Pedal Box

Still saving for the engine so installed the pedal box last weekend which has been lying around for a while. Offered the pedal box up with the clutch pedal removed to make it a bit easier and marked all the holes. Then did a lot of drilling, pic below was taken from within the engine bay looking back at the front of the footwell and shows the cutout for brake servo with slotted holes (ahem - intended!) for adjustment.

The braket for the clutch master cylinder sits ontop of the footwell. Installed pedal box shown below. You can also see the U-bolts for the column on the scuttle hoop above, and the SLFL25 RHP bearing (from RS) fitted ready to take the steering column. This replaces the dax part and is much firmer and prevents the column wobble that some kits using the sierra column can suffer from. The guidance for fitting this is as high and as close to the centreline of the car as possible. It also says to beware that the column could foul on engine/exhaust parts so you need to be sure of where everything is before you fit it. Initially this worried me as it will be a while until we get the engine and exhaust during which time I wont be able to do any dashboard work without a steering column. I then remembered that we will take the car to Gary at Sidepipes who will be making us custom sidepipes and will bend the exhaust to fit around whatever is in the way so I could whack the steering column in and bo**ocks to whatever might clash with it.

The Dax manual says to mount the pedal box as high up as possible, you'll notice mines dropped 1cm or so. This is because the manual also says the lower part of the pedal box bolts through to plates on the chassis on the other side of the footwell. If the pedal box is at its highest then the bolts dont come through the plates, they are too high. Therefore I lowered the pedal box a bit so it all located properly. The only side effect this has is that the pushrod of the clutch master cylinder is at a slightly increased angle but it still operates smoothly. One thing to note is that the pedals are pretty high off the floor. We'll either have to put larger pedals on or raise the floor a bit so its comfortable for Naomi, mind you she is just sat on the floor with no seat.

As far as the steering goes, the column height is of most importance to me so I can get my legs under the steering wheel. The sierra wheel is 14" but I plan to use a 13" momo wheel eventually. I could have got the bearing a little further inboard but would have lost a bit of height on that mounting point which would make the steering wheel sit more at an angle and given a less comfortable driving position.

Clutch master cylinder can also be seen attached to the pedal, theres a slot in the top of the footwell to allow the pivot off the top of the clutch pedal to come through. Got a brake servo from a 1998 1.8 TD escort van off ebay for £18 as opposed to £150 from Dax. That just needs painting then it will go on with a new master cylinder (£15 ebay).

Lights

First post in what feels like ages, what with the micra needing a new timing chain (took us nearly a week!) and trying to make the best of the weather so the garden doesnt look like a jungle. We were planning on doing nothing else until we saved for the engine but thats far too boring.

Bought some rear lights - Lucas L594, Landrover lights and fitted them with LED bulbs. What a difference to the rear it makes, it actually looks like a car now. These lights required an earth wire from the bulb holder to work on a fibreglass bodied car.

Loads of stuff arrived in the post, radiator (200sx S14 off ebay), pedal box, fuel filler assembly. Also on order is a fuel tank and wiring loom.

Stoneleigh Kit Show

Can't do much now until the engine arrives, apart from radiator (200sx S14 triple core, Ebay £120, rather than £400 Dax one) and a bit of wiring. To keep enthusiasm high while we were kicking our heels trying to save money for the engine, we went to Stoneleigh kit car show which was very good, had a good look at lots of other cobras, especially at the interior design and dash board to get some ideas of what layout we want.

Heres a few photos, Naomi is almost entirely convinced that when we move to somewhere with a double garage, we need to fill the extra space with a GT40 replica.

Fortunately we stumbled accross the interiors seating stand and had a go in a few seats. They do Dax specific seats which are narrower to match the available space. Originally we had an idea to have a modern high-back race seat but we both found the original style ones a lot comfier.

The only benefit of a modern race seat is that I would sit an inch lower (im over 6ft) but I've sat in a cobra with a classic seat and I wasnt looking over the windscreen. Also we cant have the seat too low as it would be too low for Naomi. The classic seat with the potential for a booster cushoin (not a joke - interiors seating actually do these which blend in with the seat) is the best compromise.

Body Fitting Part 2

A lot of work in this post, securing the body down to last forever more is pretty stressful.

Once the body was in the correct position we jiggled the body about a bit with plumb lines from 12 o'clock in the wheel arches to get left/right alignment correct, then deployed lots of clamps to hold it in place. Then mega-drilling commenced on the floor. Quite awkward drilling right in the footwells. Couldnt get the drill straight through the chassis becuase of the shape of the top of the footwell so we just drilled through the fibreglass to leave a mark on the chassis to drill out later.

We lifted the body off to clear all the swarf away and started applying the Wurth adhesive like it was going out of fashion. One interesting point at the rear end the manual suggests a pretty convoluted way of getting a line of holes drilled into the extreme rear cross member. Our solution was to dremel two slots in the boot floor at either end so we could see where the bar was, then draw a line down its centre and get drilling. All holes were spot on the centre of the round bar.

The body went straight back on and line it up on the drilled holes, not too difficult. I bought an air riveter of ebay and I can honestly say that without it we would have been completely stuffed as these are pretty meaty rivets. Heres Sam doing some lazy mans riveting.

At this point we hadnt put any adhesive around the engine bay and it was a good job as it was getting dark We judged that the inner wings were flexible enough to apply adhesive and rivet at our leisure the next day as we were tired and hungry and didnt want to encourage any mistakes.

Below - first the passenger  side inner wing on the front horn. Job well done, good fit. The fibreglass is bendy enough for this to meet the chassis snugly and was rock solid with a metal spreader plate on the outside, a good dollop of adhesive and neatly tidied with a good fillet of wurth around the edge.

The drivers side was not as good - There wasnt enough flex to make up the gap and have a nice flat face of the fibreglass wing against the chassis rail, giving a vastly reduced area for the adhesive. The solution here was to make a half inch thick spacer plate bonded and riveted to the chassis, these rivets interspaced between the rivets that would eventually go through the exterior spreader, fibreglass, spacer plate and chassis. This required a quick trip into town to get some longer rivets. All faces were copiously covered in wurth adhesive.

Eventually though all was well. The spacer plate was covered by a large fillet of adhesive to neaten it up The insides of the wheel arches currently have the metal spreader plates visible which to be honest look like a bit of a bodge but all this area will be covered in 5mm thick neoprene rubber to stop stones cracking the body. 

For now though its quite satisfying to look at the mass of rivets, although after getting some of the wurth stuff on my hands I know the adhesive is doing most of the work in stopping the body blowing off in the breeze.

Body Fitting Part 1

We drafted in friends Max and Chris to help finish the slightly messy assembly of the rear end, driveshafts and CV joints which took most of the day at a steady methodical pace but passed without massive incident, apart from having to adjust the rear caliper carriers as the wheels were catching. We ended up griding away the slave wheels in frustration which solved the problem.

When it came to it, 3 people was enough to fit the body. One at the front and one each on the rear wheel arches. Bit of effort required for the two at the back to get it chest high but it dropped straight on. Pushed the footwells up against the plates in the chassis to ensure fore/aft alignment was correct then stepped back to admire our handiwork. The difficult bit will be tomorrow when we start drilling and riveting but for now we basked in the glory.

Alignment Finishing

Tried to attempt assembly of handbrake, discs and caliper carriers but first decided to have a last check of the toe, and borrowed a digital inclinometer from work to check camber (although its non-adjustable).

The reason for this is that although in the manual it says to set the toe/alignment off the upper forward mounting lug and then measure the space in the other 2 lugs and fill appropriately, if you were to be ±1 shim in the lower forward lug and then did up the nut effin tight you could inadvertently alter the toe and potentially the camber depending how bendy everything is.

Due to dissasembly for messing around with driveshafts, then reassemby, the aligment measurement for the rhs was out by 3mm at the front of the car which is near as damn it one thin shim (0.15mm). Maybe I wasnt quite so brutal in doing up the nut as before but anyways we were getting sick of the iterative measure-adjust-remeasure process and the manual says within 2mm either side is good enough.

With all shim packs inserted and everything done up good and tight, my toe readings were 0.5mm greater at the rear of the setup bars, giving very slight toe in, and 1mm difference at the front although the width of the laser at that distance gave another 1mm potential error margin so we reckon it was as good as it could be. Out of interest the camber measurement was -0.2° and -0.1° driver and passenger side respectively. Probably not going to get much better than that and the target is 0°.

This meant that the handbrake components could go on, followed by discs.

Finishing off the rear end

Friday/Saturday saw the rear end almost finished apart from driveshafts. Shim packs were put in the remaining mounting positions for the rear hubs, the lower mouting hole drilled through and the outer face required some filing to get the taper washer to fit (thanks Shaun!). Re-measured the alignment all fully bolted up and it was still correct so that was a relief.

Couldnt find the driveshaft circlips so wasnt able to fit the driveshafts but did a trial fitting and got a bit confused by the fact that they seemed a bit short:

Asked on the good old forum and the CV joint there isnt fully extended and spacer rings are available to fill in the gap so I'll get those ordered. Did a test fitting of the handbrake backing plates so when the driveshaft components come I can fit everything in one go before putting the body on next weekend.

Also got a bit more tedious drilling/tapping done to secure the fore/aft brake line and battery cable which barely seems long enough but as I'm going to an isolator switch I've realised that I dont need to use the dax cable anyway, I'm going to have to re-crimp terminals eventually so wasted some £ there from poor planning.

Took the opportunity for a photo with Shaun who came round for a couple of days to help out, and Naomi too, who got away with some light gardening this weekend but has some mega drilling/tapping and riveting to do in the coming week.

Brakes Part 2

First job, front drivers side brake pipe

Right, that was easy. Now the rear.

3 way union jobby put up above the diff, line from the front comes in from underneath then splits left/right. Bit fiddly this, can you guess which was the first one, and which was the much-improved-from-experience second attempt?

Might do the left-hand one again. All thats left to do is the long run from front to back, which will roughly go like this:

Unfortunately my £9.99 Argos drill had seen enough for one day and tomorrow the Micra is having clutch surgery so no cobra progress for a couple of days.

Update 05/06/13 I've swapped the 3-way union for a 4-way one so I can add a centre bleed point as the union is quite high and looks a likely place for air to get trapped.

Brakes Part 1

Right then, time to actually drill into the chassis (eek!). I got the Dax brake kit with the chassis which comprises copper pipe (3/16 or 5mm OD I think) with braided flexi hose to get to the calipers. The pipes are pre cut the correct length if you follow the suggested route in the manual. I have heard stories of having to cut down pipes to fit, or including an "engineers loop" so we will see how it goes.

The first one I'm fitting is the front passenger side. Luckily I was looking through my archive of research photos and was reminded that the steering rack passes through in the region of the brake fittings so the steel tube in the photo below is my representative steering rack so I remember to work round it. Quite a complicated route to begin with but it got easier. I used a fan heater to gently warm the pipe for half an hour but it wasnt really necessary, it bent really easily around a 3/8 socket.

First I got some medium duty garden wire to plan the route but again, this wasnt necessary and I just got stuck straight in.

Steering rack neatly avoided, now up the other side and out with the masking tape before drilling and tapping for p-clips. (No budget nylon clips here!)

Thats the difficult bit over with, now just one more bend then the rest will be left coiled up for now as there is no brake master cylinder to fit it to.

Now to drill, tap and p-clip, remembering max 300mm between fixings. I'll put another one on the diagonal bit on the left chassis member as by string round all those bends its just over 300mm

Well that wasnt so bad, bit nervous about finally drilling into the precious powder coated chassis but its really starting to feel like im building a car, not just assembling meccano

Rear Alignment Part 2

Had a final check of the alignment and took a couple more photos to clarify the method, here is the laser level which shines forward onto the steel rule at the front end of the car -

Just shimming the upper forward mount (the one with the temporary brass bolt through in the picture below) then fill in the spaces for the other 3 mounts as required. The laser points forward with a vertical line so I can take a measurement as below:

 

you might just be able to see a faint red line at 450mm, its a bit obscured by the camera flash.

Rear Alignment Part 1

This is proving to be extremely time consuming and I've realised during the process I may be missing some taper washers (yet another thing a simple items list on delivery would have avoided). Cut some 700mm bar with a hole 375 from one end (as per the manual) with the longer length forward. Put one bar on each rear hub. The aim is to shim the rear-pivoting hubs so that the distance between the bars front and rear is the same. This means that the rear hubs are aligned with each other. That wasn't too difficult.

The difficulty then came maintaining that setting whilst trying to align the wheels with the rest of the car. The rear wheels may be parallel to each other, but they weren't parallel with the rest of the car.

I had removed the rear left control arm to have a look at drilling the lower mounting hole in the hub, realised I didn't have a 10mm drill bit so left it with the arm off. I then went through the alignment procedure described above without the control arm attached, which put the whole rear end on the wonk. Confused me for a good half an hour that did before I fitted the arm and could continue.

I bought a small laser level from the Homebase the other day with a magnetic base so I can  put that on one of the bars, which projects a vertical line to the front of the car. The manual then suggests to measure the distance from a good datum on the chassis, the from crosslink mount. Trusty steel rule was employed and when I did this I was amazed how far out the hubs were, even though they are presumably jigged up before welding they were dissapointingly misaligned and I had to make up the difference with a LOT of shim washers. A 0.15mm shim on the rear hub is 2mm on the front measurement and from the initial setting I had to make up over 15mm. That's nearly 5mm of shim washers on the rear end. It took a lot of iterations of changing shims/measuring to get it right.

The good thing to know after speaking to someone at Dax is that getting the measurements within 2mm is acceptable, this equates to 5 minutes toe, so giving it to a garage to do they probably wouldn't get much better. Final setup is within 1mm on the measurements, tending towards toe in which is more stable. Once the car is moving all the compliance in the system will probably mean it ends up tracking straight. Hopefully. Tyre wear will reveal how good it is.

I plan on string-boxing the car when its complete which to me seems a better method than this bar-and-sight that Dax describe in the manual.

Alignment bar fitted to rear left hub:

Rear end with alignment bars fitted to both sides. Looks a bit agricultural but it does work!

Body!

Yesterday (29th March) the body arrived. It will be left outside for a fortnight until I can round up a few people to help fit it, but this will probably do it good if its warm and sunny as the resin is still curing. Sadly no sign of a steering rack yet but this isnt Dax's fault - well not their fault that it is taking so long to come from the supplier, but still naughty of Dax not to even bother telling me they didn't have any. I will get the rack, extended steering column and rivet kit for the body some time next week.

Jeffrey the Jag

As I'm twiddling my thumbs waiting for the body to arrive I thought I'd post some pictures of previous cars. Jeffrey the Jag - sorely missed, no longer with us :(

Sneaky shot of the friendly old Micra :)

Herman the German

front brakes assembly

Thought I was missing some parts, turns out there are adaptor brackets to use the bigger front brake discs as the caliper sits further out (dia and car width). These are random shaped bits of metal with some holes in that at first I didnt know what they were for so threw them to one side and forgot about them

It sees daylight

All four wheels on, decided to go for a photo op and wheel it outside for the first time.

Things noted whilst doing this, the threads on some of the wheel studs are knackered, need to get 1/2 unf die. Also, its  bloody difficult to move it backwards with no steering rack and completely misaligned wheels!

New upper ball joints

Lack of progress due to faulty front upper ball joints. Threads stripped on installation, correct nuts,torque, calibrated torque wrench, no clue as to what was going on. New ball joints arrived today to replace faulty ones and went on a treat. Slave wheels on the front to make it feel like even more progress

Inadequate length bolts

Luckily in the massive bag of assorted fixings there were some special 3/4 length nuts that I assume are specifically to fix this problem. Surely it would be simpler to provide 5mm longer bolts!

Edit - This was a running theme throughout the build. A good quote from pro cobra builder Dave Brookes - "A kit car is a collection of parts that almost fit together"

Front Suspension 2

Brakes still do do but all springy/rocking/moving bits are fitted. Setup of toe and camber is done later with full car weight on. I've also noticed we appear to be missing a steering rack

Front Suspension 1

At last, after numerous days painting questionable blue, front suspension is about half done