Brace Yourself for Progress

Cracking on with the build and I now needed to fix and secure the body tub to the chassis. The front and rear bulkheads were in situ now and just need sealing with polyurethane sealer and so the sills needed fixing to the chassis sill flange. I had already drilled the rear bolt hole when I was aligning the body but now I need to fix the sills the full length. This is simply done by drilling through the flange from underneath up through the body and then securing in place with nyloc nuts, bolts and a spreader washer. This clamps the body side to the chassis and combined with the front and back bulkhead it’s becoming a surprisingly solid structure. 

Now most of the body fixings are in place I can start to provisionally cut and fit the boot floor. I won’t be fixing it permanently yet as I still need access in order to fit then brake lines and fuel line. There is a void between the chassis sill and the curve of the body tub which will be perfect to run the lines down. I will be fitting a closure plate along the top of each side also for visual aesthetics, trimmed the same as my interior. I need to start making some decisions for fuel and brake lines in either ridged or flexi pipe. I think I will use ridged pipe for the brake runs but flexi  for the fuel line. This car has relatively zero side impact protection  in case of an accident and a ridged fuel line is much more likely to split if involved in an accident as opposed to a flexi pipe. There will be no pressure in the fuel line naturally as this is only a little 1500 engine on carbs, but I might fit an electric fuel pump which might change all of this thought process…. We shall see. 

So final body fixings are all at the front of the car. I need to fabricate the two headlight fitting brackets and fix the body right at the front under where the radiator brackets which will be welded on still. The headlight brackets are made from a few strips of steel. I started marking 40mm from the end and making a 90degree bend and then a single fixing hole. These brackets are mounted to the top of the suspension towers and bolted through to give a solid fixing. I haven’t pictured the bolt but I used a low profile pan head bolt which will not void with the top wishbone through its travel. Once I have an initial fixing of the bracket it then needs to be bent/manipulated to match the contour of the body. This wasn’t as hard as a first thought and a just a single return bend further up the bracket allowed it to sit nicely up against the body. 

The headlight themselves are mounted on a single spigot and bolt through a central hole, which is opened up in brackets once fitted. The inner bracket creates the backplate and a front bracket aligned with the rear sandwiches the body tub between them. In order to get the headlights sitting level and even with the dimensions of the body it’s imperative that I mirror each bracket correctly and keep the dimensions the same. The only issue is it’s a fibreglass body so  there is no such thing as centrelines or symmetry as such, but I will get as close to identical as possible… 3-4 mm should be an acceptable tolerance to deal with but all I can do is fit one and hope my second is relatively the same. 

In order to align the front bracket with the back bracket I simply marked and drilled a small center hole through the front bracket. Then when offered up to the rear bracket drilled the hole through that one also. 

I then marked a line 8mm internal on the front bracket around each side. This then gives me my corner marked to drill for the fixing bolts. The same again as the center hole just simply drilled through to mirror onto the back bracket also. Once that was done I trial fitted the bracket onto the body and one at a time drilled each hole through the body, starting with the center hole. I was really pleased with the fixing of the first bracket and it gave me a starting point for some dimensions in regards to fixing the other side. I followed the same method for creating the second bracket and once done started the fixing exactly the same. 

You can see here the external bracket fitted and bolted through to the rear bracket, leaving a small central hole which will be drilled out to the correct size for the headlight mounts (when I can afford them) I have seen these front brackets made from a polished stainless steel but I want mine body colours, so will need to remove them prep and prime and whack any old paint on to seal them temporarily from any moisture. I will also round off the corners to make them look nicer with a file… attention to detail. Also the fixing bolts match the same as the bulkhead fixing used so I’m trying to keep the theme running throughout the build. 

So both headlight brackets now fitted, just need removing once more for painting and after measuring the external brackets off a fixed chassis point either side, I have 3mm difference between the offside against nearside external bracket. That will not be noticeable whatsoever when looking at the car so overall am fairly happy with how that all went… a productive and enjoyable day for sure and another little tick on the list of jobs. 

Finally for this update very very exciting news, in my opinion. I took delivery of my wheels and knock on hubs. I knew from the start of this build that I wanted wire wheels but after concluding brand new chrome wheels and tyres were just simply unaffordable for me I had settled for a painted alternative either new or second hand. The problem or risk you take with secondhand wire wheels is that sometimes the wheels themselves are beyond their lifespan and the cost of refurb or repair then outweighs replacement units. Inspecting my latest purchase and it would seem that I have dropped on with a superb set of chrome finish wheels which have been well cared for and looked after. Initial inspection shows all the splines are tight and nicely tapered with no rounding which would cause the wheel to jump on the hub. Cosmically they look great also, just a slight patina that you would expect with a second hand used wheel without compromising the overall finish. So some further cleaning will maintain the finish and shine 100%

The wheels came up for sale nice and local to me in Dartford, so only a 10 hour drive or so… haha. Luckily after some negotiations the chap selling them agreed to have them shipped to me up North so long as I arranged the logistics and covered the cost. Can’t say fairer than that really and I struck a deal and transferred him some cash….granted I’m skint currently and the money came out the family holiday fund pot that I had ring-fenced separately. But considering it’s only me that has put into this pot, it’s technically mine to take out also, so I did. Anyway I only “want” a holiday but I “need” wheels for my car. 

They really are superb and will look beautiful when all fitted against the car, truly stand the car out in a crowd with wheels like these but I’m a tad intimidated by the cleaning processes…. Those that have seen my daily drive will agree, I’m not a car cleaner type of person. More of a £5 for a drive through car wash, job done. 

I will have a play over the upcoming weekend and take some pictures of the wheels temporarily fitted along with some other little jobs like rounding off the edges of the headlight brackets and painting them etc… All in all a bloody great chunk of progress. Shout out to Pete who sold me the wheels, great to know honest people still exist in the world without trying to scam people out of cash, unlike most sale posts on social media. Thanks again Pete you have definitely put the icing on my cake when it comes to my latest project. 

Thinking Ahead Make Me See Red

 

This is a fun update for you all here, as it will show you the final colour I have chosen for my Spyder. I’m still many many hours away from actually painting the car but you have to plan this build and think stages and stages ahead of where you currently are in order to achieve a quality finish. So this update I have removed the front and rear bulkhead in preparation for painting and final finish. Removing these is an absolute ball ache of a job to be fair and one which does not get any easier with experience. Fingers crossed this is the last time it is removed now, as after the paint finish is on I want them fitted and sealing into place not to be removed again…. I hope. 

In the last update I had finished all the trimming and cutting needed for the front bulkhead so once it was removed it was just a simple prep and prime with a bloody good clean first. The rear bulkhead also has been given a similar treatment and has just been brush painted with the textured black that I used for the chassis. The texture for this paint is achieved with the application gun but considering this will never be seen it can just be brushed on and left to cure in order to protect the metal. To be fair whilst the back side of this rear bulkhead is exposed to the elements it will take relatively no wash or road spray simply because the wheels are external to the body and thus wont throw hardly any road thrash onto the underside or engine bay. Whilst I was in between priming the front and painting the back I have to put a little final colour onto the body around where the front bulkhead fits. The front bulkhead once fitted again now is going to be bonded in with a polyurethane sealant so removing it again is not really possible. Because of this I need/want to paint round the body tub up against the front bulkhead flange and so when final paint gets applied then I don’t get any show through or joins of then grey gelcoat finish of the body tub as it stands now.

So the final colour as you can now see is going to be red, or Ferrari Rosso Corsa the shade from 1997 to 2021 to be more precise… many different red variants from Ferrari over the years. So as you can see I have quickly primed and painted the front flange as so when the bulkhead is up against it there will be no risk of any show through or edges that don’t match colour. 

I am painting the bulkhead the same colour but I’m following the theme of the chassis and using the texture bed liner finish. I’m really trying to keep a standard of finish to this car, just like my Cobra I have a vision in my head what I want it to look like and I’m making the provisions to achieve this every step of the build. Attention to detail is what finishes any kit car build and it can make or break how the finished car can look. 

I purchased another litre of the texture paint from work last week, but this time it was the tintable as opposed to black. I mixed this accordingly with my chosen base colour and started to coat all the panels that needed painting. I ran over the panels with two passes in order to get the coverage as I did not lay down a drop coat first like I did with the chassis, straight on with the texture from the start here and was surprised how much paint it actually consumed. I still had a good 3rd of a litre left after I had the coverage so I decanted the leftover into a pot and used it to brush onto the inner panels of the engine bay. I don’t want or need a glass smooth finish in the engine bay, just a uniform flat colour that matches the exterior so a brush finish is fine, but the nature of this paint will self level to the panel it’s applied to so all in all it looks fairly good and is child’s play to touch up and blend easily without showing edges or brush strokes. 

I couldn’t resist refitting the bulkhead back in and pedal box brackets with master cylinders etc…. It really shows how the overall finish is going to look in the engine bay and the matching red callipers are going to look awesome. A real little red racing machine… it’s going to be great fun to kick about in. I have also decided that I no longer like the red rocker cover on the engine as I feel it is going to be red overload within the engine bay so I’ll upgrade that to a nice alloy cover at a later date. 

I have another little surprise coming in the next week so will possibly do another little update next weekend. I still need to bond in the bulkheads front and back and make some final fixings to fit the body…. Then I can crack on with the next stage of the build. 

Booting Off

 

I really need to make some progress on this little project, but I’m struggling to find the time and the disposable income currently. I’m sort of waiting for the spring and slightly warmer weather so I can start painting the bulkhead etc… which then allows me to fix the body properly and then progress with other stages. 

So one little job to do is to open up the metal on the bulkhead at the pivot points for the pedal box. I have the original rubber boots that were on the Spitfire and they keep any dust or debris from gunging up the clevis pins and linkages. This is really a fairly trivial job and took no longer than an hour or so real to sort.

I started off removing all the master cylinders and associated brackets along with the pedal box also to give me access to mark and cut. 

Second up was to create a cardboard template in order to mark the metal correctly to accept the boot seal. Easily done and cut to shape and the boot fits the cardboard, so will also fit the metal once cut. Once marked out I drilled the four corners of each markings with a 5mm bit and then just used the angle grinder to straight cut each side. I then tidied up each opening with a file to de-burr and square everything up. Quick trial fit to make sure no issues and then on to refit everything again. 

I need to get all these bits cut and sorted now before the paint finish as you can see on some of the pictures the metal is taking a bit of abuse with all the scratches and marks, however I’m not really taking much care or concern over this as I fully intended to prime and paint before the final fit anyway. I’m still not 100% what colour to go with yet, but will definitely be continuing the bed liner/texture finish on the bulkhead like I did on the chassis. 

Can’t really say much more on this really, everything fitted back together ok and the boots now fit and seal nicely. Think I’ll start the tedious process of removing everything in the next week or so, then with some extra fast hardener in the paint I can have a bash at priming and painting before it all goes back on…. Hopefully for the final fit. I want to start making the brackets and fixings for the headlights however it would be pointless to really start all this when it all has to be removed again and potentially change position slightly… so better hang fire and wait until after. I have got my headlights and rear lights all planned with what style I’m going with… and they are not exactly cheap but they need to be correct aesthetically and functionally.