Progress

Progress has been made in various areas these last few weeks...

There are about a million steps missing still, good
job you can zoom out a lot!

Firstly the organisation of the build has changed, in that as well as my spreadsheet, I'm using RealTimeBoards to whiteboard things out which is a good graphical way of seeing what needs to be done next (I'm in no way affiliated with those guys, I just think it's a great tool!)

As well as planning, I've got some help now in the form of Martin, who will try and figure out WTF I'm meant to be doing.

In terms of actual progress on the car, well focus has been on the rear corners. You see, I want to get the braking system done next, but before I could do that really, I knew I had to finalise the rear corners as they'd have to be dismantled in order to get the rear cycle wing stays in place.

The front wing stays (the bits that hold the cycle wings in place), were easy, in that both stays were jointed together to form a single piece of metal and the holes where they connect to the front upright were pre-

drilled and set. The rear stays however were in two parts and there were no holes.

This meant that they could go at any angle and distance which gives a high probability of me stuffing it up. The rear uprights are also made of mild steel and quite thick, so I wasn't looking forward to drilling them.

So we put our minds to it, and sketched it all out to scale on some A0 diagram (it was actually the back of the wiring diagram, but I won't be needing that for some time!). We came up with a plan that looked like it would work, so we reassembled the corner to test and it looked about right.

Rusty disks

The next step was doing the drilling, so I once more made use of the facilities at work and Steve made the holes.

The assembly was then fairly simple and everything is back on the car. The only two worries I have is that I'm not sure what to torque the axle bolt up to and the brake calipers pinch the disks a little...

Progress was also made in that I had a massive amount of play in the steering rack, so I took my wheel and quick release boss off... no wait, I didn't do that, because one of the bleeding bolts had rounded. Instead I spent an hour hack sawing away at it before removing it.

Once in pieces, it was obvious what was wrong, the bolt inside wasn't done up properly and when that was sorted all of the play disappeared. So that was put back together after and all was good.

Now with the rear corners sorted, it was time to run the parking brake cables (I'd call it a handbrake, but I'm trying to use the same lingo as in the IVA manual!).

The basic run for the parking brake cable

It seems most people use little clips or struts on the brake & parking brake cables to keep them off the frame, I'm not sure why, so I just cable tied mine to the chassis for now. I haven't connected them to the actual handbrake yet, because that looks like it's going to be fun job*, so I'll save that until next time.


* Read: no fun at all