Saturday 29 December 2012

Tie wraps and gaffa tape

Had to tidy up the garage yesterday evening, spanners, screwdrivers, and other tools all over the place, spent more time looking for a 10mm spanner than tightening up the nut ! Found the missing drill bits, a good handful of rivets, and several washers. A good sweep of the floor also revealed other missing items !

So today, still in a "tidy up" mode decided to tie wrap the wiring to the rear of the car, also the fuel lines. Placed in-situ the fuse box, and ran the engine harness to approximate positions to the front of the car. These are taped in place with good old "Gaffa" tape until the exact position is known.




Fuel lines and wiring harness are protected past the diff and drive shafts by a short length of flexible plastic tubing.



Fuse box in-situ, as recommended by Simon at GBS, with the wires coming out via the top of the box.



All looking rather smart, the only concern is the closeness of the handbrake cable to the fuel lines, wiring and brake pipe ? hoping that when the rear of the car is nearly completed and the handbrake cable is connected that it should pull clear ?

Lastly today, wired up the low pressure fuel pump, this needed to have a 2 way connector fitting to it so that it could be plugged into the wiring harness. A simple job of crimping the wires into a couple of spade connectors. I have had mixed results with crimping in the past, so a small amount of solder was used just to be on the safe side, probably a little over the top, but at least I know the wires are not going to come out. Think I shall do this for all the crimping connections ?

Summary of build so far today...

Tie wrapping fuel lines and harness... 1 hr
Placing fuse box in situ... 0.5 hr
Placing engine harness in situ... 0.5 hr
Fuel pump connector and soldering... 0.5 hr

Total time today... 2.5 hrs

Total time of build...  24 hrs
total days since started... 33 days

Thursday 27 December 2012

Minus 6 and Christmas

The 2 week run up to Christmas saw little work on the Zero, a combination of cold weather, Christmas shopping, doing those little jobs round the house, and waiting for deliveries, and a lack of parts, meant I could not get stuck into the build. Added to the fact that the garage fell to minus 6 degrees with no heater made it not worth going in.

Present to myself... A heater, and some off cuts of carpet to stop the penetrating cold from the concrete floor rising through my feet and legs, plus a couple of trips to GBS for some parts. Saturday before Christmas GBS had a bit of an open day (Coffee and mince pies !) went along to pick up even more parts and a chat with a few builders, always good to get extra tips from other Zero owners, well the wife was working and the boys had gone out to their mates, so made myself useful !

Now that Christmas and Boxing day have past, the wife back at work, and my boys out for the day round the sales, time to get back on the Zero build.

Brake pipes the order of this morning, I had already bolted in place the master cylinder so it was just the case of routing the pipe work from the cylinder to the 4 corners of the car. First was the single rear pipe to the 4 way union, then the 2 smaller lines to each side of the rear. the 2 front pipes where then routed around the frame to each front side.





The firewall is just placed with a clip, just as a guide to make sure pipes and wiring etc where clear. 

Quick break, now this afternoon, swirl pot and high pressure fuel pump...

Swirl Pot fitted, very simple, downloaded the instructions from the "Kit spares" website, then the high pressure pump fitted, all plumbed in.




A rather productive day, now just thinking what to do tomorrow ?

Summary of build and times...

Brakepipes... 3 hrs
Swirl pot bracket... 0.5 hr
Swirl pot... 0.5 hr
High pressure fuel pump... 0.5 hr
Plumbing in fuel lines... 1 hr

Total time today 5.5 hrs

Total overall time... 21.5 hrs
Total days since start... 31 days