MadaboutKitcars

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:

[IMG][/IMG]

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:

[IMG][/IMG]

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.

[IMG][/IMG]

[IMG][/IMG]

[IMG][/IMG]

[IMG][/IMG]

[IMG][/IMG]

[IMG][/IMG]

[IMG][/IMG]

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

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!

[IMG][/IMG]

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.

[IMG][/IMG]

[IMG][/IMG]

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:

[IMG][/IMG]

[IMG][/IMG]

[IMG][/IMG]

[IMG][/IMG]

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.

Saturday

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

I needed to make this bit:

[IMG][/IMG]





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:

[IMG]http://[/IMG]

[IMG][/IMG]

The day of the sun

Well I wanted to get the apertures, (now there's a posh word for "holes")
cut out today, and it looked fairly straightforward, and I thought "this will be a piece of cake", just at that moment, the doorbell rang, and it was a friend of mine, and he handed me - a cake! His wife had made it for me!
Is that spooky or what?

Reminds me of another time when I was younger,
and I had my fortune told at a fairground, and the gyppo said "You will come into money", that very night I scored with a girl called "Penny", coincidence perhaps? I have an open mind............

I digress, so I started on the panel, what a nightmare! far from being easy, it was extremely difficult to get all the angles spot-on, and hard to get clamps in the confines I was faced with. I also had to make several small formers from wood and metal to clamp on to the workpiece in order to get good right angle bends. Really time consuming stuff.

But, as ever its done now, and that's enough for today as I have other things to do.

[IMG][/IMG]

[IMG][/IMG]

[IMG][/IMG]

Later Sunday

No Landmannn, I haven't got a clue what happened, so what happened? :-)

Okay, so I had a think about making the glove box on the dash panel, and went ahead with it. I used really thin galvanised steel as it was easier to work with.

I used rivets, but mainly fibre paste. The rivets don't (and CAN'T show!)

As usual, I work from photo's, and in this case, my inspiration was a picture of a D Type being converted to an XKSS.

That type of conversion is usually reckoned to cost around £30,000, (and you have to own a D Type to start with!)

I wonder what they would charge to convert a Spitfire to an XKSS?

At present, going by their rates, I have about £26 000 left in my kitty.

Mind you, if I charged myself labour costs at their rates, I don't think 30 grand would cover me up to now!

Here's my inspiration:

[IMG][/IMG]

[SIZE="5"]And speaking of Jaguar XKSS glove boxes, here's one I made earlier[/SIZE]

[IMG][/IMG]

[IMG][/IMG]

Now that's very interesting Mick! wonder if it will sell, and for what price?

I shall follow this one.

Monday

I filled, sanded, and painted the glove box part of the dash this morning,

and like all else on the car whilst not perfect, it is well acceptable, and looks right.

[IMG][/IMG]

Hi Ox, well, yes it was necessary actually, as I intend to make as large a glove box as I can behind that panel, and the cover will have the 4 screws on it (dummies) but will actually be on a hinge, so it opens, then I can store all my rubbish in the cavity I will make. So it will look standard, but perform a useful function,

Am I ever a glutton for punishment!

When you look at the so-called "glove box" on the right of the panel, its a bit of a joke really, I cannot imagine what Jaguar were thinking at the time. but I had to copy that too so it looked right.

Do you really think Jaguar were that far sighted?

Wow!

Mr T, this is a wild card I had not expected, what a dilemma I am facing now, do I put in a USB slot or not?????? Mmmmmm.

Nah! Its just got to look right, not BE right!

[IMG][/IMG]

Oh Gary! You are a bitch..........:-)

You made me laugh Swifty!
Thanks for the encouragement.

I think with the dash and the seats as they are, that should be enough to give the car authenticity, regardless of how I finish the interior now.
Having said that, I will of course try to detail it as much as possible even so.

Wednesday

Having done the dash, I now have to make it fit properly in the car.

To that end, I have spent most of today.

Mainly hacking out chunks (most of it) of the Spitfire steel dash. Also cutting bits off the corners of my new dash to get that in right.

So time consuming, but I have come closer to the end game.

I also glued the heater pipes into the front bit of the new dash, ready for installation.

Some pics:

[IMG][/IMG]

[IMG][/IMG]

[IMG][/IMG]

Point taken Mick, You are right, I had not intended to put the easily ecognisable H bracket back in as it was, but had noticed that it was quite a chunky lump, and must be there for some reason.

Seeing as I have cut away more of the top part of the dash than I had originally intended, I realised when I cut it that it would need some sort of bracing.

When I get round to doing the transmission tunnel itself I will definately work out something in that area, possibly using the original bolt mounts that Triumph have provided.

I will try to cover it in alloy, so it looks like it should be there!

Thanks for the advice Mick, which adds creedance to what I have written earlier, that one of the good points of this forum is that no one who reads the threads, will let anyone make a dreadful mistake in their build!

Well, I guess some people will go ahead and do what they want anyway, but when it all goes wrong, they realise that they had been warned!