Rear, lower wishbone issue ?

A few weeks ago I tried to fit the rear, lower wishbone to the hub carrier, and found that both long bolts for each side would not fit through ? On closer examination they where bent ? and when rolled on a flat surface they looked like banana's ! GBS swapped these straight away and returned home to fit them. Then I found a second rather frustrating problem... the bolt went through both ends of the wishbone, brill, then tried it through the hub carrier, no problems, but when together the bolt was getting struck going into either end of the wishbone ? this was the case for both sides ?  I could only think that the tube in the hub carrier was a little off and was making the bolt go off centre, only "a Nat's bollock off" ( Mansfield slang for a very small amount ? ) but its enough to stop the bolt. So as I said this was a few weeks ago, in fact just before Christmas, and I have been putting it off until today. Well it was about 1:30am last night I woke up with the way to do it ( Massive light bulb above my head !! ... and never got back to sleep. )

So the bolt was just catching the crush tubes no matter which way I put the bolt through ? So I removed the last crush tube from the wishbone, this allowed the bolt to now pass through the bushes, then reinserted the crush tube over the bolt.... Simples ! why oh why did this take 6 weeks to figure out ? Alex my son says its my age ? In my defence I hadn't given it much time as until I got all the bits to finish off the rear mechanics it wasn't an issue.

As you can see from the photo, the crush tube is just sticking out from the bushes on the right, it will be fully in place once the nut is fully tightened.

Still all the nuts and bolts are not tightened up fully, until the drive shafts are fitted and everything is in its proper place, then I'll go round with the torque wrench and paint pen, that "just in case" scenario if parts have to come off for any reason.
Still waiting for the calliper brackets and the brake callipers for the rear, so this is as far I can go until this parts are back in stock.

More work on the scuttle

Last night I removed the scuttle and sprayed primer inside ready for the satin black finish. This Morning all dried, then sprayed the satin black. Refitted to the car this afternoon and is looking smart, although this will not be visible when the dash is fitter, it looks finished off.

M6 Rivnuts also inserted along the dash bracket ready for the dash.

The Diff has arrived !

Got the call I've been finally waiting for ! My diff, drive shafts, and gearbox have all been delivered to the GBS factory after been reconditioned. So picked them up last Wednesday.

Sunday afternoon, time to fit the diff ! simple procedure fitting 2 long bolts with washers, spaces, and nuts, then a further 2 bolts and washers to the front of the diff, what could be simpler ???

First thing, check that the bolts will fit through all the holes, (been there before not checking !). Good they all fit !. Now lifting the diff, its a heavy little thing and to make things easy its a 2 man job, so got Alex to give me a hand. Soon figured out if we where going to do this we would need a 3rd man ! A quick scratch of the head and the workmate came out, placed under the rear end of the car and a trolley jack with the diff nicely balanced on top !

Procedure is to get the lower bolt, spacers, and washers in first, again easier as a 2 man team. Problem no.1... spacers to long ! only by 1.5mm, but still impossible to get in, probably due to the extra thick powder coating on the frame. Don't want to take the powder coating off the frame so a little work on the bench grinder soon had the spacers to the correct size, just tight enough to slip in between the frame and the diff on either side.

Next step is to get the top long bolt, spacers, and washers in, once again the spacers are 1.5mm to long... another trip to the bench grinder.

Now for the 2 bolts at the front of the diff, this part was frustrating ? Holes in the frame about 0.5mm out ! So to try and get these bolts in we did notice there was slight movement in the top bolt on the diff, so we disassembled the top bolt we just put in and tried the front bolts again, this time they seemed to fit, but very tight. Problem No.2 !

The only thing I could think of was that the threads in the diff where either dirty or damaged ? So the whole diff came out, M12 tap in hand and re tapped the thread, not sure if it was damaged or dirty but it did the trick, after the bolts went in easily.

OK, so new procedure for me getting the diff in is...

1. Lower bolt, spacers, washers
2. Front bolts and washers
3. Top bolt, spacers, washers.
4. Well earned cuppa !

As you can see from the photo, the front bolts have not been fully tightened, need some stud lock on these which I purchased a few weeks ago... and can I find it.. NO ? So somewhere in the garage or house there is a bottle of stud lock waiting for these bolts, I will find it, cos at £5 a bottle its expense stuff, "Sods Law" says if I buy another bottle I'll find it on my return from the shop !

Time for a little clear up of the tools, they all seemed to have escaped the tool box in the past 2 weeks and is looking untidy again. last job of the day, got 4 bolts to connect the diff to the prop shaft, once again not tightened up, just waiting to find the stud lock !

 

 

 

 

OK round up of time taken so far...

 

Scuttle part 2... 3hrs

Scuttle part 3... 1 hr

Diff fitting...    4 hrs

Searching for Stud Lock... 1hr (Found it !)

 

So Total time now 38 hours

 

11 weeks since kit started.

 



Scuttle part 3

The last bit of the fabrication of the scuttle this morning, after countersinking all the holes on the scuttle it is time to rivet the dash bracket to the scuttle, and use the black bond as extra as I will be grinding back the backs of the rivets to make fitting of the trim a bit neater.

View of the scuttle and dash bracket, now riveted and bonded.

Got to leave the bond cure over night, then will trim back all edges, mask up ready for spraying the inside in satin black.

More work coming the afternoon...  Time for a spot of lunch !

Scuttle part 2

The cold weather continues, and the snow has arrived. A weekend away with a swimming competition for Ben, and a stay with family has made working on the Zero once again a slow pace. However work on the scuttle is progressing, wrapping up in warm clothes after an hour or so in the garage is plenty for both myself and Alex. Apologises for some of the photos, the lens on the camera was suffering condensation from the sudden change in temperature that some pictures look a bit misty.

After looking at some blogs and some tips from GBS, there are a few different ways of finishing the scuttle/firewall/dash bracket. The route I'm taking is to bond the fire wall to the scuttle, secure with rivets, then when cured, remove the rivets and the tabs to leave a clean line to the front. On the dash bracket to drill close to the edge along the edge of the scuttle, then countersink the holes, and use stainless flush rivets along the edge along with a bead of black bond. After the bond has cured will grind off some of the backside of the rivets so that the IVA trim will fit without kinking and looking scruffy ? ... well that's my intention ?

All holes drilled, and Alex adding the temporary rivets, making sure everything is lined up before the bond comes out to play. (see earlier blogs on how sticky this stuff really is !)

Now the scuttle is bonded to the firewall, once the bond has cured, the riveted tabs will be cut off and trimmed back flush.

View of the dash bracket with some of the riveting done. After the bond curing, the inside of the scuttle will be sprayed black to go with the colour scheme of the finished car.

Cold fingers now so back inside the house for some food.... and a cuppa !

Fuel Sender, Scuttle, and firewall

A quite weekend, or so I thought ? Christmas decorations finally came down on Saturday morning, my 2 boys did that while I surfed the Internet for blogs on how to tackle the scuttle and firewall assembly, got slightly distracted and ended up on E-bay and purchased some carbon fibre wrap ! a bit ahead of time me thinks ?
Right, time to get back to the research on the firewall and scuttle, distracted again ! this time just a few little jobs round the house and a bit of clearing up after the decorations have gone back up in the loft for another year. Its getting dark ?? 4:15pm where has Saturday gone ?

OK, found out a method for the firewall, etc assembly, think I'll save that for a full day next week sometime ? Just enough time to go to Halfords for some flange sealant, after seeing a couple of blogs, the next job will be fitting the fuel sender.


Sunday Morning, (Well 11:30 !!) and time to tackle the fuel sender. Using masking tape I marked out the holes to be drilled for the sender. Too stop swarf from falling into the tank while drilling the fixing holes I used a good blob of gaffa tape stuck to a stick which I placed just inside the tank.

 

 

All holes drilled, sealant ( Locktite 5922 gasket paste ) around both sides of the rubber seal, and 6 self tapers later, fuel sender fixed in place.

Please note... DO NOT use the panel bonding sealant ! if you ever try to remove the fuel sender you could cause damage to the fuel tank and cost you ££££'s to fix.

It all went very quickly ! I had allowed myself an hour to do it before dinner and was well within the time, so I decided to start some prep work on the scuttle, bending the tabs back on the dash support, using a couple of grips these tabs have to be bent in the direction of the rear of the car, where as the firewall tabs are folded forward to the front of the car.

Just 1 hour on the build this weekend, feel a bit lazy with it at the moment. Is it post Christmas blue's, the cough and cold I've picked up, or is just the fact that I want to finish parts of the build but have not got all the parts required ?

Monday Morning... Shower went BANG ! so spent most of the day sorting out a new shower and fixing it, so no work on the Zero :-(. Planned to spend time on it today ?

So now its Tuesday, must get stuck in.

Back to the scuttle and firewall, my plan is to temporary fix the two together, and bond the front end. Then trim of the tabs, seen a few of these and they look tidy without the need for rivets, seen some like this as well and I'm not too keen on this look. Riveting the back of the scuttle to the dash bracket seems to be the norm, but riveting close to the edge as a length of trim will cover the rivets anyway for the IVA test.
I have opted for the stainless steel instead of the alloy, and boy is it a hand full to bend, would be much easier with an extra pair of hands, remember I only have 1 good arm ! As you can see from the photos I have managed to bend the scuttle over the fire wall and secured it with temporary rivets. I also marked out the positions for the rivnuts on each side for the scuttle, drilled and fixed in place.

Bolted the sides of the scuttle with some M6 button head bolts with washers.

 

 

And the view from the other side...

 

 



Total build time now... 25 hours up too the fuel sender

Total time including part build of the firewall/scuttle...  29 hours