Roll bars, Part 2

Time to tackle the rear leg. I made a template with some mdf with the leg holes sawed out and the rear marked and drilled 6mm for the hole saw pilot hole. Placed in the boot , marked and sawed out the hole.
I made another template the same but with the 3rd leg hole sawed also. The rear leg is smaller than the 2 main legs! Good to remember before attacking theseThis acted as a jig for the rear leg hole. But only for the pilot hole as I needed one hole size up from the template for clearance like with the main legs.
Also put some gaffer tape round the edge of the hole saw just in case it catches the body as it cuts through. Lucky I did cos exactly that happened as I did this hole.

Hmm....How did that happen?
I worked out that I had flipped the template thinking I had to, cos the roll bar was reversed. Silly mistake but not a biggie. Its about 6mm off. As I have to leave 5mm gap all the way round with the aid of scribing with a 10mm washer, this little error wont show luckily.
Did the repeated the procedure for the other roll bar, less the flipping of the template, but the other rear leg was out slightly too . Never mind, Its not an easy job, but they are all ok now and look great.I will give it one more final full polish before I fit them for good and before I fit the interior. Shame as I got to work the next 3 days but I need to. :P

Roll Bars. Part 1

Well its time to bite the bullet! But I plan to do it over a couple of days.

Before the body went on, I trial fitted the roll bars and found the rear legs needed slightly pulling into align with the holes. This saved me lots of hassle for when the body went on as I will be making templates for the holes from the legs.

Did a bit of reading up how others tackled them as there are no real surfaces to use as a reference for drilling the holes in the top of the body.
So easy to mess up and hard to hide any cockups.

So I opted to go for the studding route.
Some use a plum bob but my garage floor isn't level lengthways so neither is the car on axle stands. But it is level sideways.


I got some 12mm studding, measured and cut it to have enough for a nut top and bottom of the chassis mounts and to reach the top of the boot and drilled a 6mm hole saw guide for the 2 mail legs.
Small pilot holes drilled/dremeled from below the body, the inside most leg was done with the angle drill and a 12mm bit of scrap with a 6mm hole in it for a 6mm drill through the chassis rail. Then hole sawed out to 61mm. The 2 main bars are 50.5mm or 2" so the bottom holes wont catch the bars.

The outer holes were hole sawed with a bit of studding that I drilled a 6mm guide hole into and bolted into position.
The rear support is different on the Euro to the Jag chassis as it fits in under the body with plenty of room.
With the studding close to the top and the nuts tight, I measured the centres all the way up.
I then did the same the other side to make sure it looks the same and that I didn't do anything silly.

Triple checked everything,
No going back now!

(Latex gloves on, itchy hands from fibreglass dust drive me mad.)
Moved the studding back and tightened them back up again to see how they lined up through the top. I noticed that the hole moved a bit if the stud was rotated. hmmmmm.....
I wasn't happy with it and it felt like one of them was slightly off vertical as the centres were a little off as I measured up.
So I decided to make an extra spacer/centre jig. I measured the roll bar centres and drilled them level into a bit of plank and they were snug over the studs. Looked better and measured up bang on.

Here we go....


Slid them in back-to-front to check the main legs for now. All pretty much bang on!
Well chuffed. Will leave it there for tonight.

Exhaust fitted

This was fairly easy, just meant me getting covered in Silicone again. How do I do it?
Temp fitted the cherry bombs, and marked the slot for the bobbins, drilled and nylocked in the boot.
One side seemed to be a little lower, but this was easily fixed with a large washer under one of the bobbins.

ECU and dash bits

One of my big worries was how and were to fit the ECU and excess loom.

Now the body is on, I can see how much there was and it curled up nicely with the ECU fitting flush against the bulkhead. (old photo)Now I had to work out fixing it. The ECU has 2 holes for bolting. However, this would mean trying to drill holes behind the distributor and have screw heads or nuts in plain sight. So I opted to use some stuff I have used at work that is stronger than Velcro and works really well. "3M Dual lock".
Also as I can't fit the washer bottle in the normal place, I ran some hose into the dash area and the other end to the Expansion tank as that's where the new one is going to be.
I then fitted the pump, wrapped in sound proofing sheet inside next to the ECU and stuck it with the same Dual Lock.

Battery Installed

Got my Optima Red Top 3.7 Battery a couple of months ago, at 730 cold crank amps, it should be good enough and it fits in the GD tray perfectly.

Having seen Simon R fitting something called a "Battery Brain" I looked a bit deeper into it. Most people fit a battery cut out of some type for safety/security. Mostly the red key type.
But I was intrigued that it cuts off battery supply if there is a drain before the point you can no longer start up. So if you parked up and left the lights on, it would still start after a week. Not that I plan to do that, but say over winter there is a small drain.... No dead battery. Also acts like an immobiliser, and full battery isolator.It comes with everything you need to mount it in any configuration and position and 2 key fobs (Arm (Immobilise), disarm, fully isolate and buzzer test).

I opted for the extra one with the vibration sensor (Platinum), just in case there was a problem with the alternator on a trip as its EFI it needs a constant live, I don't want the risk of it isolating on a roundabout or somewhere inappropriate. Cost a little more but I don't mind this once. :P
A bit fiddly working in the wheel arch but got there eventually.The only permanent live is fused and fed into the dash area and will be for a charge socket I plan to fit. Will also fit a direct Cig lighter feed after the isolator, but not wired it in yet.

Engine Bay

While I was at the front, I got to work connecting up the cooling, heater hoses, brake & clutch lines and sorted out some wiring as I had this week to play about.

Firstly The battery cable. The one to the starter was 4" short of the terminal in the side of the body. I had loomed it up in the heat shielding with too much of a loop by the starter. (Bo**ox) This took me a day to rectify as now there is sod all room to get hands in to sort out.
I eventually pulled my scratched and cut hands away from the stainless cable ties having jiggled enough cable through without snagging anything else.
Most of the time was spent trying to cut the cable ties and re fit fresh ones. All part of the fun though.
I placed the reservoir bottles here as the smaller one looked odd next to the distributor where they are normally placed.
Ignition Amplifier placed where the washer bottle would have been. I will make up a little cover plate to go next to the fuse box to keep things looking tidy. Seen a few cars with these. Nice touch

Fed the EFI loom through the hole I remembered to make the night before we fitted the body.


Oh and fixed the gear stick hole by drawing round a roll of tape and using the dremel I also added some room for all the gears.

Rad & Ally tray

While refitting the rad, I decided to do the ally under tray. This was easy jacked the front up high, sat it on the highest point on the axle stands and gave me enough room to get in and mark up and drill.
Not fitted the oil cooler yet, need to get a small oil filter before I fit it properly.

I was going to post up how I worked out the hole for the gear stick in the tunnel, but I think I'll let someone else explain how to do it correctly!
Lets just say, I wont use the same method for the roll hoops! :D
Luckily it needed opening out a bit to clear the range of gears.

BODY ON!

Today was a perfect day for it.Some local chaps from the cobra club and some friends kindly came to come help.
With the chassis mounts lubed up with Vaseline we got the body off the stand, turned it round and slowly lowered it. As it snuggled down, it appeared the holes were out. It needed to come forward about 10mm. We tried to tug it and lift it about 4 times but just kept settling backwards. (Andy at GD had emailed me the night before kindly giving me some tips, one of those was not to be shy to give it a good tug forward.)
So we lifted up and tugged forwards and we tried to get the engine bay bolts in to keep it forward but no joy as it started to pull the mounts away off the chassis.
It felt like something was pulling the body backwards. So how about bolting the boot in as there were holes pre drilled there, that may keep it forward. But those holes were out, both holes were further in towards the middle than the mounts. This gave some people the feeling that the other holes were out too. But I wasn't having it. :) The boot holes, maybe but not the side ones.
(After speaking with Andy today(Mon) these boot hole aren't normally drilled and as my body is an early Mk4 these mounts have been moved a little since)
After a few goes of on and off we rested it on trestles to check there was nothing snagging or fouling and put it on axle stands so we could remove the wheels.
Trying again lifting and tugging it forward, some of the chaps were urging me to open up the holes, but I stuck to my guns as even though the body had been sat on trestles for nearly 4 years there was the fear it may have sagged a tiny bit but it hadnt! It was just a need to get it forwards enough as the side bolt holes were all out by the same amount. The front of the tunnel is tapered and it felt that this was forcing it back and just needed to be persuaded enough forward.
We finally decided to try and get some other holes in the tunnel at the rear lined up where the seats would go. Both holes either side were close and on the third jiggle and hold, we got both rear bolts in, then the rest went in with ease! Only the boot holes to re drill and a couple by the front bulkheads need tweaking. the rest lined up perfectly lol. So don't get the drill out! Keep trying.

Was a bit of a mission as the body went on and off about 4 times, only one chap had done it before (Trevor) and some had some doubt it would line up.
I'm sure that once you have done it once, you know what to look for and what technique to use for it go on easier the next time. GD can do it in about 20 mins. I have seen it and they made it look easy.
Now to get the rad back in.