot cheaper than retail cost. Wasn't an easy job to fit to be fair, firstly cut straight across the old gear selector then i had to grind down the diameter of the stub i had left to fit the internal diameter of the new gear selector. This is then held tight by 3/4 grub screws that hold it nice and tight. They also make removal fairly quick and easy as this gear selector is not IVA compliant.... bugger!! time to make another one for the test then!! I will hopefully find the correct rubber gear gator and chrome surround whilst hunting the internet for more parts.

So onto the fog light and reverse light. On my finished car i don't want the horizontal nudge bar that most people fit on their cars and they then fit the reverse and fog within that. I'm considering some nice quick quick jacks but again not IVA compliant so maby afterwards. This left me with a decision of how to mount the two lights, i certainly didn't want any brackets coming from under the rear valance and i didn't want to have to make bloody great swan neck brackets to fit them. I decided the best way was to have them surface mounted just off the centre line. This left me with another problem as the rear valance is contoured and curved so surface mounting isn't just a simple bolt on job. My first few attempts ended in failure, but you need to fail first in order to succeed (or so I'm told) I thought i could create a contoured flange the same diameter as the light unit, i had some bits of off cut drainpipe that was the correct thickness and diameter but i found it very tricky to get it cut to fit... so tricky that i said a few bad words and gave up on that one.

Idea 2 was to make a wedge of fibreglass body filler and sand and shape that to fit.This ended up the same fashion as idea 1.... lots of bad words and fingers covered in fibreglass bodge, so scrap that.

Idea 3 was the winner for me. I started by extending the length of the mounting threads on each light unit, simply knocked the old ones through opened the hole a little and in with a M6 x 100 bolt, you can also see two little brass nipples that take the lens holding screws. These i needed to bond into place from the back to stop them falling off when fitting the light, so a little epoxy glue and job done. I also bonded the rubber backing to the back of the light to stop that from looking unsightly from a side angle when fitted.

Now to measure and cut the rear skirt. Normal rules apply "measure twice... cut once" or measure ten times in my case. First is to cut the larger hole for the rear of the light unit to fit in. The light can then be offered up to mark the fixing bolt holes, i opened these a little to give some adjustment as they will be secured with a penny washer and nyloc nut from the other side. The reverse side is not integral to the boot, and sits just under the boot floor skin. This is good as it helps keep the lights high enough to be IVA happy as the bottom of the lens cannot be lower than 250mm from ground level.

Now i needed to make a spacer to stop the light from just falling down or just point to the floor. I used some alloy tube that was very easy to cut and shape with a file. This then just sleeves over the fixing bolts as the come out the back of each light and stops the light from pointing down to the ground. And yes the pictures here do show sunshine!!! it was almost an alien concept to be outside and not be balls deep in snow, or flood water. And the temperature was a tropical 8 degrees so i didn't take any risks and whacked on a load of suncream!!! ha ha






Once i had the little spacer sleeves done it was just a trial a error process on getting the correct angle to get the lights to sight right. The advantage to me with fitting the lights like this is their will be no damage to paint work when that's done, but the light will sit as far back to the body as possible, so the top of the light will be touching the body (12o'clock position) and the two bolts sleeved with the spacers and look nice and tidy.

The fog light in this picture is not an IVA happy one...something to do with parabolic reflectors or the like.... parabollox in my opinion. However these are the rules i must follow, so i will...... currently. LOL

The fog in this side picture does look to be pointing down, but its just the angle i took the photo and the uneven ground surface.

 I'm thinking that i don't like the way the centerline of sight is thrown off with having one clear lens and one red, so i might look into getting another clear lens and a coloured bulb, that way everything is kept uniform and pleasing to the eye. I could even just re wire the fog to be a second reverse light (with clear lens) then just fit the red fog for MOT time and switch the wires back over?? not sure yet.

So all sorted and happy with the work today. Another step closer and another job ticked off the list i have a few snag's i need to sort out but nothing worthy of a blog update. So keep your eyes peeled for more updates soon. (probs battery tray and kill switch next)









All tested and working fine. Good