Screen 3

Had a bit of trouble previously getting the batons to adhere to the car. Reading the instructions on the 'No More Nails' tube I noticed that the ideal temperature should be +10° C. As my workshop has thin aluminium walls and roof and it isn't heated, at this time of year it barely reaches that let alone stay above that.

Eventually, I managed to get them to stick on using a combination of adhesive and silicone. They doesn't need to be to firm as they have to be removed once the holes are marked on the screen legs.

With the batons fixed in place the screen mounting bolts are removed and the screen legs are lowered through the slots in the top of the wings/scuttle. They then pass between the baton and the mounting panel. I decided at this point to get the alignment as correct as I could and then just drill one hole which could be made oversize later if adjustment becomes necessary.

Again, another point to note here is the dimension required to get the screen rake at the correct angle. The build CD says 860mm but most of the build blogs say 930mm. Having spoken to GD, I think the 860 is for a Mark III not a Mark IV.

To get the 930mm right, I trimmed a piece of timber to length and wedged it between the roll of the rear scuttle and the top of the screen. This gives a nice solid point to ensure the other holes are all marked in the right positions.

Timber prop ensures 930mm distance from scuttle to screen top is maintained.

The other thing to get right is the gap between the bottom of the screen frame and the top of the scuttle. I've read about people making up all sorts of spacers to get this right but again with some advice form GD, they suggest that its more about getting the screen to fit with the rubber seal sitting properly on the scuttle. By default, this gives a gap of between 4mm and 6mm at each side once the escutcheons are fitted.

With this in mind I concentrated on getting the gap level each side.

Ensure gap both sides is the same

I also made sure that the screen was sitting 'square' to the car sides. This was checked by measuring from the edge of the screen (I used the outer fixing hole for the sun visor as a common reference point) to top of what is in essence the 'B' pillar.

Once I was happy with this the holes were marked and drilled and the screen was test fitted. The centre support bar mounting bracket was attached and the hole positions marked on the scuttle. With the screen removed these holes were drilled slightly oversize (5mm to accommodate 4mm button heads).

Im still not happy with the scuttle finish despite lots of rubbing down and polishing so I cant final fix the screen just yet but hope to get this done in the next few days as this will hamper progress otherwise. But all in all I'm pretty happy with how it looks :)

Seats

My interior arrived a few days ago and with a few hours spare to work on the car on my own I was looking for something new to do. Well, having a big box of new stuff and not getting to grips with it is like having new toys at Christmas and not playing with them so I decided I would have a look at how the seats and runners all go together.

As soon as I bought a seat into the garage I couldn't resist trying it in the car - just to see what it looked like - I didn't sit in it or anything like that... honest!!!

Just to see what it looks like

The runners are bolted to the underside of the seat using 4 button head screws that come with the runners. These bolt into captive nuts that are hidden under the leather of the seat. Once you know roughly where they are they are quite easy to locate.

I then used a bradawl to open up the leather and expose the captive nut and test fitted the button heads.

The first seat went according to plan but I ran into some trouble on the second seat as the one captive nut was defective. I was unable to repair this using a tap (my tap and die set seems to have a different pitch for M8 to the seat mounting bold) so i drilled a new hole and fitted a rivnut in line with the next position in the runner.

The runners were then fitted without further problem. It looks like the runners I have are of a newer design than on some of the other builds I have looked at as the adjuster bar is easily removable. This is a real a bonus for IVA as I understand the seat needs to be in a fixed position if the head restraints aren't seat mounted.

Couple of tips here...

1. Make sure you put the runners on the right way round, ie. check which end goes to the the front of the seat so that the adjuster bar isn't at the back of the seat.
2. The distance between centres on the seat mountings is 330mm - there is only one way up the runners go using this measurement. The distance between centres for the side of the runner that mounts to the car floor is 300mm - this is a pain as the car floor is predrilled at 330mm.
3. The spacers are used on the front mounting bolts only - no spacers are used at the rear which is contrary to the build CD

Exhaust

The main section of the exhaust has been fitted for sometime now but until the body was on I couldn't fit the rear boxes as these are mounted using the 'cotton reel' style mounting brackets which are bolted through the floor of the boot.

In order to mark the position I put a piece of masking tape roughly in place then pushed the back box up and the head of the bolt marked the masking tape giving the correct point to drill through.

For some reason I havn't taken a photograph of the boxes in place... will update this later

Bonnet

With the scoop in place, the bonnet hinges back from powder coating, it was time to final fit the bonnet.

This would simply be a case of refitting the hinges (I had cleverly marked the one hinge so I knew which one went where - but had rubbed this into off the white board buy the time they came back), refitting the bonnet latches and then adjusting the height as all gaps had been sorted out before power coating.

So the bonnet catches were fitted without problem. The hinges were were fitted to the car (Ali and I were certain that the marked hinge went on the nearside) and the bonnet offered up for fitting to the hinge. The nearside fitted without problem but the offside was a mile out. So the hinges were swapped over and refitted but this time when the bonnet was closed the gaps were all over the place.

Wanting to realign the bonnet without lots of bending and packing of the hinges, I drilled out the mounting holes slightly oversize to give some movement and then put strips of card back in place around the bonnet and tightened everything back up. It looks ok but not 100% happy but rather than waste lots of time trying to sort this now, I want to crack on with the build and come back to this as part of my snagging list.

Card used to correctly 'gap' the panel

Catches fitted and adjusted

Shut height adjusted to bring bonnet in line with scuttle

Cooling System

Another simple task that isn't going according to plan is connecting the cooling hoses between the heater matrix outlets and the water pump and manifold.

Ken at EDA sent me some Speedflow connectors in black to match up with the other fittings using on the fuel line (just find the standard red and blue looks a bit blingy and I want to stick to my black &white/silver theme).

The blanking plugs were removed from the water pump and manifold but the taper thread seems too big, leaving the fitting sitting to high on the pump and then the 45 deg fitting fouls on the alternator adjustor bar.

Also the 45 deg fitting doesn't put the hose at the correct orientation from either the pump or the manifold so need to reassess this next week. Essentially I need to copy the set up used by STR on his iron block engine.

Taper thread doesn't screw in far enough

Fitting fouls alternator adjustment bar