MadaboutKitcars

Brilliant, top work.

I had bought those long rivets and threaded them Dave, and the idea was to bolt them in, but then I realised that the switches that have rivets secure themselves, so I cut them off short (half-inch long) and stuck them in with epoxy glue from the other side, but like you say, the effect is quite nice.

Here is a pic of the rear of the switches, which shows how the Heath Robinson idea works:

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Scottie - Another stunning job on the dash.

Good luck with the rest of it, Paul.

Tuesday

A friend of mine asked me to cut down two trees in his garden yesterday, so I did it this morning, as the weather was good.

The deal is I get to keep all the logs for my wood burner, so I could not refuse really.

It meant I lost half a day on my dash, which I carried on with at lunch time.

Drilling holes filing, etc. Then it struck me that I did not have a panel light housing, which I needed, and it looks like this:

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I found some pipe the right size and made one and stuck it in the dash with fibre-paste, I will put a bulb in it later.

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Dash is looking good Scottie. Nice work.

5000 rpm red line though???

An excellent copy.

Mr T, I think most road Jags were like that in the 60's, but they certainly were not sluggish to drive.

I think the tuned racers were much higher revving. After all they won Le Mans three years in a row, beating Ferrari and Aston Martin at the time. etc.

Thanks Gary

Scottie - That is a rather dashing dash board you have there.

Love the way you made the dash light, it is a vision thing.

Good luck, Paul.

PS


Forget the revs, I want to know how to get my Spitfire to do 140mph!

Sorry, should've made myself clearer, isn't five thou a bit high?

My vitesse motor runs out of puff at 4500 at the moment, but I do have a cunning plan. A pair of 1.75 Strombergs with Vitesse manifold adaptors await a rebuild in the man-cave...

Lovely looking replica dash, you must be proud of that, its the finishing touches that are very satisfying as you see the fruition of all the hard work come together.

The dash light is ingenious and looks the part, well done Scottie.

Wednesday

Paul and Swifty, thanks for the support.

Paul, when they raced Spitfires at Le Mans, they were doing 140mph!
Check it out on the net, you'd be surprised.

I think they tuned up 1300 engines as they have better crank bearings and loved to be thrashed. (And very tune-able)

The later 1500's (one of which is in my car) only had three crank bearings. and by all accounts cannot be tuned much, and do not like to be revved highly because of the rubber crank!

Mr T, I don't think I ever got anywhere near 5000 revs when I drove my old jags,

they seemed to have bags of power and torque and went really well, but the road cars by and large were far too heavy, the Mark II jag weighed
a ton and a half!

The D types and XKSS's weighed in around 900 kilos as race cars, but I am hoping that my replica will be around 5 or 600 kilos, so it should be quite nippy
even with such a crappy little engine.

Well, today I put in an absolutely insane amount of hours to make that final panel for the dash, and re-engineer the indicator switch and lamp,

but now it is in place and looks right.

I decided not to put the horn push on that panel, nor the hazard switch as it just did not look right.

I will place them elsewhere, half out of sight eventually.

Here is the final effort, and effort is what it took to get it right!

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Fantastic looking replica dash. Your skills and ingenuity are really making this build stand out. Well done.

Very nice. Well done, matey.

Stunning work Scottie, looks fantastic.

The text of the buttons on the left does line up -1 for presentation ;-)

Top work

Thursday.

I know what you mean WCA, however, I have yet to see any XKSS, real or replica, that has got these three lined up, BUT, I was determined that mine would line up.

Then I came to actually fit them in and tighten them!

F*****g hell! talk about a pain in the arse!

At that point I then realised why I had never seen any lined up. It is much harder than it would appear, believe me. I would not say impossible, but certainly not worth the effort.

Besides, if I lined them up, my car would be the only one in the world like that and consequently look false!!!

After a stupid amount of effort, what you see now, is my compromise.

Enough she cried, I'm satisfied.

Right! today, was for me a sort of rest-on-my-laurels day, it did niggle me that I had not fitted the horn button or the hazard switch, and I detest outstanding jobs like that, so I gave it some thought:

the horn and hazard switch had to be in the same place, be readily accessible, but not be in-your-face so's not to ruin the period look.

So I came up with the idea of mounting them together just under the dash

right next to the indicator switch, which seemed to me to be logical.

(It is life, but not as we know it Jim) (Spock)

Once the dash is in the car, the two will be close to my right hand on the wheel and should work a treat.

(The switches that is, NOT Jim and Spock)

Now, finally, I yam a happy bunny.

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I recognise that song -

Up and up with a level of stea-eam,

down and down with a level of cream a rum ti**y bum ti**y bum ti**y bum...

Nice dash btw Scottie, it's one of the things that gives away a lot of 'kitcars' as just that if the builder doesn't make the effort.

You are 100% right Mr T, its the attention to detail that makes all the difference, trouble is, its such a pain to do it all!

Well worth it though of course.

Friday

I am still toiling away trying to get the dash all sorted.
Unfortunately, when I've done it, most of it will have to come back out to take off the screen for painting, and the car body itself, still a long way off!

I stuck some leather on the front bit of the dash top, and got it in the right colour,also, I could not resist the urge to try it in the car, and in went the dash front,and steering wheel too.

Mmmmmm, it is going to look quite reasonable when it done I think.

I now have to make the nearside dash, and the top bit to join it all together.

Oh, one more thing, I got my logbook back from the "dreaded" today, after a long wait, and I now have the correct engine number and cc size on it.

So at least when I come to register changes, the V5c will be correct at the time.

Some pics of what I just did today:

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Nice work Scottie. Looks just right for the car.

Yes it does Mr T, at first, I thought it would really look out of place, but it had to be there to hide all the gubbins, so in it went, and it does seem to look right thank goodness.

Of course, it will look even better when The whole dash is complete.

As I said earlier, I changed my estimate of time for doing the dash from a day to a week, but now it looks like it will be two weeks if I work hard all next week.

I feel that at the rate its taking to get it all right, I'll be sweating about Stoneleigh NEXT year!

I can really see how your build got out of hand and took you two years.

Looking like the bee's knees scottie !

Scottie - It must be a great morale booster to see it all finally coming together.

Good luck, Paul.

Saturday

I made a start on the left hand side of the dash today.

I needed to make this bit:

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So I cut out the bits from my alloy sheet, and stuck them together with epoxy glue, which has always worked well in the past, but unluckily or luckily, whichever way you look at it, I dropped the glued up panel on to concrete, and it shattered the glue, and the two halves fell apart!

I could hardly believe it, I have never known that to happen before, but there we go.

So the next time, I re-prepared the work piece, and used fibre glass paste, lots of it.

It seems to have done a better job, but I've not tried the concrete drop test yet!

Here's where we are now:

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