Tuesday 1 November 2011

More mockups

Time to get busy with more of the myriad of jobs to do.
Next up was the location of the fire extinguisher and electrical kill switch. In both cases, I much prefer electronic solutions. I just think that building an expensive car and then fitting cheap choke cables to operate equally cheap master switches or extinguishers is wrong. Electronic master switch and extinguishers may be a bit more expensive but the result is a much neater installation.
Anyway, a couple of plain holes are the only bits I'll need to do at this stage ahead of paint.




Another couple of holes are needed in the trunk lid for the locking / bonnet pins. Then there were a couple of brackets to make to hold the pins themselves.



Moving on and with a head of steam from those easier jobs I got stuck in to making brackets to hold the rear tonneau / deck lid together where it had been  cut in half to fit around the roll cage.



The idea was to make up some nut plates to go inside the box sections and then hold it all together with aluminium U sections underneath. This was a job my Dad had done on the '60 Corvette so I was working a little in the dark. I had thought about using Riv-nuts but they are not flush to the surface. I seemed to recall something called a clinch nut which Dad had used. A search on the net and an order from eBay had a packet in my hands. To use these, you have to drill an 8.6mm hole and then press them in place with the vice. It turned out to be ever so easy to use and the nut plates were done in no time.

http://www.npfasteners.com/ns.shtml



A few more holes drilled in the U-section and the fiberglass and it all came together.