1 September 2007
Session 193 - Westfield Standard rollbar
I made a purchase that I was very pleased with off Ebay. I bought a second hand rollbar for £41! Only it looks brand new obviously not had much use. The guy I bought it from has upgraded to a RAC specification rollbar.
So today's little task was to attach this to the car. I was a little apprehensive owing to the fact that I need to cut lage holes in my boot box and you know me it has to be spot on. So I spent pratically 40 minutes just measuring and re-measuring, etc. The rollbar is 56mm in diameter so requires two holes of this diameter to be cut and without chipping the gel coat. Using masking tape and a few layers as well I marked the squares where the chassis plates are located and used this as a guide where to place rollbar. I then made absolutely certain it was centrally placed from left to right and then drew around the rollbar to indicate where to drill the holes.
Tip 1: If you have watched the Mark Evans DVD you will know this but here goes. How do you find the true centre of a circle? Mark a point of the circumference and using a rule draw a line from this point to another on the circumference making the line 45mm long, repeat this again from the new point and then join up the first and second line to form a triangle. Next for each side of the triangle draw a line to disect the mid-point and draw to the adjacent angle. Where these lines all meet is the centre of the circle!
Tip 2: When drilling GRP with a regular bit switch the drill in reverse and this will cut the gelcoat without chipping it, it works trust me. Switch back to forward to cut through the fibre glass if you wish.
Having marked the centre I then drilled a 6mm hole for the hole cutter spindle. Now the scary bit with the 54mm circular hole cutter in my drill and my drill set to its highest setting and hovering just above the surface got the drill up to full speed and then with a firm hand pushed thorugh firmly but not hard and completely level. Wow, perfect first time. Please note I use piranha hole cutters which are very good, in fact the centre bit of GRP that was not chipped either.
Next I drilled out the centre pilot hole out to 12mm to take the rollbar fixing bolt.
Photo showing my proud work below.
The hole did not require much smoothing, just need to ensure no bare strands of fibre glass, nasty, nasty stuff!
I then repeated the process for the other side and then attached the rollbar, perfecto!
3 September 2007
Session 194 - Plenum chamber mould
Decided to do some more work on my plenum chamber mould. Spent 1 hour trimming, drilling for bolts to join the two halves of the mould together. Also started sanding the surface to remove some imperfections left by insufficient plug release.
5 September 2007
Session 195 - Bodywork - nose cone attachment
Rightly so I was not looking forward to doing this and have been procrastinating over it. Why, well because you need to fix with three bolts to the chassis which involves drilling the nose cone at the right place to fix the bolts to rivnuts in the chassis and the cone has to be in alignment when it is all finished. Very difficult. The standard nose cone is even more difficult as with the ducted nose cone you can get your hand into the cone thorugh the top vent to mark at the least the bottom rivnut. I lost count how many times I measured and how many different techniques I used!!
On and off this probably took me about 90 minutes to do. I am 90% happy with it, it could have been much worse. Well that's my consulation anyway!
Less and less pieces of masking tape holding body parts together!
This photo shows the right hand side bolt holding the top part of the cone to the chassis, as you can see a little tricky. I took this photo through the vent. This vent is not present on the standard nose cone making this task a lot harder. Conversing with some WSCC members I discovered that some make a spike out of an M6 bolt and screw down in the rivnut and then press the nosecone onto it and it will leave a small mark on the gel coat and that's where you drill.
In this picture you can see the bracket at the bottom of the chassis with a rivnut installed to hold the nose cone on. I marked the spot where to drill with a pencil through the rivnut and then drill through the panel the wrong side with a 2mm drill bit knowing it would chip the gel coat the other side. I then progressively drilled out to 8.5mm (M8 bolt here) to ensure a chip free hole. Again a lot more trickier to do with standard nose cone.
Here's a view of the nose cone from the bottom showing the M8 bolt and the largest repair washer I could find in my collection. I have temporarily used socket cap bolts but I am intending on replacing with button head bolts, more streamline!
7 September 2007
Session 196 - Baffled and trap door sump
As you know I sold my last baffled & trap door sump. I sold it because the clearance between the crank and the horizontal baffle plate or windage tray was too close to the crank for comfort. The Rover V8 4.6 has a longer stroke and the lobes, especially the front one require more clearance. This sump was a bargin and very good quality so I was sad to have to sell it! The cost of the same spec sump with better clearance is just under £600! So for many months I have been checking ebay and parts for sale on various club sites almost daily! Finally one came up on Ebay the other day and was quite cheap. With my birthday comming up, my mother is always stuck what to buy me so she has offered to pay for this for my Birthday, even better!
I received this sump today and it is absolutely fantastic, very good welding and construction, very heavy guage steel it is 2mm thick and the flange that mounts to the block is 4mm thick! It is bullet proof, no fear of sleeping policeman now! The flange being so thick will act like a reinforcing girdle to the bottom of the block as well. The only disadvantage is that the sump weighs 17lbs! but you cannot have everything.
The sump was painted a bright red colour and yes I know you can see little of it from the top but you know me.
Picture of sump installed on the sellers engine.
I must admit I tried spraying on top of the red paint and it reacted with my primer so I had to remove down to the bare metal, bring on Nitromoors.
Two coats of Nitromoors and 40 minutes later.
Some white spirit and 20 minutes later the sump is sprayed with etch primer. Tomorrow it will be sprayed in gloss black plasticote.
8 September 2007
Session 197 - Sump painting continues..
Well first job today was to finish off the painting of my new sump. I primed it yesterday so all I need to do is spray in nice acylic black. Took me about an hour with the waiting time in between coats.
Here's a few pictures of the finished article.
As you can see this is a shallow sump, I took some measurements to double check things later. From the surface of the flange to the inside bottom of the sump where the strainer goes is 100mm. The horizonal baffle is located 28 mm down from the flange.
I thought I'd remove the old range rover sump I installed to check the oil strainer position. Boy getting that sump from underneath the car was like extracting a tooth, I had to raise the car the maximum my trolley jack could accomplish.
I installed the stainer torquing the bolts up to approximately 7 ft/lbs (no way a torque wrench could fit) used thread lock 222, the low threadlocker as used for screws as these bolts are only 1/4" diameter.
Picture of the oil strainer attached below.
Took some meaurements of where the stainer sits in relation to the block edge it is 95mm from the bottom of the block so will sit about 5mm from the bottom of the sump, sounds good to me. Looking at the dipstick it looks like I might need to shorten it by a few millimeters as it looks like it might be over 100mm from the bottom of the block.
16 September 2007
Donington Kit car show
Decided to go up to Donington for the anual kit car show just in case there were any bargins to be had and sadly not. I bought some front indicators, mesh for my bonnet and new cycle wings to replace the westfield items that are too small for my tyres.
I did take the opportunity to have a look at the plentiful supply of westfield owners cars for inspiration and also wanted to take some photos.
These indicators are similiar to what I bought.
Next picture showing position of side indicator and bonnet lock.
These lights photographed below can be had from SVC lightening usually mounted in a plinth with a led cicular light around. This owner simply cut hole in body work and inserted, a nice effect!
I took this photo because I wanted to see what the finishing strip across the back and the boot box looks like with four point harness installed. Pretty neat.
Photo of the rear lights that I want to use on my car.
Still undecided about what dash. Pictured below is the upgraded westfield dash.
New westifled for 2007 pictured below
I think the rear is a improvement but many people do not like it.
Picture below showing standard westfield front indicators.
18 September 2007
Session 198 - Front Indicators
So tonight I thought I would install my front indicators. The westfield manual says that these have to be be 130mm down from one of the lines in the nose cone and 130mm back from the front. I found a really good way of locating this quite quickly and without chance of one side being different! Here's how I did it.
1) the 130mm down happens to be in line with the middle of badge on the front of the nose cone. Make sure you are on level ground and take a spirit level and hold across the centre of the badge platform and hold straight.
2) With masking tape in the aproximate place take a set square and set it so 130mm is measured from the back of the spirt level and mark the point on left and right.
3) Drill!
Photo of the finished job.
However the legal requirement for front indicators is that they must at least 350mm heigh and must be minimum of 500mm apart and no more that 400mm in from the outside of the car. These are 395mm heigh which is fine but 415mm in from the tyre walls so they need to be extended.The next job. Here is how one guy tackled the problem.
Tigger to the rescue with the SVA requirements for light positions here.
Photo of my new wider carbon fibre effect cycle wings. I have left the protective film on them for now, had a peek very shiny.
23 September 2007
Session 199 - Attaching underside of the body
I have been procrastinating over doing this for a while now. Why, well you have to pop rivet the bodywork remember that the floor was pop-riveted to the chassis, so you have to miss those pop rivets! Also you have to know where the chassis rails are which again you cannot see. There's a simply solution to it all. I used a feeling guage and inserted one of the 0.5mm blade between the body and the floor panels and you can then feel the rivet heads, not only does this show you where the rivets are so that you do not overdrill them but also shows where the centre of the chassis rail is, just remember to add about 4mm onto the measurement. I didn't quite finish this job as I was rained off but I'd the front on both sides. Took about 90 minutes.
Front section, the rivets do not run exactly in paralle to the edge of the tub as this edge is not quite parellel with the chassis member, watch out for this.
Along the straight section of the tub the rivets do run parellel with the edge of the tub, I found that 18mm from the inside edge was the correct position.
Oh yes it was my birthday today, 39 years old, no honestly, seriously I have only been 39 once!
27 September 2007
Session 200 - rear wing stone guard template
Ordered some carbon fibre stone guards for the rear wings from carbonmods. I was asked to provide the exact measurements that I require. So I spent about an hour producing a template, trust me this is more trickier than you would believe. Cannot wait to receive these they are a special development of carbon fibre and polymer to resist all those stone chips. Click here and have a read. Carbonmods are a new company that are receivng lots of positive comments concerning the quality of the products.
30 September 2007
Session 201 - Concerted effort to complete body
I did not start until late as I wanted to watch the F1. Started at 13:00 and its now 18:00 so I guess I spent 5 hours does this, do not know where the time went.
Completed the pop rivetting of the tub underneath at the back which I couldn't complete last week due to the weather.
The rest of this session was spent basically putting in the locks on the bonnet and the pins and gromets which hold the bonnet to the nose cone.
The construction manual suggests only using three rivets per side on the top of the tub and I had noticed most people use five so I decided to pop in a couple more each side.
the bonnet lock position is determined by using the template from westfield, this is hand drawn and at some time was faxed to someone and photocopied a few times I am sure. The template does detail the height of the template so I measured it with a ruler to double check then I photocopied it as well! Interestingly the templates are slightly different from side to side one is 2mm lower, you remember I noticed the bonnet does not sit level to the skuttle from side to side, erm, looks like it actually is ackinowledged as being so.
So I drlled a series off holes and then poked out with a step drill then finished of with a dremel. A little tricky but go slow and steady and it should look like this.
You notice it is not round, sort of square with rounded corners. This is so that lock does not turn when using the key! and then the lock screwed into position like so.
The construction manual does not mention this but pretty obvious when you come to operate the locks and the latch fowls with the return flange underneath the bonnet. Yep out with the dremel again to remove some of the flange.
Next job is those dreaded cone to bonnet pins. So following the construction manual I drilled 2 4mm pilot holes from the front flange of the bonnet at 65mm up and 15mm across. Now I connect the nose cone to the bonnet using my alignnment marks I made in the masking tape and clamped lightly together.
Drilled the 4mm pilot holes out to 5 mm and attached the bonnet pins.
Next I drilled out the pilot holes in the nose cone to 18mm using a step drill bit (very useful, buy one!). Photo shows the gromet installed in the hole.
Assembed nose cone and bonnet, here are the pictures.
If you look very carefully at the bonnet alignment on the offside you will see is is slightly out. I have since corrected this. My original alignment was correct but I think the issue is that clamping the bonnet to the nose cone with no gap and the return flange is not quite 90 degrees. I would think doing this again I would have spaced out with some cardboard simulating the thickness of the rubber gromets that the bonnets pins locate into.
I have not poped down the lock latches yet as I want to take some advice as they do not look ideal as the bracket will be half on the tub flange as shown in the picures below.
I had an answer concerning the position of the latches, yes they are correct. People space up with washers or a bit of ali plate. All my answers come from the WSCC forum web site. I think I have only called the factory about three times before I got into the swing of things. I almost had my answer before I asked, Barry had read my web log and was waiting for my post!!
Go to October 2007