I'm actually building a car...

Okay, so apologies for not having explained the various switches being employed as previously promised.  I've decided that I need one more switch and its not that interesting a topic anyway.

What is much more interesting is the fact that there are some panels on the chassis.  I'd left the chassis with Dave at Track Developments last week and he'd made plenty of progress getting most of the panels roughly cut to size and some of them drilled and virtually ready to bond and rivet on.  To this end we concentrated on fitting the floor and seat-back bulkhead.  To make subsequent work a lot easier however, it makes sense to get the internal panels cut and drilled where they attach to the bottom chassis rails as its tough to get the drill in once the floor is on.

Once this was all done, I ran a wet'n'dry contour sanding block around each of the panel edges and then degreased both the chassis and the panel.  The chassis then got a spray of wax oil in each of the rivet holes.  I appreciate that rust is unlikely to be the factor that determines when the life of a race car chassis is up but it can't do any harm and hopefully stops any swarf etc from rattling about.

I should mention that Dave had also put the chassis onto a clever rotisserie/spit that means that the chassis can be spun around without lots of muscle or damage to the powdercoat - it makes life so (relatively) easy.  At last it was time to squeeze some bonding compound onto the chassis.  I've used Car Builder's Solutions PU adhesive for years - its economical and really does stick like polyurethane to a blanket (don't ever wear tidy clothes when using this stuff).  You can abrade the paint to get a better key apparently but I've never found it necessary; not when you have a rivet every 40mm.

Here's Dave having a go with the PU - despite warming it up, it's hard work for the tendons in your wrist as you slowly squeeze it out of the tube - it's therefore great to be able to pass it across to someone else while you have a rest.

Then, having enlisted the help of local MEV Exocet builder Simon, the three of us carefully lowered the floor into position, adding a few clecos and rivets as we did. Roughly an hour later and it was looking spot-on.

We then repeated the process with the back panel, which admittedly was a little more awkward - we guess because the panel had shrunk by a tiny amount in the cold.

Finally, I simply slid the rear tunnel cover into place.  This is going to be secured with rivnuts and bolts to allow me to check the bolts on the diff.

Am I happy?  Too bloody right.  It looks great and we're actually constructing a kit car at last.  I don't know why I doubted the powdercoat colour now either.  I think it looks very classy against the aluminium.  I'll need to buy shares in Autosol to keep it that way, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

In other news, the reverse 'slave' gear is back from HPC with teeth rounded and steel hardened - 6 weeks ahead of the quoted lead time.  Also, my Digidash 2 Lite with IR lap timer is imminent - this as come at an excellent price with bags of useful advice from Andy at AB Performance.

After a pretty horrible week, yesterday was a good day.

TC