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Are you going to be painting the body in a similar colour? Had a chat with my paint specialist today, cost for painting glass fibre is about 1500 ouch, then we got onto the aluminium bonnet... I might well anodise it silver, as polishing it up using alovol or whatever was recommended sounds like a total nightmare
Tim
Chris
The painter that Simon used charges £1500 for the complete car, and makes a very good job too. They do work for several of the Formula 1 teams so the quality must be good. I have there details filed somewhere if you are interested? - They are based around Daventry.
Mike
My cabrio is in for painting at the moment. Colour is going to be Rover BRG4
I spent last friday at the paintshop taking off all the body panels, then towed the chassis home.
The quote was £1800, but I know the guy well, as not only has he repaired my wife's cars a few times after minor dings, but I meet him regularly when we are both out walking our dogs.
My cabrio is in for painting at the moment. Colour is going to be Rover BRG4
I spent last friday at the paintshop taking off all the body panels, then towed the chassis home.
........I know the guy well, as not only has he repaired my wife's cars a few times after minor dings, but I meet him regularly when we are both out walking our dogs.
Like the dash and the console, all the boot closure panels got 2 layers of 3mm self adhesive foam before being wrapped in leather cloth. I got the foam from Woolies, and it's great stuff. So easy to work with.
Gives the panels a nice padded feeling.
I need to take the hatch jambs and lock plate off again and paint them with some chassis paint yet. You can see that they're still raw ali in the pics.
The panels got a 6mm black piping bead to finish them off:
I've got some extra to go around the inside of the wooden dash capping later on.
I've also stuck some of the carpet I'm using on the inside of the boot hatch door, to make it look nice and neat:
Next stop - taking at all out again now I know it all still fits, so I can get the rear tub off and do the seatbelt bar and boot matting. Happy days!
Guys, can anyone tell me what size and orientation the block is that is placed on the seat to act as a reference plane for the turning point of the seat belts? I seem to recall it's about 50 X 130... But which dimension goes where?
I know it's 450mm up from that block, and I assume that's a minimum height, not an absolute.
I'm asking as I need to locate my turning bar - and I have a funny feeling that I may get away with attaching it to the top of the shock towers inside the tub, rather than welding it to the rollbar.
16. A harness or three point belt “effective upper anchorage” location must be at least 450mm above the reference point. (see note 14)
17. A lap/diagonal belt “effective upper anchorage” location must be at least 140mm from the longitudinal centre line of the seat. (see note 14)
18. The lower anchorages must be at least 350mm apart.
19. The lower anchorages on side ward facing seats must be at least 350mm apart but no further apart than 500mm
Yep.
The widget my tester used was a steel template about 3mm thick with a hinged arm at the reference point. He held the arm vertical using a sprit level and to the top was tied a piece of string that he took back to the slots in the seat. He had a second spirit level that hooked over the string.
There was in my case a bit of umming and erring as the slot was 1mm too low, but I persuaded him the seat would comress 1mm under my weight.
I'm asking as I need to locate my turning bar - and I have a funny feeling that I may get away with attaching it to the top of the shock towers inside the tub, rather than welding it to the rollbar.
I thought about doing this but in the end welding it to the roll bar proved to be a far better solution. My reasoning:
1. The seatbelt has a nice clear run - even through the slots in the rear bulkhead.
2. Its not just an "SVA" fix. Its a solution that would actually work should the seatbelts be required to work in anger (heaven forbid...).
In practice it was an easy job - albeit a bit of a pain having to remove the rear tub. I even managed to match the paint finish to the coating Marlin use on the chassis. - You can't see the join as a famous comedian once said...
I decided I may as well go for it as I kept procrastinating over building one, and the price seemed a snip compared to a new one.
The only problem is I'm going to have to rewire the LED, as the guy selling it seems to have gone halfway through the cable when he was taking it out. Not a problem, but a pain.
Installed the shift light unit tonight - works like a charm
I've taken a feed from the back of the tacho for the coil -ve line (the unit reads the pulses in the same fashion as the tacho), given it switched power & an earth from the dash, and hooked my incandescent lamp up that I fitted as a shift light (it turns out that the box can drive any light / buzzer combo up to 7 watts / .5 amps)
The box of tricks is quite easy to program - it's set to 4 cylinder, 6000rpm activation out of the box or after a reset. You can select 2 through 8 cylinders and set the shift light activation in increments or decrements of 100rpm using a couple of buttons. And thats it. It just works!
I've set the shift activation level to 4,300 rpm for the time being, as the bently manual mentions this as the Max torque figure.... I don't know if that's the right point (does anyone know?)
I'm sure after driving the car for a bit I'll get an idea where the best point is, and if it's anywhere else it's dead simple to reset and plug in a new point.
I don't think you want to shift at the moment you are developing max torque because you will immediately drop to a point there you have lower torque and hence less acceleration.
I'd set the shift light at either
1. Just below max RPM
2. At the point where the gear shift will take you to max torque in the next gear. For instance if second gear at 5600rpm is the same road speed at 4300 rpm in third, then 5600 could be the point to change gear when in second.
Option 2 may not be achievable in every gear depending on the gear ratios of course, but a quick play with an excel spreadsheet could give you the best compromise rpm.
I made the bracket out a strip of ali - the box does have some self adhesive pads, but I took them off as they'd probably give up the ghost at an inopportune moment and drop into Pauline's lap during high speed cornering.
Blue line is the -ve line from the coil, red is +12v from the ignition switch, and the black is an earth
The other pair of wires is the power to the lamp - red +ve & blue -ve
