A bit of a gap between postings I see. I've been busy, busy with work and family so there hasn't been lots of visible progress on the car (which is not to say there's nothing going on - it's just not all that noticeable).

However, I got my suspension plates back from anodising during the week and (with a little help from Paul - thanks mate) I got the spherical bearings pressed into the moving plate and the retainer circlips installed. That meant I could hang the plate and a complete strut assembly in the chassis for the first time. Having done that, I hoisted up a wheel and had a look at that too - very nice. Still lots to do but it feels good to have a wheel hung (sort of) on the chassis - makes it seem more "real".

Here's the plates with their nice anodised finish:


The strut hung in the chassis at roughly ride height:


and two views of the wheel mounted up:

Engine test fit

Didn't get to cutting brace tubes tonight. My mate James came over to inspect progress and we ended up swinging the motor and gearbox up into the newly created engine bay to check clearances etc. In general it's all pretty good although I'll probably need a remote oil filter because the factory location lines up with a chassis rail and will probably be impossible to remove.

Anyway, here's a pic of the engine in place.


Still need to cut and fit the four side braces and I'll probably do the two top front braces at the same time. They'll run from the strut towers forward to the middle of the front of the engine bay.

More soon.

Looks like an engine bay :)

Got done what I wanted to tonight. After jigging the two top rails I welded yesterday and the two rear upright tubes (cut ages ago), I welded it all together.




I've done some "masking tape CAD" to show where the two braces go on each side of the engine bay. Should get them cut and welded tomorrow night.

Didn't get as much done this weekend as I hoped due to other commitments and various interruptions. I did get the two engine bay top rails tack welded together which I'm very happy with. This required the manufacture of a jig to hold the strut tube in the right place and angle while everything was tacked up. Here's the two finished articles.

And here's an end view that shows the 5.3 degree installed angle of the strut tubes.

Tomorrow's job is to tack these into the main chassis along with the rear uprights (already cut) at which point I'll have the outline of an engine bay :)

More soon.

Catching up again

Restarting this blog now that I'm making some visible progress and because I've shifted my web page hosting as well. I'll jam a few months worth of updates into this post and hopefully try to put something up every week or two.

So, from January 2008, some chassis progress:


And from more recently, some suspension bits. First the shortened strut housings with the Koni inserts etc:

And then the parts to make an adjustable top mount for the strut:

Lastly, the top mount bolted into the 135mm diameter tube that will actually get welded into the chassis:


All of the alloy bits need to go off for anodising yet but I can proceed with putting the tubes into the chassis. That'll need a jig to hold everything in place (the tubes go into the chassis at a 5.3 degree angle to suit the installed angle of the strut itself) so I'm making that now.