Good luck dude :D

Welcome :D

Hi Sorton
Welcome to Madabout.
You have cheered me up, as as I appeared to be the only one left on Madabout still building a Marlin with BMW components (E36 M50 Cabrio), now that GOO has submitted his for IVA.
Now that you have come out of the closset, how about giving us an up date on where you are up to.
If you are interested I have logged my (slow) build on :
www.flickr.com/photos/mikes_bmw_marlin_cabrio.
We would all love to see how you have gone about solving all your build issues, and stamping your mark on it.

Can I get a Woo, and a Hoo?

HELL YES!

http://www.greatoldone.co.uk/Sportst..._IAC_small.jpg

:madgrin: :rockon: :eusa_dance:

And for my next trick, I shall make several pints of beer disappear before your very eyes! :)

Thanks to all the advice and help you chaps have given me - I couldn't have done it without you. :eusa_clap:

GOO
What a result!!- Well done Jason.
Does that mean you can now legally drive it on the public highways?
Have fun!!
Mike

Not quite - still needs the DVLA inspection for registration. Then I get issued a reg number and I can get plates & Tax. Then it's all systems go.

WOHOOOOOOO!
Congrats.
Mine's a pint of gin!

Fantastic news. I bet you're chuffed to bits.

Now just the registration to deal with. I used Peterborough. It was almost worth the fee just to see the rather plumpshoush young lady in tight jeans crawl under the car checking the engine number. Slap my wrist....

Robin

You bet I'm chuffed! :)

Peterborough? I thought you where Bedford-ish... I would have thought the closest DVLA office was Northampton?

:rockon: Very well done and congratulations !

A first time pass is quite an achievement - particularly now it's the tougher IVA rather than SVA test.

Cheers

Simon

Very well done. Brilliant effort! An inspiration to all of us stragglers. Makes me want to go down to the garage straight away.

Alfie

You're right. It was Northampton. They call it a senior moment. I remember the young lady vividly though ;-)

Well done, nice one :D

Well done, that's brilliant news!! :eusa_clap:

Tell us moe about your day, it must have been bloddy freezing this morning but driving the Sportster without windscreen as the sun came up must have been pretty cool! (ugh, sorry)

...peter

Well done, Jason! That's very impressive! And well worth all the hard work!
If you take all the right paperwork to the DVLA they will give you the tax disc and the numberplate form there and then, get the plates made up and off u go!
Congrats,
Tim

Yes - it was a bit cold...

We left Northampton at about 6:30, and went down the A508 / A5 route to LB. It was fine on the slow bits, but as soon as you got on the open road and up to national limit, it was bloody RAW. I had my thermals on, two t shirts and a rugby shirt, a scarf and a ski jacket it was still bitter. My trick with two pairs of gloves (fleecy type under my leather gloves) didn't work, as I couldn't feel my fingers when we got there! :shock:

There was one moment on the way there that will stick with me for a long time - belting down the A5, I had a blood red sun rising on my left, with the full moon still fully visible on my right. It was almost like something out of Star Wars. Not that I was going to the biggest hive of scum and villainy in the know universe. Just LB. :)

We got there with plenty of time to spare - arrived about 07:15, and had to wait on the entrance way for one of the VOSA bods to arrive and open the gates.

The actual test was very interesting, and the chap doing it was very amenable - after about 5 mins the banter was flowing and everybody was laughing, despite the cold.

The car sailed through the emissions check, .5% C02 and about 400ppm HC.

The external projections check threw up some items - he wasn't happy with the rear of the headlight bracket - but everything else was fine. He also hemmed and hawwed about the slots around the nose cone - apparently they need a 1mm radius edge if they're 25mm wide. The only other thing he pinged me for was the rear reflectors - they didn't have a 2.5mm radius

Inside, there was nothing to really note, apart from he didn't pass the gear knob. Everything else was fine (boy was I glad I made up the panel to cover the electrics - he shine his torch in there and just shrugged and said "well, there's nothing there to check..."). No probs with the console, either. When he was checking, he mentioned that anything above a line he chalked on the tunnel had to be checked with the larger 160mm sphere, for head strike - so whilst the 100mm may have been able to get in to touch the console, as it was above the line he used the other one, and he couldn't even get it past the gearstick and the lower line of the dash.

There was a bit of a moment with the seatbelt bar - when I had positioned it, I had triple checked the height, and added a few mil to be sure. Lucky I did, because with the tolerance it was spot on. The inspector lucked at me and said "Where's your spare couple of mil then" And then winked at me. I can only assume the rubber matting and the carpet on the seat bars took it up.

Checking the lights, he did discover a fairly major boob on my part - you could turn the rear fog on when you only had the side lights on. And the only other item of note was that the self centring wasn't really working right, even with pumped up tires.

So - it got to mid-day, and he said we'd break for lunch, and if I could rectify the issues he'd found in the afternoon, he'd pass me.

Popped in LB town to the little Halfords there and got a replacement gear knob and some emery paper, and some lunch

Returned and as soon as he came back, we rectified all the issues - sanded a radius onto the rear reflectors, radiused the edges of the front slots, changed the gear knob. He seemed mighty impressed that I could take the dash off by disconnecting a couple of plugs. 5 mins later, after a switcheroony of some of the terminals in one of my connectors, and the fog was fixed. "Good god - it's even neat and tidy under there" said the Inspector. :)

The back edge of the light brackets was sorted with some rubber edging I had left over from the bonnet - we just slackened of the light and clamped it bak down trapping the rubber - The Inspector then helped us re-align the lights afterwards.

The self centring was cured by giving her more toe out - We popped her back on the lift and used the wheel skates to allow the wheel to freely move when we wound the track rods out. It did mean cutting of the shrouds I'd heat shrunk on - I did have spare ones. I asked him if he wanted me to put them on now (which would have meant winding the rod all the way out and slipping it on before screwing it back in), or if he trusted me to do when I got home. All I got was another grin in reply.

He took it for a spin, declared it was feeling a lot better an centering as required, and told me to wait whilst he did the paperwork.

That's when it hit me that I'd actually done it! YAY!!!! :D

Got the paperwork, (IAC, copy of IAC, and all the print outs and calcs from the test) and was on the road again at 3:30ish. Coming through MK, I opened the taps to celebrate - she felt great. I only slowed down as it felt like the helmet I was wearing was about to tear my head off. ;)

All the way there, and all the way back temps where fine - stayed at about 80ish - fan was cutting in and out as it should - so I don't think I'll have too many issues with cooling - but the real test will be this summer when it's a bit warmer.

She's tucked up in the garage, having a snooze at the moment. I think I'll leave her be for the rest of the weekend. :)

Still can't quite believe I've done it! :madgrin:

Awesome. Absolutely brilliant on not having to do a re-test.

However it is the little things that catch you out, mine was the chassis number on the wrong side of the car.

Generally the testers seem to be helpful chaps.

Here's some pictures from the big day:

http://www.greatoldone.co.uk/Gooster...A_Was_Won.html

GOOd one Jason. I wonder what they will call the IVA by the time I am ready!

For the odd person who might be interested, my story began when in 1990 I bought a diamond black E30 325i Sport with a large impression of a lamp-post just behind the osf wheel. First reg. Jan 1989 14,000 miles. It looked like a reasonable repair job but on closer inspection there was a kink in the transmission tunnel and it became a re-shell. After 12 years and 140k of excellent motoring the chickens came home to roost. Without the benefit of factory rustproofing, the rust took over and I eventually ended up with a Marlin kit and a garage full of BWM bits, all except the pile of rust!

Since then I should have built a Sportster but life got in the way and I am still at the suspension/pedal box/steering stage. However, I am now determined to crack on and hope to use as many bits of the original car as I can. I retired in 2002 (to be exact I was retired) and last year became an OAP living in North Dorset.

So 2010 for me has to be the year of the spanner and now that I have introduced myself on this forum I have no doubt I will be asking all sorts of questions. I also hope to get about a bit and meet some of you.

Incidentally, Jason, I have XH 559 -560 - 561 & 562 in my log book but not XH558!!!

Now where's that 13mm spanner???

Sorton
:yo:
Why don't you start your own thread so that we can follow your build..........
..........and are we to call you Sorton?
Regards
Mike

Wow - Ex RAF? You flew Vulcans? :hail:

Ah yes - cunning buggers, your 13mm spanner. Always sprouting legs and moving from where you put them. ;)