Rolling Chassis!

Some more good progress this weekend. We got the wheels on and the whole thing dropped down onto the ground from the tressles, thanks to some extra help from a few friends! The car has increased in weight by quite a lot already! The car seems very low to the ground, but I guess thats mostly because all the things that sit higher such as the bonnet, seats, dash etc are all not there yet...

The main task we wanted to achieve was to test fit the engine within the engine bay to establish how our rather large saab engine might actually fit! I spent quite a bit of time removing all the inlets, exhausts etc from the main block to allow us to see how it would fit in with the gearbox. As you can see from the picture below, the engine is looking fairly sparse without all the supporting parts!

After much effort, we go the engine actually into the engine bay and sitting fairly nicely close to the position we would expect to install the engine.

The saab engine mated with the omega gearbox seems to be fairly short, as there is a significant amount of space in front of the engine, which could be useful for positioning parts we have to move to fit it all in. The engine being positioned more centrally helps the weight distribution too! Our main concern was the height of the engine, but it seems to be not too bad compared to the height of the bonnet:

We have planned the two side engine mounts and it looks like we can convieniently reuse the gearbox mount from the omega box to fit nicely into the mounting point. So we will try and get them all made up soon to allow the engine to be fitted into the car, saving us valuable garage space and allowing work to begin on all the supporting parts for the engine. The alternator will need a new mount fashioning, the water pump will need to be modified a bit to fit. The exhaust and turbo piping will need to be almost from scratch. While the inlet side will be using the manifold from a saab 9000, which is a better shape, but will still need to be modified a bit.

Lots still to do, but feels like we are making some good progress.

Wishbones and diff

Some good work this week, working a few week nights and the weekend. The aim now is to get suspension, steering and diff in to see what space issues we're going to have with the Saab and engine and Vauxhall gearbox.. We'll have to remove front suspension to get side panels on.

1st job, tidy up the rough edges of the insert tubes, redrill the insides (I think) with a 10mm drill bit. Clamped in a vice with a couple of pieces of wood to protect the tubes.

From Zero 050410

We then tried to get them into the wishbone bushes but the hole was way too tight. So, a 14mm drill bit run through the middle of the bushes did the trick. Tubes were still a tight fit but lightly copper-greased went in ok.

After that, wishbones were attached to the chassis with the supplies hi-tensile bolts washers and nuts. Then the shocks were fitted.

Next up, Diff was fitted. We lifted the diff upwards roughly in its fitted position to allow the middle of the bolts to be fitted into the slots. This allowed us to look through the badly pre-drilled chassis holes and mark on with a Tip-Ex pen where to Dremel out to see the diff holes. Several hours later and the front and upper mounting holes were done.

From Zero 110410

Note the washers used to centralise the diff. We did this by lining it up roughly central between the front 2 mountings which looked pretty square to the chassis, then selecting the correct number of washers to fill the gaps between diff and chassis brackets.

From Zero 110410

The rear mount was to far away from the rear mount plate so we'll have to get 10mm longer ones to reach.
On checking the diff flange, it isn't quite at 90deg to the chassis rails. I wanted to fix this but Mike reckons the prop joints will be fine with it..! We'll see.

Driveshafts next, we had some 'issues' getting everything lines up as the hub bolt pattern is not square but only by a small amount making it difficult to keep everything the right orientation. The 4 spacer plates each side need the holes redrilling for 11mm to get it all to fit. Marker pen lines to help us remember!

From Zero 110410

Brake back plates, these are handed and should go with cylinder at front, handbrake entry from the top. No bolts with the kit so needed to buy M10x40 8.8 grade bolts and nyloc nuts to bolt everything up.

From Zero 110410

Front hubs next, the bores for the wing-stay/ball joint adaptor had a quick sand to remove surface rust and the same to the wing-stay to reduce the thickness of powder coating slightly. Then with the aid of a chisel to spread the clamp the stays dropped in.

From Zero 110410

Aligned as shown.

From Zero 110410

Then bolted to the balljoints (not fully).

From Zero 110410

Sierra master cylinder and steering column dropped in place, and steering rack loosely bolted in. Annoyingly GBS give you balljonts, a new rack, but no track rod ends... back to ebay for those.

All bolts so far have come with the kit, been bought from Screwfix or B&Q, and specialist ones like the bolts that appear to be 3/8" that pinch the hub up are from places like www.Namrick.co.uk

Now ready to put drum, discs and wheels on so we can see how engine, brake/fuel lines and loom can fit in.

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Detling Kit Car Show

Mike and I went to Detling today for the European Kit Car Show. Calling it 'European' is over-selling it a bit, it's a small show but 1st of the season so always popular.

Some Pics:

From Detling Kit Car Show 2010

Nice Lights

Love the indicator stalks, a very neat dash setup.

Would look awesome in the Californian sun rather than the Kent clouds of misery!

Bonnet bulge

Awesome

This kit had a handy perspex cover allowing us to see how he'd done cable and pipe routing. Also note washers for diff spacers.

How cool is this little caravan! Only about 6' long.

Nice layout, very tidy

I want one!
Mev Atomic
Nice stance, excellent colour

Garage and Bushes

Made some good progress today, wrapping up a lot of little but important things.

Finished off a workbench strong enough to park a small house on, and got electrics sorted and most importantly additional lighting. 5ft tubes are cheap in Homebase, rest of it came from Screwfix and QVS.

From Zero 030410

From Zero 030410

From Zero 030410

Air filter/regulator can be seen in the photo, bargain-tastic at Aldi :-) £80 for a 2.5hp compressor.

Mike did some more parts prep, after Hammerite Rust Remover Gel, wire brush by hand, wire brush in drill, Cilit Bang Power Degreaser (!), then Black Hammerite Smooth.

From Zero 030410

From Zero 030410

As can be seen, finish isn't the smoothest! But the priority is performance on this car not perfect finish and Mike didn't want the extra cost and time of stripping, then a Vinegar Bath or Electrolysis to remove the thick rust coating.

Also finished fitting the bushes into the wishbones and pedals. Not too many problems, Mike had used a Dremel with sanding drum to clean up inside tubes as advised by GBS, and used a vice to press the bushes in (hopefully) nice and square. Tip: sand a small angle (chamfer) on the edge of the tube to help guide the bushes in. Pedal was ridiculously tight so some of the bush got shaved off (oo-er) on the way in.

Note: never been sure weather you can use grease or not to help assembly and prevent corrosion inside wishbone tubes, so we assembled dry. Hard work but went ok.

From Zero 030410

From Zero 030410

Prep work

So after a weekend off kit car work for a stag do in edinburgh I got down to working hard on the car over the weekend. Still nothing attached to the chassis though!

I've prepped and painted the back plates for the rear discs, same with the front caliper carriers to go with the shiny new calipers I've got. Cleaned up the diff ready to put in, but haven't painted that as it looks fairly good as its aluminium rather than rusty steel.

The majority of the weekend was taken up with sanding out the insides of all the wishbones ready for the bushes to be put in. The bushes are definitely an interference fit! Very hard work getting them in even with a vince to push them in! I was about 2/3rds done before my arm got too knackered to do any more! So they are next on the list to finish. Maybe can then get something attached to the car.

Lots of other purchases too ready for installation on the car, so many little bits to get in addition to the kit! e.g. for the fuel system:

Low pressure fuel pump
Swirl pot
High pressure fuel pump
Some 8mm pipe
P clips to hold the pipe
Plus I'm sure we will end up needing lots of parts for joining pipes together in places.

Also bought a sierra master cylinder off ebay as we forgot / didn't realise we needed to get that from the donor car. Hope we don't find too many more things like that!

The boots on the driveshafts have seen better days too, so am going to replace them too.

Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me to take some photos of all the bits and pieces we've got ready now, but I'll make sure to get some as they go into the chassis. Hopefully some more good progress over the easter weekend - should be able to get the diff in and start attaching some of the wishbones. With a break for the kit car show in kent at some point over the weekend. Hopefully I can buy some seats off the GBS guys at the show too, as i quite liked the seats when I sat in them when picking up the kit and they are very reasonably priced when you look at other options.

Trestles

Been busy on the car over the weekend. Lots of planning for the tasks to do on the car - will put the list on here soon for you to see.

Nick and I also finished the second trestle, so the car is now up on them, giving us space underneath to keep all the car parts - so we can work around the car now!

I've been de-rusting some of the old sierra parts - lots of elbow grease! Plus some rust eating gel etc. Still not finished tho.

Made some decisions on the brakes - going to be keeping the drums on the back, as putting discs on is just going to be an expense and not going to affect how it drives much - its more cosmetic. I've also been buying lots of the discs / pads / drums / shoes etc for the brakes - which will be one of the first things we will fit to the car.

Hope to get some pics up soon along with the list of tasks and some idea of all the extra little bits we need to buy that hadn't thought of before hand - so hopefully others can plan in advance.

Collection Day!!!

We hired a LWB Transit and drove up to GBS today to collect the Zero kit. Seemed fitting that the sun came out to, the M25 had no traffic, and for once it wasn't freezing cold!

Anyway, a quick stop off first to pick up the Omega Gearbox courtesy of ebay. Smaller than we thought and lighter than the Type 9 thanks to being all alloy. Came with hydraulic clutch cylinder too which helps.

From Kit Car 070309

From Kit Car 070309

Our chassis on its trolley.

From Collecting Zero kit

Loading up the Transit.

From Collecting Zero kit

Some other cars there when we got there, useful to take pictures of certain areas for reference later. The GBS guys gave us loads of tipe which we promptly forgot.

From Collecting Zero kit

We ticked everything off while loading up, there's so many parts that come with the kit. GBS had very nicely given us orange harnesses to go with the orange GRP.

Top tip - get some pipe lagging to protect things (for 22mm pipe, about 60p a length from B&Q), cheap, easy to cut and stays on by itself.

From Kit Car 070309

Over the weekend, having recovered from a slight hangover, I knocked up a pair of trestles to put the chassis on.

From Kit Car 070309

P.S. its not a wide angle lens making it look wonky, it is actually wonky :-) sturdy though.