MadaboutKitcars

What more does a man need?

Do you have access to the back of the panel that your windscreen will attach to before you actually fit the body to the car?

If so it might be worth bonding a strip of metal across the width of the screen with a series of nuts welded to if at measured intervals.

This will both add rigidity and give you a series of solid metal bolt points at known intervals. It might be a pain to do it but you will only do it once rather than trying to replace broken fixings in the future.

I had considered that WCA, although he body is not bonded on yet, I a REALLY reluctant to take it off again, and will most likely go the route I wrote of earlier.
Why can't you use stick on plates on your car??

I can but they are not road legal...

...except sometimes they might be.

It seems to depend on which copper pulls you over. As they bring in more cameras and auto recognition software the more likely they are to nick you as they cannot apply common sense.

Mmmm, I take your point, Financially better off within the law for sure!

I believe that the camera and software you speak of will still read a correctly fonted slightly mis spaced plates even in black and silver, its the silly scrolled fonts favored by boy racers and people altering letters and numbers and spacing to make words that are the problem moving an "I" about an inch or so to the right is a minor infringement, and common sense should apply!

I wouldn't recommend the well nuts for a glass screen/metal frame due to the extra weight, but you've already picked up on that. Best idea so far is to include a steel strip with nuts welded in under the dash for added strength and security. If your dash ends up like mine it'll be a real pain to access underneath once all the instruments are in.

I'm sure you'll come up with an elegant solution.

My access as it is now, is limited, and of course will get worse as other bits are added, as you say.

I have another idea to add strength to the screen frame, which is to support it either side, by hefty steel bars / strips bolted to the side crash bars which are ideally placed for that to happen.

That will be successful I'm sure, so the bolts which hold the lower part of the screen on, will be relieved of an awful lot of stress if I get it right!

In other words, those lower screen bolts will not be stopping the screen from being ripped off, as the two bars either side will be doing that, if you see what I mean!
Not sure if I've made that clear enough, but it is clear in my mind!

Scottie - Glad to see your exhaust shield is all sorted out.

Once there is some paint over the top no one will guess how you made it.

Good luck, Paul.

PS
I do like your build tent.

looks to me as if it needs planning permission!

I'm not sure whether you mean my "tempory" build tent or the exhaust dome!!!!! Clarify please, (you may be a council spy)

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now i see why theres no IR thermal sheeting left in the stores!
could double up as an illegal grow lab

I trust you also have a power supply from the traffic lights!!!!!!!!!

Naturally!!

He he, no I am on your side I design and consult on planning so I am constantly fighting enforcement officers on behalf of clients!

Love the thought of the power supply working off the traffic lights and going on and off between the phasing of colours!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Keep crowing the hedges.

We have a farmer in our village (made the national news) who build him self a castle (proper house to live in) surrounded by giant hay bales, he is in a bit of bother with it all, so you have a way to go yet.

And what a terrific house that is too!

Well, I finished it Paul, and as you say no-one will ever know how I made
it!
( that is if you don't count the 5,119 people that have looked at this thread!!)
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Looks very nice. Great job.

Since I last posted, I have managed to sell off most of the bits I stripped off my donar Spitfire, and surprisingly I raised over £456.

I only paid £1180 for the Spit, as is was a bit battered, but it needed no work, and came with a genuine years Mot.

With the battered bits fetching £450, I have a cracking donar for about
£700. ( And, I had budgeted for around £1500 to £2000 for a good solid donar!)

So all you builders out there, don't leave your junk at the back of your garage, as it's worth cash to you, get it on *bay!

Good advice Scottie.

My experience was thus:

Vitesse donor (no mot) complete with reconditioned straight six - £845

Unnecessary parts sold on ebay - £874

Cost of chassis, recon engine, gearbox/prop/diff and front bulkhead - free, with £29 profit thrown in for a half decent pub meal to boot.

And I'm not alone in making a profit from my donor, so the question is, why wouldn't you build your own car? Apart from the two thousand hours spent with bleeding, oil soaked fibreglass rashed knuckles of course.

I actually joked about making a profit just recently, but with what I have left over i'ts not going to happen, But it did to you! So it IS possible. Well done.
I envy you being able to jump in your car and drive about, I will get there eventually, but I have so much left to do.
If I had decided to build the car as Chris intended, I would be finished now, but Wanting an XKSS, means just about everything has to be modified or fabricated from scratch. But of course I knew that when I started, but it doesn't make the work load any easier"!

Seats

As I said earlier in this thread, I was going to build a Jaguar XK13, but the company went bust and I lost 2.5 grand, ouch.
But I had started hoarding Jaguar bits and pieces, most of which I still have.
I have just sorted through my bits and found some XJ6 seats which I had stripped out of a car I scrapped years ago.

I will use them as a base to build new seats for XKSS.
They are creased and worn, but that is exactly the look I need.
They were made during a good financial period for Jaguar, when they could still afford top quality materials.

here are some pics
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Exhaust AGAIN

I thought I was out of the woods with my heat shield and cowl, but the saga drags on.

I had to cut some off the cowl, and the shield needed a right angle bend on the lower edge to mate up perfectly with the sill.

The tolerances are so fine that when I've got the whole thing wrapped in heat resistant tape, it will be a shoe- horn process to get it all in.
difficult but do-able.
Sounds like the whole of my build so far!

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Rear brace

Pressing on with the build, I have fabricated a bracing bar to
Re-inforce the body where it overlaps the steel tub at the rear of the car. In that area, it is a bit floppy!

Chris provided back panels to cure this, but because I am trying to mimic the XKSS design in that area, I cannot use them, so I must
Make my own.

I have used a 1.75 X ¼ inch solid steel bar, which I have made fit
Across the car from wheel arch to wheel arch.
I have tried to show this in these pics:
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