It seems like I have been waiting for ages and ages. Every now and then I go back out to the garage just to make sure the car is still there and still starts. It is and it does. The next few days will be very exciting as a number of things will be happening.
In the time that I have been waiting I have actually taken delivery of my garden shed and assembled it. Now that it is up I have also managed to empty the garage of some of the crap tha was lying around on the floor. It also gave me a good excuse to throw out a lot of the rubbish that I had accumulated. I also found some of the tools that I thought had completely disappeared. Good job done.
Today I ordered a new Weber 500 carburettor and inlet manifold (and all the bits to go with it) from RPi. That should be arriving on Tuesday or Wednesday next week. Very expensive, but it will give me a little extra power and most importantly, looks good.
Tomorrow (Saturday) sees a trip to Pilgrim to collect the body shell, exhausts, wheels & tyres. Also included will be all the hinges and locks required to put all the body panels together and hang doors, etc... I'll be travelling down, complete with notepad and pencil to take as many notes I can about fitting the body. When I last spoke to Pilgrim they mentioned that the newest body tub has a more simple method of hanging the doors. Hope this is true.
I called Pilgrim today just to make sure that everything was ready and the only thing that may not be ready will be the wheels, which is a bit of a shame, but they did mention they would send them on at a later date. I'm also collecting the roll bar and fuel filler cap so that I can get some of the more awkward parts completed.
It was sad news to hear that Tony Holmes has left Pilgrim. Seems this was lack of demand for shop built cars, for which he was in charge. Shame, he was was a decent bloke. Tony, if you read this, good luck with your future plans - you will be missed by a lot of people.
So, it's up at the crack of dawn tomorrow to travel down and collect the goodies. Now that the new parts will have turned up this should mean that the diary now gets a few more entries (until I run out of money again).
My neighbour Gary provided the lift to Pilgrim today. As he has a full length car trailer it proved ideal for collecting the body shell. With Gary driving he took a different route than I and we reached Pilgrim in an hour and a half - about an hour less travelling than I would have done. This meant that we arrived in plenty of time.
When we got there, Den was aware that we were coming and so were the store men. They arranged to get the body shell from round the back of the factory along with all doors, bonnet, boot inner wings, etc. As they brought it round, Gary and I were busyt tying the thing to the trailer and fitting everything into the boot of his car. It was at this point that we realised just how small his car was. The boot was tiny and wouldn't take all the parts we had, so what didn't fit in the boot got stuffed on the back seats, parcel tray and behind the front seats. Poor Chris (Gary's litle boy) was so cramped in the back.
When all the body parts were fixed down I then went upstairs to see Den to collect all the other parts - exhausts, baffles, heat guards, hinges, bolts, tyres and wheels. Turned out that there were numerous parts missing. A little dissapointing as they knew that I was coming weeks in advance. Turned out there were no wheels, only rear tyres, centre sections of the exhaust missing. Den reassured me that he would get the parts as soon as possible and then send them on. The wheels would be sent direct from Image Wheels to my house. The tyres and exhausts would be sent along when Pilgrim got hold of them.
That was good enough for me, so we packed up all the parts we had and then set off back home. On the way back we stopped into a nice pub for some dinner and almost everyone in the pub noticed the car on the trailer. Also got a few interesting looks on the drive back home (a lot of rubber necking).
When we got back home we unloaded all the bits and pieces and stashed them in the garage. Like every young boy with new toys I couldn't wait to try the body on the chassis. So with help from some of the neighbours (everyone was out and about when we got home) we lifted the shell over the chassis and tried to position it where it should be. Run into a little snag as the radiator was sitting too low and would not allow the front of the chassis to sit where it should. This meant that a lot of the other shell didn't fit into place. Would obviously need to check where the rad should sit.
With all the excitement over, I then wheeled the car back into the garage. It seems to take up so much more space with the shell on it. Guess the bike will need to stay outside for a while.
I received another new toy today. I ordered a Webber 500 carburettor from RPi (full kit) with Offenhauser manifold. This will see the end of the old SU's that I have. It will also give me some nice shiny chrome bits under the bonnet. Now I just need to figure out how the whole thing goes together.
I fitted the new carb and manifold today. I'd gone round and bought some new bolts to fix it down so that they look nice and clean. Fitted the carb to the manifold and then set about working out the plumbing. One problem I did encounter was that with the old SU's there is a pipe that runs underneath the manifold and provides a supply for the heater matrix. With the new manifold on this pipe wouldn't fit. I called RPi who were extremely helpful and they advised that the rubber hose that they supplied should be used instead. They also assured me that the heat from the engine should not melt the pipe. That out the way and the manifold went on nice and simple. The only awkward job left was to connect the fron hose off the manifold to the top of the water pump. This was a piece of hose around 4 inches long and it was a complete bitch to fit. The pipe wouldn't bend so I ended up using a screwdriver to force the pipe around the water pump. One thing to do is to put the jubilee clips on before fitting the pipe. Luckily I had already done this, although I think that a little fairy liquid would have helped get the pipe on a little easier. All I have left to do now is to connect the fuel line and connect the throttle and choke cables. Then hoepfully the thing will start. Oh, I also have builders arriving this week to knock a wall down in my house. They have told me that they will need to fit an RSJ from inside the garage. Obviously this means that the car needs to move out. May need to arrange with work that I'm at home the day they do that. If they damage the car....perhaps the work will be free. Anyway, the next thing that I want to do now is to move the car out the garage, pop the shell off (no pun intended), and then relocate the radiator and fit the exhaust manifolds. Hopefully the wheels and tyres will also turn up and then I can set about locating the body and fixing down. I had some help from the builder to move the body shell out of the garage so that he could get on with his work. A couple of days after we had the gales hit Swindon. When I woke up in the morning the wind had blown the shell off my patio and halfway onto the garden. Fortunately I had a garden light (and some steps) that seemed to stop it getting blown too far. No damage luckily. Now I have my garden bench up against the shell to stop it moving anywhere (it takes two strong men to lift my garden bench!). I've been a little under the weather this past week and have been off work sick. Still feel a bit ill today, but I'm back to work now and so will get back to work on the car. While I was off sick I had a little play with the PC at home and the programme 'A Car Is Born' now sits in digital format on my computer. I shall play some more over the next few days and create a Video-CD so that I can use it as a reference a little quicker than the videotape. If anyone's interested how it worked out just let me know. Just a quick thankyou to those guys that created VirualDub. Last night I worked a little more on the chassis making sure that things were ready for the body shell to sit in place. Looking at the top of the bulkhead, it's a little messy so I have obtained some stainless steel to cover it up, along with some aluminium angle to trim it off. It took some time to mitre all the angle pieces but I managed to use my new grinder to help get them to fit. While not 100 percent perfect, it's close enough for me. I took a look in the box that had the remainder of my exhaust pieces from Pilgrim an found an envelope with some instructions. These were guildlines to cut down the exhaust manifold outlet pipe to length so that the down pipes could fit in correctly. Out with the angle grinder again and hey presto - manifolds to length! I left one side longer (nearside) as the V8 engine has one set of exhaust outlets further forward than the other. Leaving one side longer should help see that the exhaust come out of the side of the body in the same place (on opposite sides of course!). I called Pilgrim again just to make sure that cutting the manifolds was the right thing to do and they simply said try it and see. So I did and in my opinion the down pipe came too close to the chassis for my liking so its trimmed. I also asked about my wheels and was told that they should be here by the end of the week. This will help me aligh the body a little easier, but I want to make sure that the bonnet is fitted before I fit the thing. Tonight I shall fit the manifolds back on, possibly cut the hinge holes in the body and then look at how the bonnet needs to fit. I've heard that the lip around the edge of the bonnet needs trimming back so that it sits properly. The edges didn't appear too bad on mine - pehaps I'm not looking properly. The boot lid definitely needs trimming. Guess this must be a feature of having the gel coat put on, or that Pilgrim's moulds are a bit slack around the edges. Then I have some tidying up to do as the builders have pretty much finsihed. I can see decorating will also happen soon.February 19th
February 27th
