Seats / Steering wheel refitted

Sunday 18^th March 2012

Refitted the seats and steering wheel, so now just need to wait for the registration docs to arrive.

Recarpeting the interior

Saturday 17^th March 2012

Started to refit the new carpets today, I bought some acoustic carpet and spray glue for the tunnel and floors under the seats and plan to cut down the tiger supplied floor carpets for front part of the floor where your feet rest, as this carpet is harder wearing and will last longer. I done it in 7 sections, the tunnel sides first, then the rear floors, front floors and lastly the tunnel top. The tunnel top i done in 3 sections so i can easily get at the handrake adjustments etc if needed. Then i finished it off by fitting the new gearstick and handbrake surrounds and gators and lastly refitted the dash.

Interior Revamp / Gear Remote Adjustment

Friday 16^th March 2012

Stripped out the seats / dash and all the interior carpeting today, this was all supplied with the kit (apart from the dash) and didn’t fit the best so I decided to redo it.

While I had all the interior out it gave me access to the gear remote, I took this apart as selecting the gears was not easy and there was quite a bit of slop in the gearstick. On checking the gearbox side of the remote there was already a saddle fitted to the shaft but I didn’t have one on the remote side, so I purchased another saddle, fitted it then refitted the tiger remote.

On the tiger remote there is an adjustable reverse stop block (this is to stop you selecting reverse when you are changing gear). To adjust this to the right position, I put the car into 1^st gear, and then adjusted the block right up to the bottom of the lever. On the bottom of the lever there is a recess which can pass the reverse block when the lever is pressed down enabling you to select reverse gear. The gear change is now positive and nice and smooth, and thanks to the added saddle there is slop in the gearstick

New Dash and Stoneguards

Thursday 15^th March 2012

Still waiting to hear from the DVLA.

Decided to change the dash on the car as I was not too happy with the finish on the first one I made. I bought some decent carbon wrap to cover the new dash with and I used thinner ply this time 6mm instead of 9mm. I am quite pleased with the result.

I also made some stone guards for the rear wheel arches, these were made using aluminium and then covered these in the same carbon wrap as I bought for the dash. T

Post IVA

Saturday 3rd March 2012

Spent the day in the garage today working on the car. I removed the ugly extensions off the front indicators that were required for the IVA, I also fitted the sporty steering wheel.

Then I fitted the pedal box cover, I had to cut away OS bottom of the pedal box to allow the bonnet to fit correctly, I am not 100% happy with this so will improve / modify it in the future

Time to fit the windscreen, this was a pain in the ass, the curve on the bottom of the glass does not match the curve of the car perfectly so it is hard to get it level, it took a bit of tinkering but got there in the end

Monday 5^th March 2012

Ok off to the DVLA today to register the car, I filled in all the paperwork and paid the registration fee and for tax, I was then told that they only register kit cars every other week and there was no one in the office who could do it this week. They took my phone number and said they would be in touch if they needed anymore info and that they would process the paperwork next week. So it’s just a waiting game now.

Car more or less finished

IVA Update

Wednesday 29^th   Feb 2012

Ok no updates for a while due to Christmas and work commitments. So since the first IVA date and the mess up with the chassis number, I have had to take it back for retests 3 times, basically the main issue was the rear brakes over braking and the speedo not reading correctly.

I found the issue with the brakes, when I fitted the master cylinder and then the brake pedal, the pushrod bar that goes from the pedal into the master cylinder was not in line, it was out by approximately 10mm, so when the brake pedal was being pushed with any great force, like it is in the test, the end of the bar which is located in the master cylinder was bending and not releasing all the pressure off the brakes, this was also the cause of the binding brakes that happened after every test. I just drilled another hole 10mm higher in the brake pedal so the bar now runs in line when pressed.

The speedo issue was little harder to work out, I called Tiger who put me onto ETB (the people who made the speedo). I explained to them how I had fitted the sensor and the magnets to the car / prop shaft, there was no issue here. I gave ETB the diff ratio and the tyre size, he then told me to input the pulses manually into the speedo instead of using the auto calibrate, this I did and still no change, it would rise upto 30mph then just jump to over 70mph (I had the car up on axle stands). Anyway after some head scratching I took look at the magnets I had fitted in the prop, I fitted these by drilling 2 small recesses into the prop flange to seat the magnets I then put epoxy over the top to stop them moving, when I drilled the holes I had drilled one slightly deeper than the other, so the magnets where different heights. I removed one of the magnets and halved the amount of impulses I had entered into the clock and tried it again, it run smooth and perfect with no jumping at all, so issue resolved.

I had rebooked the test for this day 29^th Feb 2012, so I hire a trailer took it back to chadderton and it passed J .