LSD

With the evenings starting again to be longer, I was able to spend some time out in the shed working on the gearbox. The plan is a full over haul of all the seals, bearings, and cleaning of the internal ring magnet.

Once the gearbox was open I took the stock differential out, this is always a job I hate doing as holding everything still and achieving the torque level is difficult without an impact gun. In a short period the quaife limited slip differential (LSD) was installed into the final drive, however I could not do the bolts tights as I need to fetch my loctite 270 from the unit.

Skinning the roof P1

With the sun starting to appear and shine down on us and all my friends driving around in some very nice minis it really makes me want to finish this car and get it on the road. With that in mind I took the decision to work on my own in the unit so I have no distractions.

My aim was to pin the roof skin in place and also finish most of the grinding on the welds. however I could only grind them so far back because I had ran out of flap disks to achieve a good finish, never mind, something to do later.

Sat in the car with my angle grinder I started to smooth the welds back and tidy them up, I had been leaving this because I am not overly keen with the way the sparks seam to attack me within the car bouncing off the metal work back to me. After a short time I had the pillars ground back as far as I was willing to go with the coarse grinding disc, then to protect the metal work I gave it a quick coat of primer, this will be removed when I go over the metal work again to smooth it out with a flap disc.

With the majority of the grinding finished within the car and the majority of the body work finished I decided to go ahead and start placing the segments of the roof skin on the car. Using what I though was my large collection of mole grips I held the skin in place. As it happens I actually need many more grips...

With the roof skin held in place I then moved over to the spare roof skin. I have been advised on several ways to make the new roof, from filling the sections to building a glass fibre roof. The chosen method I have decided to go with is taking the main section of another roof and placing it in the centre and then filling the small areas, its still hours and hours of work but I think the roof skin will indeed keep its shape better this way.
With the plan firmly in my head I marked out the spare roof in the least curved section to keep the job simple or at least as simple as it can be.

I then proceeded to cut the panel out and then offer it on to the car, with it on the car I then marked out the sections and cut them to the same size and the panel.

 Once cut I used some nifty little holding devices call inter grips, I was advised to try them from an ex collogue and they are wonderful, I just underestimated how many I actually needed so in some of the photos the roof is still sagging. Not a huge issue because I still have a lot of moving about to get it perfect and I will order lots more of the grips to keep the skin in place. The strap is in the pictures because I ran out of inter grips...

Next I will be placing the skin on the roof for a perfect fit and will start to spot weld the skin together.
Until then take it easy.

Cage fitting P3 & subframe

With the majority of the cage in place I set about adding a B-pillar support and also started to polish the frame and smooth out the welds so that the profiles blend together without compromising the welds.

With the frame coming together I decided to take some time away from the grinder and spend some time working on the seat frame to allow the new style of seats to mount to the runners. Once the box section was cut and placed onto the frame I tack welded the across bars in which fits the seats perfectly so this is ready for the belt bolts. With the frame in I had to cut and change the position of the handle for sliding the seat, it was taken from the side and move to the centre with a angle change.

Cage fitting P2

Glad to be back working on the car after taking some time off to get on with other projects, I have decided to get the project moving and put the car back together

With the main hoop in place and the two sides attached, I notched and added a cross bar, originally I did plan to have 2 bars but have re-arranged the layout of the cage

With the cross bar tacked into place I then placed the seats in to give the needed height for the harness bar, the top harness bar is to be attached in to the main hoop, this was notched and placed into the main hoop

With the top harness bar in the car the lower harness bar was then added

With all the bars in place I stared to fully weld the cage starting at the top and will continue welding next time I am working on the car.


I am pleased with the outcome of the cage and so far have only been trapped between the cage once as I crawl through to weld.



With the bars in place I then put the seats back in to ensure that both them and myself fitted with no issues. Once I have made the seat runners and I am happy with the seat height I will be re-trimming the seats to match the planned interior.