Rollbar is on, temporarily

OK, so I had a few hours spare yesterday, so dropped into the workshop to say hi to Frank. Clearly you cannot come in and NOT do something, so I've fitted the rollbar and the rear mounted brake light.

The rollbar itself is a bit of a story. The one that came originally didn't fit at all. Apparently having the two arms that attach to the back of the car not quite perfect isn't unusual - they can be pretty easily bent a little (not too much - it is a rollbar after all), and you can fit spacers if you have to. The problem with mine was that it was the main bar (that goes from side to side in the car, and is MUCH thicker and stronger) that was out. By quite a bit.

Turns out there was a breakdown in the process in the factory. The guy responsible for putting it all together didn't follow the Standard Operating Procedure, and was tacking the bar (ie. welding little spots on to hold the pieces in place) in the jig, but then removing it and completing the job off the jog. Now when you heat these things again, everything can shift, so the final geometry of the bar tended to bit a bit of potluck.

The next batch were all a lot better, and in most cases now go straight on no problems. My new one goes on find (a little bit of filing required), and the two arms are close, but there's still some work to do there.

With the bar and bootbox in temporarily, this was a good opportunity to fit the rear stop light. Given the height of the main stop lights on the rear guards, and the overall lack of height in the car, I'm guessing this is the main indication to people behind you that you're stopping. I've read a few stories of people in clubmans being rear-ended, and the explaination was that the guy behind was so interested in the car, he forgot to stop. So a bright red light may prove useful.

Anyway, it's an easy matter to position the mounting bracket, drill a few holes, and get it all stuck on. Again, learnt a few more things, like how to pick the right drillbit, and how to thread a hole (slowly and with patience).

Now that this is done, it can all come off again and be sent off for chroming - again, Kerry will do the honours. Should look great when it comes back all shiny. And yet another thing to shine in the eyes of people coming up from behind so they don't hit me.

BTW: Apologies for the poor quality of the photo - I'm still on the hunt for a new camera, and the phone camera is having to do for now.

Odds and Ends

More work on the weekend, completing little jobs around the place.

For example, putting the ignition switch on. Sure, a ten minute job, but now you can turn a key and imagine it running! OK, that's a little sad.....The idea of relocating the switch is going to have to wait, as ADR apparently requires a lockable steering column, so the existing barrel will remain where it is.

I've also finished (or at least, fitted) the pedal box. Last week it got moved towards the front of the car to give the maximum room possible for the driver, and this week the pedals got connected to the cylinders. Took me a while to figure out that the threads on the pushrods were a completely different width (guage? pattern?) to the threads on the pedals. I spent some time cleaning the threads thinking it was that, but eventually eye-balled it and decided they were completely wrong. That's when the box of bolts Frank put on the car suddenly made sense - they were to replace the pushrods.

That turned out to be a simple task, but again if I didn't have someone to tell me what to do, I'd have spent another few hours beating my head against the wall.

That done, the pedal box now looks correct as compared to everyone elses. The real trick will come once the disks and brakes are on and the lines are bled, so that I can set up the balance bar. The only thing that's worrying me at this stage is that there's not a lot of room for adjustment in the middle cylinder, so if that needs more movement than the current pushrod allows (it's a little short) then I'll have to take it apart again and redo it later - but on a pressurised system.

I've also sorted out the fusebox, which was another exercise in frustration. The new model Birkin's have a shortened fusebox - earlier models had a wide, flat fusebox with lots of access from the top, so you could lay everything out. The new versions have theirs shortened to allow the Duratec engine to fit, but it means that they're deep rather than wide. Add to that the fact that the wiring is pretty damn tight, and it makes it a exercise in frustration trying to manoeuvre everything in there.

So I did what I always do, and cheated. Luckily there's another short fusebox chassis in at the moment, so I had a look at what he did and copied it. Worked a charm. On that note, Blair (the other IRS in the workshop) has been in working hard over the past few weeks, so if I'm not careful my main reference point (i.e. build to copy off) will be gone soon.....

So that's now all in place and covered over - the fibreglass cover is hiding a multitude of sins, but I don't care.

Mind you, seeing how long it takes to get these things finished, and how long the engineering and registration process can be, I'm getting worried for my December deadline. That may prove to be optimistic, unless everything goes really, really smoothly from now on. We'll have to see.

Further progress

Hi y'all.

Further progress has been made in some small areas. Firstly, the dash wiring is basically in now, with some clips supplied by Paul making the whole thing a lot neater. I still need to drill a hole for the indicator light, but I'm going to wait until I decide on whether I'm going for LED lights or not. If I go LED, then the indicators require two lights (one left and one right). If I stick with bulb lights, I only need one to indicate that an indicator is on. When you turn the indicators on in a clubman, they're set up to make a horrible noise to remind you - no nice soft clicking sound like in other cars - because there's no cancel on the steering wheel to turn them off once you've completed the turn.

I've also completed the front steering mounts, including getting the sway bar roughly located in place with the reinforcing plates are now all bolted in. I've also fabricated some little aluminium brackets for the fan and mounted it on the radiator, which is now also mounted on the car. Just a tip to the unwary - you need to turn the fan around. It's default position would have had the poor thing trying to blow air back towards the front of the car - not the most efficient setting.

I've also moved the pedal box to its farthest position, and fitted the pistons for the pedals. I'm still missing the joints to fix the pedals to the pistons, but its all there ready to go.

So that's not bad progress. I've started to make a list of the next steps to take, and there are a few things that need to happen before I can move on some of the suspenion components (machining a few spacers etc), but its moving forward.

You know, I think it may be a car

There's been some movement lately, which has made the car look, well, more car-like. The front and rear suspension and running gear is coming together, with the uprights installed at both ends. When you attach the steering rack to the front and turn the shaft, there's a satifying corresponding movement in the uprights to turn left and right. OK, I know, juvenile, but it's great to see some mechanical movement at last.

I've also been putting the dash in - the dials and lights are all provided, and the holes all pre-drilled. The dash only required some work on the holes for the lights to make them large enough, which wasn't that hard, plus I need to drill an additional hole for one more. ADR requires, of all things, a seatbelt light to warn me if someone's seatbelt isn't done up. I have absolutely no idea who would be in a Birkin and not realise they had no seatbelt (especially after they've left an impression of the dashboard in their forehead at the first lights), but there's a light just in case. I'm also not sure how that wires into the racing harness or not.

I've also been looking at making my first, individual, decision (so far I've copied everyone else). I thinking of moving the ignition from the usual position, where it's attached to the steering column. In the Caterham, I kept bashing my knee on it, plus you have to contort a little to reach the damn thing. Then the keys keep hitting things. I've been wondering whether it's possible to move the ignition down to the centre console. Keeps it all out of the way. Hey, maybe I could even have a pushbutton start ;-)

More progress, but a bit stop-start

More progress this weekend - still a little bit hidden, but the next series of steps should start to make a difference to how the car looks.

First up was to install the rear wishbones, both upper and lower. Pretty straight forward at this stage, as they just slot in with the bolts loosely fastened. The trick comes in a little while when I attempt to get about 20 different moving parts to all mesh into a single integrated unit.

Progress stopped on the rear suspension when I realised that the uprights are all still at Dad's - I've got them back in Perth now, so they can go on next week. That will make the car start to look a little more complete, as the uprights have things like brake calipers and disks etc, and you can mount wheels on. It also means that I can test the handbrake operation, then once that's done get the diff and half-shafts in.

I can also install the front uprights and therefore the shocks and springs, which should make the front a little more car-like as well.

I also started threading the wiring loom in. One thing about the new Birkins - the fuse box is now really, really small, as the engine now cuts into the space where it used to be. It also reduces the passenger footwell quite a bit. From the wiring perspective, I'd be interested in seeing how others have managed to get the fuses and so on mounted in there. One option is to simply let them float around (it's pretty tight) rather than try anad screw them to anything. They won't move around that much.

I also spent an inordinate amount of time fabracating a small bracket to keep the wiring nice and neat. Took a while, but its the first time I've actually made something for the car rather than just bolting things on.

So, more progress. Next week I'll be taking some days off, and working on the car either side of a Sydney trip.

If I had suspension, wheels and brakes installed, I could park

Three cables. One triangle thingy. Four hours.

This could take a while.

I've installed the handbrake - well, the handbrake itself (two bolts), the three cables, and the triangle that turns to activate the rear brakes when the handbrake is pulled. So far the cables go out into space, as now I have to install the rear suspension arms and uprights which include the calipers to attach this all to. At the moment, all I can achieve is to pull the handbrake, get the clicking noise and make two cables get shorter. Hold back the excitement.....

In my defense, it wasn't as simple as it first looked. I did have to get the dremel out and make a few holes a little bigger to allow the cable to thread properly through the chassis. And there was some scratching of heads trying to figure out how the pictures related to reality, plus a few missing pieces (nothing major, custom or tricky, just some split pins) to replace.

At the very least, it means I can now get the rear end moving - I can install the diff, the half-shafts, the rear suspension etc etc. It's all a progression that needed the handbrake installed, so it releases a whole series of activities that I can get on with. In project manager speak, the handbrake was a critical path item.

I'm planning on taking a few weeks off shortly to actually focus on the build, which should mean some better progress than I'm showing now. I must admit, the lack of time is starting to annoy me.

Baby Steps

Spent a day on the weekend with Dad continuing on the car, which was great. The first task we tried was to install the handbrake – except I have the handbrake cable for a Live Axle car rather that the cables needed for the IRS. So that stopped that, and I need to get this in and the rear brake cables before the diff goes in, which has to happen before the rear suspension goes in. So the back-end of the car is on hold for now.

However, as with most things, there are other activities that can happen in the meantime. We moved to fitting the drivers seat. Because of the range of relative sizes of the two main drivers (Dad and I), we needed to put the adjustable runners into the car. In most vehicles that wouldn’t matter, it’s just that in this sort of car it’s all or nothing – if I can reach the pedals, Dad can’t. If Dad can reach the pedals, I can’t get my knees under the dash. So the movable seat is required.

The downside apparently is around the stability of the seat. As the runners are mobile, and the anchor points are brought inside the main runners, the stability suffers, by all account. Whilst the seat isn’t structural – it doesn’t hold you in, the belt does – it is important to feel secure, and to have all the messages from the chassis translated through the seat to your backside properly.


So there were a couple of things to do. Bolt the runners in – no problem. Cut a hole in the bottom of the seat to allow space for the runner – slight problem. The measurements in the book would have put a huge hole in completely the wrong place. And now this is where Dad comes into his own – measuring and measuring and measuring against to get it right, even if it doesn’t matter as you can’t see the holes. Did it all, and it turns out to be a really nice, neat job.




Dad also came up with a good idea to resolve the stability issue. We’re going to craft a simple metal frame that goes between the bottom of the seat and the squab. This will anchor the seat tightly to the frame, and spread the load a little wider than the underlying frame. Simple and cheap – gotta be a first for this build.


We also bolted the wiper motor on. No real excitement there.


So for a day’s effort, we put a seat in. This could take a while, especially as my work now takes me to Melbourne basically full-time until the middle of July, at which point I might take a few weeks off to focus on the car. Then the blog updates will come fast and furious, I promise.

You’ll also notice some photos of the car in this posting – what do ya’ll think of the colour?