The 'to-do' list is getting shorter, but so is the time. This is my last weekend of work before the factory collect the car to prepare it for the SVA. So I'd better stop rambling and get cracking which is why I started out at 6:30am!
First up, mirrors. The factory had done the fiddly bit by pre-fitting them when the body was put on, all I had to do was to fit and wire up the motors. Sounds simple enough. Damned fiddly, but simple enough! The first task was to mask up the mirrors so that the inside could be sprayed black. This is so that you don't get an unsightly view of the unfinished GRP behind the mirror glass. The black stonechip spray as used for the body panels is well suited to the task giving good coverage and being fairly resilient to the elements. That done, the mounting stems were drilled out to take the 6mm tri-core cable which connects up to the main loom. The cable was run down through the door frame and out through a 6.5mm hole that I'd drilled in the door shut, in the prescribed position from the build CD. This passes through a grommet and into the cockpit where you can connect it up to the loom. The cable ends were prepared with the appropriate connectors. The mirror motors have the minature type connectors and they're a pig to fit! I ended up cutting back the plastic a little to allow enough room for 3 crimp connectors to sit side by side. The wiring got a bit confused by the diagram on the build CD, as it shows the mirror end as (1,2,3) whereas it's actually marked (2,1,3). On mine, 1 was used for the yellow wire which terminates in a spade connector at the loom end, 2 for the red and 3 for the blue which terminate in the dual connector at the loom end although, you may end up having to switch the two around if you find that the switch directions get inverted (ie. up/down becomes left/right and vise-versa).
Much swearing later, they were in and secure and the motors could be screwed into the backing plates using the long set screws provided. They're not the self tapping variety but with a little care, they screw in without too much bother. The plates which hold the mirror glass itself needed to be fettled with a file as the hole in them was a little small to fit flush on the motor. The factory sikaflex these on, but I drilled mine out for self-tappers as there are mounting lugs on the plastic motor assembly. The mirror glass velcro's onto this plate so that they can be removed for servicing. The biggest problem was with the mirror adjustment switch itself. Or rather, with the loom connection for it. For some reason, the green 'live' wire was omitted? Fortunately, the mirror switch was quite close to the ignition which has spare terminals for 'ancilliaries', so I just made up a short live link from the ignition switch to the mirror switch. Thankfully, this resolved the problem and I've now got working mirrors!
Right, next job was to fit the gearbox breather. This is required as you have to block the original vent bung so that the gearbox can be inverted. Basically, the original drain bung becomes the filler and a second bung in the side of the 'box serves as a vent. The seperator pot returns the oil to the 'box as the oil heats up in use. In order to fit it, you need to drill and tap the two bungs using a 3/8 24NF tap. Care is needed as you don't have a lot of 'meat' to work with. This is made more challenging as the original drain bung (now the filler) may have a magnetic pickup mounted in it. This is almost impossible to drill out using conventional drills. I sawed mine off along with about 3 threads worth of material. This not only removed the magnet, allowing the hole to be drilled/tap'd, but also meant that I could remove the top bung without having to drop the gearbox from it's top bracket as it sits just under the top chassis rail. Make sure you have braided pipes with the 'long' threaded ends (about 25mm). Otherwise you won't be able to screw them into the drain bungs as the nipple doesn't extend far enough into it past the allen headed socket (this sounds complicated but makes sense when you're doing it!!). One of my pipes had the 'short' connector, so a new one had to be bought from my friendly local raceparts supplier. Once the bungs were drilled and tap'd, the hoses were installed and the seperator pot rivetted to the top chassis rail. Make sure you leave enough room on the rail for the oil catch tank. This is an item not shown on the price list, so make sure you order one! Finally the 'box was filled with 3.5 of Mobil 1 SHC transmission fluid. This 75/90W oil is fully synthetic (despite the factory suggesting semi-synthetic oil in the manual) but was recommended by Rennesport who have a lot of experience with this type of thing. It's not cheap though! This little lot will set you back about 45 quid!
At this point I also installed the clutch master cylinder. I had to buy an adaptor to go between the inlet thread of the cylinder and the braided hose end supplied by Ultima. The cylinder was installed so that the takeoff faced the starter motor which risked shorting out the motors live post on the stainless braid. Some spiral wrap was put on the hose and cable tied in place to stop this from happening. All ready for bleeding now.
Moving on (at a pace!), it was time to fit the coilovers. No great story here, just jack the car up, remove the wheels and ride height bars and install the dampers/springs taking care to get the fronts and the rears the right way round.
Onto the brakes and clutch. These needed completely filling as they were currently as dry as the day I installed them. A buddy of mine turned up to help with his new fangled vacuum bleeder. This is a top bit of kit which 'sucks' the fluid through the system rather than having to manually 'push' it through by pumping on the pedals. That said, we found that once all the lines had been filled with fuild, it was best to use the traditional method of pumping the brake pedal to achieve final bleed. The brakes feel much like my race car as there's no servo assistance. They need a good press, but those massive calipers and rotors should soon take care of stopping my 630 brake behemoth! I prefer the feel of an unassisted system anyway. The clutch was a bit more fiddly as it's tricky to keep the tiny master cylinder mounted reservoir full when bleeding the system. Still, it was done fairly quickly. The uprated clutch isn't for use by those lacking in leg muscles as it's pretty damn heavy. But what do you expect in order to put that power down?
Still, that counts for nothing without a pair of driveshafts does it? So on they went. Martin kindly bolted these on whilst I was finishing off the suspension. They need torquing up as we didn't have a 3/8" to 1/2" drive adaptor which was needed as the driveshaft bolts are allen headed and I only had allen fittings suitable for 3/8" drive. Still, they were in and working which was the main thing. So essentially, all systems were now in place to see if I had a 'drivable' car!
The only thing left to do was to fabricate a throttle cable mount at the carb end. American Speed had provided a couple of mounts, but neither were suitable. After considering several options, I opted for a mount which I made up from U-section anodised aluminium. The mount conveniently bolts to the back of the supercharger in an ideal position for the cable adjuster. Holes were drilled for the supercharger bolts and the top slotted to take the throttle cable. The whole thing works a treat and looks bloody good too! You'll need some decent throttle return springs too.
So with some trepidation, I jacked up the rear and put it on axle stands (to avoid an embarrasing 'reveal' of the car to the outside world if the clutch didn't work!!), fired the old girl up, depressed the clutch and tried to engage a gear. So what happened? Well, see the vid!
Well, to my eternal relief, all gears were present and correct! I did find out firsthand that the throttle mechanism desperately needed a return spring (or eight!) after finding out what 6000rpm of a supercharged Chevy sounds like ;) (AWESOME by the way!). But other than that, it works!!
So after the mutual back-slapping was done, I had no time to gloat over my successes - too much to do! So I bade farewell to Martin (cheers buddy!) and cracked on with the last few jobs. Due to the curing time needed for the Sikaflex, I decided to fit the grills next. Now whilst the rear canopy vent grills are pre-formed, they still don't sit flush inside the bodywork. Ignoring the obvious (was getting tired by this point), I started by fixing these with a big blob of Sikaflex in each corner and a couple along the sides of each grill. This looked awful! After a bit of headscratching, I laboriously removed the grills again, cleaned off all the Sikaflex from them (and the bodywork) and hand formed the edge of each grill by placing it in the jaws of a Workmate bench! The time taken to do this seemed like an age, but the results were worth it. I ran a bead of Sikaflex around each grill edge and weighted them from below to hold everything in place whilst it cured. The end result looks a million times better than it did and I'm more than happy with it. The same process of bending the edges of the grills was applied to the rear vents and the top scoop. This not only holds them in place whilst curing, but gives you a lot more material to bond to the bodywork! By this time, I was frankly knackered. I'd worked more than 12 hours straight on the car without a break, so it was time for a hot shower, a cold beer and some crap TV!
Needless to say, after a good night's sleep I was raring to go once again. Well, after the appropriate Sunday lay-in anyway :)
A few more 'ticks' were added to my list as I took care of a couple of 'snagging' jobs. The starter motor feed cable was P-clipped to the chassis and the cockpit fire extinguisher hose, where it runs up around the front of the rollcage to point back at the driver and passender, was also P-clipped into place.
The next procedure was to set up the Stack properly. The ST8130 gives a wealth of information to the driver, but still needs to have some parameters programmed in so that the readings are actually of use! It was during this process that I realised that my rpm readings were being based on a 4-cylinder engine!! I worked through the setup procedure and coded in the relevant information for the wheel mounted speedo pickup. For your info. the wheel is 1980mm in circumference and the AP rotors have 12 mounting bolts which is what I'm using as the ferrous pickups. That done, I could move onto the fuel tank calibration. This requires that you set sender calibration points according to the amount of fuel that's in the tank. From a 5l reserve, I set points every 5 litres until the tank was full. Despite spilling a fair amount onto the floor, it didn't take too long to complete. No pictures today I'm afraid but a shot of fuel being poured into the tank doesn't exactly add any value to this writeup!
Had to call it a day at lunchtime as I was off to celebrate Martin's impromptu marriage to long standing (suffering?) partner Alex. Congrats to you both buddies!! :) More progress updates as they happen this week.
After a mental day at the office, I had enough time to pop home for a bite to eat before dashing out to the workshop to carry on with the car!
I decided that a throttle return spring at the pedal end was a good idea in addition to the two at the carb end. After looking at the options, the most effective way seemed to be to mount a spring between the ally plate that holds the cable sleeve and the bolt which clamps the cable end. Just a simple (if rather fiddly) case of drilling a small hole in the plate and looping the spring onto the bolt.
I'd thought that the canopy insulation would be a bit of a pig to do and I wasn't disappointed! The factory supply a cloth which looks a fair bit shorter than the stuff I'm using, so it doesn't suffer from trying to follow the sculpted curves that run down to the canopy inlet scoop. I'd got hold of some new insulation material which was much lighter than that used on the engine bay bulkhead, but had the same thermodynamic properties. Being held upside down over hot exhausts, this could only be a good thing as hopefully the impact adhesive would last a bit longer! So, I got the craft knives and scissors out and dry cut the material to fit. It's about 105mm at the back and 120mm at the front for a 1m wide cloth. I decided to leave the vent holes out until I'd bonded the rear section in place. With all those curves to deal with, it's not a good idea to try and get it all glued up at once. I started by doing half of the rearmost section (or a quarter of the cloth) to get the datum points lined up, then glued up the cloth and canopy as I went, working on the other rear quarter, then the front half. Once I'd got the rear half in place, I cut the holes where the cloth went over the grills, then glued them up and stuck the rest down. As I said, this was a pig of a job and took me a couple of hours. I wasn't 100 percent happy with the result as there were a few creases. However, I checked again this morning and the cloth had seemed to have 'settled' and the whole lot looked much better :)
No peace for the wicked. After another knackering day, it's back to the workshop as we creep nearer completing the car ready for the SVA.
I needed to fit the rear canopy loom before I could get the last grill on (which I'd have to refit the canopy for to see where the exhausts exit). This was simple enough, just P-clip it into position as per the build CD. Where I did 'modify' the design was for the number plate lights. Ultima supply a pair of ally boxes that, from what I could gather from the CD, they bond into position over the bulb holders. I wasn't really happy with this setup as it meant bonding the very edge of the box and besides, should I ever need to remove them they'd be a pain (although, bulb replacement can be done from the outside by dropping out the lenses). Anyway, after a thorough examination of the GRP by the lights - remember, if you drill in the wrong place you'll be through the body gelcoat! - I found that by modifying the box so that the front flange was bent out, I could just squeeze a few rivets in. Sure enough, it worked - just! Be VERY careful when positioning them so that you drill into the GRP 'sandwich' of material just below the number plate return, otherwise you'll have holes in your bodywork!
That done, with the help of a mate (cheers Mart), the rear canopy could be refitted to the car. First of all though, I made a cardboard template to fit over the exhausts which would help define the positions of the holes that neeed to be made in the rear grill. Anyway, I was a little nervous as we'd had big problems with the air filter last time. However, I needn't have worried - it fitted a treat with about 10mm gap all round the filter pan, so no rattles - phew! This was the first time the entire body had been back on since the prefit, so it would have been rude not to take a few pics wouldn't it!
Still, no time to stand gawping at the car. With Mart there, we removed the front bonnet section so that the grills could be fitted - so the car was complete for all of about 2 minutes! Once inverted on the trestles, I set to work forming the grills. The small side ones were easy, just fold a small return at the top and bottom of the grill (make sure it's the right way round!) and bond in place. The radiator grill (the wide mesh stainless one), comes with the top and bottom pre-formed, but I needed to 'fettle' it a bit to get a good fit. It's very difficult to bond the topmost part of it to the bodywork, so I opted to fit a central mounting plate. The rivets are in the top of the scoop, so unless I've run you over, you can't see them ;) That made Sikaflexing the bottom section of the grill much easier. The bit that seems to give most builders some grief is the fan apeture grill. Well, I found that although it was about 30mm too deep, it went in with little bother. The folded return was bonded to the lower (viewed right way up!) lip of the GRP and clamped in place to cure. The top part was simply bonded in place with a good bead of Sikaflex.
This done, I returned home to finally mask out the headlamp covers and the side screens. These are almost the last two jobs that I need to do before it's ready. Still, it's almost 1am and with a days work ahead of me, then more on the car, I'm knackered!!!!
Well, that's it. I've just said 'bye-bye' to my wee blue beastie as it's gone to Ultima for its SVA. Try as I might to finish, the Sikaflex was taking too long to cure so I couldn't get the side screens or headlamp covers on as I didn't want them 'dropping' on the journey to the factory. I got the seats back in and dozens of other 'minor' jobs like removing the brake bias cable, extinguisher cables - all the SVA no-no's ;) So, with a short list of 'to-do's', Graham and I got the car loaded up which gave me the opportunity to actually drive the car!!! 630hp and a a short trailer made for a pretty cautious drive up the ramp I can tell you! Still, it went on with no drama. We taped up the cockpit screens with polythene, but the weather has been kind and it looks like a fair day. So, my build is almost at an end (if that's possible with this type of project) and I can't wait to get her back so I can see "What'll it do mister" :)
So no updates for a week or two whilst I take a bit of well earned holiday. Still, hope you enjoy the pics below. Cheers!
Well, today is the big day for SVA and after a week of holiday (which I needed!) I'm pleased to say - it passed :) Was hoping to have some pics to post but nothing yet. The car is being registered on Thursday and should be back with me Saturday am! Expect an update after the weekend. Woohoo!
Just a quick update, the SVA is done, the car is being registered today and I got some shots of the last bits and pieces that needed to be done to the car from the factory. The bad news was that I also got the bill! But hey, if it's half as good as the pics. then it's money well spent. After all, to me, the devil's in the details and all of the final jobs were 'finish' items and had to be 120% perfect. Anyway, enjoy the pics:
At last - it's here! Today I got the chance to drive my car on public roads for the first time. I'll write up some more about my first Ultima experiences on Monday, but here's a couple of pics to keep you going :)
More pics that I've just received from the factory which they took before delivery of the car:
Well site fans, first of all - mucho apologies for not having updated the site. Needless to say, with all this great weather I've been too busy enjoying it! So what's new?
Well, strictly speaking the 'Build Diary' is pretty much a done deal. I'll add any further 'enhancements' to the car and any other tweaks, but the majority of the site updates will now happen in a new section. If you'd like to direct your attention to the navigation bare to the left, you'll see 'Life with a GTR'. In here, I'll document my 'real world' experiences with the car, good and bad, on road and track.
So what are you waiting for? Go have a look! :)
