I lied. Fitting the doors IS one of the biggest pains of building this car so far and I can now gladly say that I'm done. It's not been without its problems though and it has also taken me the rest of my weeks holiday to complete, but it is done. Allow me to explain.
After fitting the drivers door early last week I moved smoothly onto the passenger side. Having learnt some lessons from hanging the drivers door I though that this would be a whole lot smoother process. I couldn't be more wrong. Having fixed the hinge up I then lined up the door using a combination of masking tape and cardboard to pack the door out and fix it in position. With this done I marked up where the holes needed to go and drilled the door. Fixed some bolts and washers through and then trial fitted the door.
The door wouldn't open without catching on the body. What I had picked up from the drivers door was to have the hinge as far toward the rear of the car as possible. This helps with the way the hinge swings - it gives more clearance for the door. So I tried this and there still wasn't enough room. I played around with moving the sills in and out and could still not get enough room. I packed the door away from the arm of the hinge with as many washers as possible and still the door would catch. I then had the idea of packing the hinge away from the chassis to give more room. This should effectively move the door outwards and so give more room. In putting my wrists and hands into positions I never felt physically possible I placed 3 washers behind each of the fixing bolts for the hinge. This moved the hinge out about 10mm. It worked. I now had the clearance I needed so that when I opened the door it wouldn't catch on the body. I still had the problem of getting the door lined up.
Playing around some more with washers on/off, on/off and on/off, I eventually got the door lined up. However it still only looked and fitted OK when I held the sill inwards. I had already trimmed some of the sill away (20mm front to zero at rear). This helps the body fit better, apparently. It did for me at least.
Finally, with both doors now aligned it was time to fix the sills in place. With the help of my father-in-law, John, we set about fixing the sills in place. We did the offside first, then the nearside. This was a pretty simple process. I decided to use bolts with locknuts rather than pop rivets as this to me felt a little safer and more sturdy. With the car up on axle stands yet again I held the body where I wanted it and John drilled the holes. Working front to rear we fixed the bolts, using some large penny washers against the fibreglass and loosely secured them all the way down. When they were all in place we then tightened everything up. Again, this tests the flexibility of your body, reaching to places your not supposed to. Not like that anyway.
Now that everything was fixed in place it was time to review the work that had been done. I was still not happy with the way the drivers door was hanging - the gap at the rear of the door looked to big. So the door was readjusted, yet again. I found that at one point I had to remove the door completely and redrill some new holes to hang the door on. The original holes just did not give enough movement rearward. We then proceeded to re-hang the door. It was at this point that John noticed that something was wrong at the rear of both doors.
The passenger side door was aligned better than the drivers door ever had been and it turns out that the passenger side has a longer mould than the drivers side. This is easier to see in pictures. Take a look at the passenger side and then the drivers side to see what I mean. Apparently this is due to the fact that Pilgrim took their mould from a crash/repaired Cobra some years ago and everyone seems to be aware of the problems - except me. I guess this I'll just have to live with. If you were to just take a general look at the car you would never tell - something for the perfectionists I guees. Still, if I wanted perfection then perhaps I should be buying the genuine item!
The next thing to try is to fit the roll bar, petrol cap and then boot lid. First, let's see how Liverpool get on in the Champions League quarter final, first leg (and beer!).
Things are looking good. Liverpool won the first leg of the quarter final and the car has made some decent progress too.
I cut out the first hole for the roll bar last night. That was fun. When I first cut the holes for the bonnet hinges I got my measurements wrong first time and the second hinge was much further forward than the first. This taught me a lesson to take more time measuring things up, to verify that things are in the right place first time - measure twice, cut once as they say.
So I preparing to fit the roll bar, this is exaclty what I did. Measured up god knows how many times and then drilled a small pilot hole. Dropped a piece of cotton tied to a pin (for weight) and measured up where this fitted against the pillar. I was 2mm off left/right and 10mm off front/back. Luckily I managed to recover the mistake as the hole for the roll bar is 50mm diameter, so my initial pilot hole was included in the piece I was cutting out. Needed to file out a little of the hole due to the angle at which the hole cutter was placed (it didn't cut down vertical due to the curve of the body). When that was done I tried the roll bar in place and it fitted perfectly. What a relief. Now just the other side to do.
Not sure how, but when I took measurements for the other side of the roll bar I was still out, by the same amount as the first side. I think one of the more difficult things here is that it's not that easy trying to use line of sight in the cramped work area I have in my (single) garage. The mistake was nothing to worry about again, and with a little more filing of the holes (both sides) the roll bar simply dropped into place. The only thing left was to secure it in place. Measuring from the centre of the roll bar to the top of the body should leave 215mm clearance if you want to fit the hood later. With my roll bar in place I had exactly that amount and the bar showed it was level. Some self tappers into the side of the pillars secured this in place both sides and it now feels rock solid.
The petrol filler cap was next. I'd seen the video "A Car Is Born" and decided that I'd use the same method that Mark Evans did. Using my eye this time, rather than the measuring tape, I worked out where the cap should be located left/right of the body and made some markings onto the masking tape I'd laid in place. This took several attempts until I was happy with the markings. I then took one measurement - the distance of the filler pipe on the fuel tank to the rear of the boot lid opening. Adding half the diameter of the filler pipe to this measurement gave me the centre of where the cap should go.
Not being brave enough to just go in with the hole cutter I made another pilot hole and dropped the cotton line in. Perfect! The line dropped dead centre. Out with the hole cutter and the fuel filler hose could then be fitted. Now it was time to trim that to shape, taking the curve of the body into account, remove, trim and refit.
In actually locating the filler cap it would have been nice to have the holes facing N,E,S,W. This may have left the top of the cap skew wif though. Using one of the spacer washers supplied I managed to get this fairly close, but when the cap was fastened tightly it was still out of position. Using some PTFE tape around the thread of the cap base solved this problem and so I made marks where the holes were and drilled and fixed the cap base. It now fits and looks quite nice.
The final task for this weekend, as I was feeling brave, was to fix the boot lid. This meant first trimming the edges of the boot lid itself to get a nice smooth finish. Out came the grinder again, followed by lots of filing and nice smooth edges were to be had. (Wish I could re-do the bonnet lid this way now that I've learned how to do this better). I then fitted the weather seal around the boot opening and placed the lid into position.
It doesn't sit on properly. Everything is a challenge. I'm not sure if the boot seal is interfering with how the boot lid should be fitted, so I pressed on regardless. The position for the holes doesn't change. The problem I have here is that at the point where the boot lid curves it is sitting about half an inch prod of the body, yet seems to line up top and bottom. Once the hinges are fixed I'll remove the boot seal and check how it fits. It may just need presuading into place. That brings me to my next problem. The bolts fitted to the hinges are UNF, not metric. I have nothing that I can use to fix them in place so that's as far as I can get today.
All in all, some good progress made.
I telephoned Pilgrim today and ordered the escutcheon plates for the side exhausts. Once these are fitted I won't feel so bad driving the car in and out of the garage, and I'll get to hear what it will eventually sound like. I also asked for some nuts to fix the rear hinges. I could of got these from just about anywhere, but as I was on the phone to them I thought "Why not?". They should be here by Wednesday hopefully.
In my quest to sort out the clutch problem that I have I called Rimmer (Rip-off) Brothers and explained that the problem I had may be due to a short pivot pin on the gearbox. I asked how much a longer pin was and was then quoted £22.50 plus V.A.T. That's over £26.00, for a pin!! The other (and cheaper) alternative is to have the existing pin I have extended. John, if you're reading this, I'll be asking you to do some more welding for me at the end of April. We can then go and spend the £26.00 on beer if you like!!
Of course, this means that I now have to remove the gearbox to extract the pin.
In the meantime I have some brackets that I need to make up in order to fix the exhausts. Should keep me busy for the next few evenings.
This weekend I have managed to fit the exhaust down pipes and cut out the holes in the side of the tub so that the exhausts can be fitted. This meant lots of measuring up where the down pipes should sit so that the hole was cut in the correct place. In order to do this I needed to know at what level the main side pipes would sit so I placed a piece of wood underneath the car (supported with the jack) and rested the pipe onto it. I loosely assembled the side pipe into it's elbow joint and could get a good marking where the down pipe from the manifold should fit.
Having marked up I then used a nice size hole cutter to tear out the first section. Then, by gradually opening the size of the hole, I managed to get the elbow attached. From there on it was simply a case of opening the hole out further so that the hole matched the same size as the opening in the escutcheon plate. With that done the escutcheon plate was pop riveted into place, needing to bend it slightly with the curve of the body. Now for the other side, but this time making sure that the holes are in the same place. No good having one pipe further back than the other, it wouldn't look very nice. So I took some more measurements, measuring how far in and how far up the hole was made. It was then a repeat exercise.
Having loosely fitted the down pipes and elbows I couldn't resist listening to what the car sounded like. I placed the silencers into place and then turned the key and the car......not so much roared but more burbled into life. The BANG - BANG noise without the silencers had dissapeared and a nice deep rumble has developed. I like that, a lot.
Now what I need to do is to make up some brackets so that I can hang the silencers from the car. I also need to take the down pipes apart and fit some exhaust paste to seal everything up. Should be able to get that done this week. For now though, this is what the car is looking like.
I'm off to Stoneleigh (Bank Holiday Monday) in a couple of weeks and hope to be able to collect all the lights that I need. This will then allow me to fit all lamps and complete the rest of the wiring on the car. If anyone wants to meet up, please get in touch. Should be fun.
There's a guy up the road from me who has previously built a Sumo and I popped along to his place to check out his car at the weekend to get an idea of how he has fixed his side pipes to the car. A simple straight (strong) bar directly accross to the underneath of the chassis and connected to an exhaust bobbin is the only thing that holds it in place. His pipes were from Custom Chrome and the plates were actually welded to the exhausts.
I had a suitable piece of 1/4 bar that was just long enough to allow me to make up four plates. I already had the exhaust bobbins so set about drilling more holes and fitting the bobbins and brackets in place.
I started at the rear of the pipe to ensure that the gap along the side was equal. It would also make life a lot easier to get the rear one fixed first, in case I wanted to finish early then I could at least leave the exhaust supported. So the rear was drilled and the bobbin fixed. I then drilled the front and tried to fit the bobbin. The problem I have here is that due to the thickness of the body shell and the length of the threaded bolt on the bobbin, there is barely enough room to fix a nut onto the end of it. This means that I'll have to reconsider how these brackets are fixed, unless I can get hold of some bobbins that have longer threads on them.
All that done, I still managed to leave the rear brackets fixed and the exhausts are now hanging on the car. It does seems a little flimsy though. I would have expected things to be a lot stronger. I have an idea of how to redesign these brackets but will need to get some more materials to make up some new brackets first. May be able to get hold of that next week.
Well the gearbox has been off and back on and still there remains a problem with the gear change. Looking back I realise now that I only checked one thing out - too much single minded thinking.
The box was removed and I measured the length of the pivot pin. This was 43mm in length. I recall reading a post on the Cobra Replica Club where one guy had the same level pivot pin and his clutch is working fine. In an effort to be safe I placed a couple of washers behind the pivot pin to give it the extra length, just in case this proved to be the problem. Thinking that was the only problem I refitted the gearbox and injured my shoulder in the process (and so have been resting for the past week or so).
Towards the end of last week I was thinking that the only problem that remained was to get the clutch cable adjusted correctly and this should sort out the problems. To do this I removed the spacer bracket that I had fitted to the bulkhead. This still allowed the slack in the clutch cable to be taken up by the ratchet adjustment on the clutch pedal. Probably don't need the spacer bracket. With everything assembled I started the engine up and still the crunch-crunch trying to change gear. It's now looking back I wish I'd removed the clutch, just to make sure that it wasn't stuck to the flywheel. Oh well, just have to remove it again. Having done it once I can see that it is fairly simple to do, just awkward trying to lift the heavy box back into position.
Last time I took the gearbox out and replaced it within about 4 hours. This time will take a little longer as I want to reduce the chance of injury as much as I can. Still, Stoneleigh next week. Looking forward to that, meeting a few of the CRC clan hopefully.
Oh, and Liverpool screwed up what little chance they had of winning the league this weekend, useless buggers.
