Tuesday 8 January 2013

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

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