Looks great finished
Ha ha! Don't say the 'F' word - don't think this will ever be finished. In active use, definitely; but finished? Never
Had a busy few days on it this weekend.
Starting Friday eve, the footwells have been taking a hammering with all the work proceeding on it, so I got out the wet and dry and scotch pads and tidied up the passenger footwell. My motivation was to finally fit the passenger seat and harness, and move the battery back a bit on the new tray I'd bought. I didn't want to do all this on a rough looking floor, so after a bit of sanding to get a better base, a quick lick of zinc primer and a fresh coat of paint on the rough bits, and it was sorted and could dry overnight.
Got my little breather set up by making a little brackety widget to mount it. Went for an e-bay special because of how little these breathe by all accounts, so my all all singing all dancing custom Spec R -12AN jobby is now redundant.
On saturday with the paint dry, the battery went in first. The tray sits on little rubber pads to cancel out some vibration, and some high density foam underneath for good measure. Went in a treat and weighs nowt (unlike the battery, but been there done that!)
Seat and harness in.
By this time I'd felt like I'd done a 3 hour mix of pilates and yoga, coupled with banging my head a good few times! By now though I could go and pay a visit to the Mitsubishi Evo Lancer Register sprint champ Rd2 at Oulton Park with my son James as my first official passenger. Had a good afternoon there, they put on a great championship for their members along with the Subaru's and a few guests for good measure. Think it'll be on Motors TV this week. Terry Pankhurst of Dimma fame has completed an Evo based 205 T16 shaped sprint/rally/drift car which looks ace and is a total weapon. As you can see my son got a bit over-excited by it all and fell asleep on the way home
And so on to Sunday and (finally) fitted my drivers' side door card, with the cut outs for the door bars. Came out well.
And whilst upside underneath the pedal box (that takes some doing in a car with race seats and full cage let me tell you) checking out the intricacies of my brake bias adjustment, I noticed that the big axle pin that the brake and clutch pivot on in the bias box had worked itself out of one side of the pedal box!!!!!! My brake pedal had always been a bit too spongey for my liking which considering the hardware involved never seemed quite right; hence me practically standing on my head in the footwell to check it out. I must confess I was a bit shaky after my discovery - not at being upside down but the thought of what might have happened if something had broken under the strain. The pin had worked itself out from one side entirely, and on closer inspection there's nothing there to retain it. It's not threaded, so you can't fit a nut on it, and there's no hole to fit a split pin etc. Pretty shocked to be honest. It was made and fitted by someone else a long time ago, but the car has been so long in getting on the road for any meaningful miles I hadn't felt the need to check it until now. I've now sourced a nice little clamp that will go on the free end and retain the pin in future. Needless to say the brake pedal is now much firmer, and I'm looking forward to trying it on the next drive.
Also going back to suspension set up I've had a chat with Blink Motorsport in Winsford up the road from me. Looks like (as Fraser said) prices are ok, the only difficulty now is booking it in with them due to my work and their existing commitments, but I'm going to try and get it to them before the end of the month if I can.
Still looking into ARB's etc. The group A stuff looks good but pricey and will need some fab work to fit it. I don't even have any standard stuff yet. I think a rear EsCos one might be the way to go. If you have one for sale or know of anyone who's selling one please let me know!
Cheers
Iain