I would rather hurry up and finishe it! Other arch at rear almost finished, along with some mods for "driveshaft clearance". Cleaned up the underside of burnt paint from seam welding. The bodyshop is in sight.

 

Cup of tea and biccies are waiting....

 

I'm assuming youve tried the clearance for the hubs / struts etc ?

David

 

Hahaha! Funny guy.

I would like to, but don't have stuff to try. I've basically get as much space as I can reasonably get. Offering wheels/tyres up by hand whereever possible. If we had more time then things would be different.

 

I wasnt being funny! I was being serious.. I know they dont extend out far, and assuming the strut body has room.. or a std strut body..

Worst case we have to cut a bigger hole out later

David

 

IBR

Have suspension parts to test fit now

 

you missed the F

FIBR.

Excellent.. work permitting will give you a call to discuss the project plan and whether milestones are slipping

 

You might need to be sick the end of this week and the weekend...

 

LOL

Forgot to call you, too busy.. maybe tomorrow.

David

 

A quick update, pics will have to wait till tomorrow.

Air jack mounts in at the rear, and nearly sorted at the front, like every other job, it took longer than anticipated, but the brackets look great. Also some more cosmetic stuff finished by a few more willing victims, sorry I mean avid supporters!

The light is definitely at the end of the tunnel, with literally just a few jobs to do before the trip to Eclipse. But soon the engine will be finished and we start a round of testing on the old car.

Pics tomorrow.

 

Damn that was a late one!!! I thought you were going to leave straight away when I left at 11.15pm?
My eyes are like **** holes in the snow this morning!!!
Pity I didn't get to finish the front air jack mounts, gutted.
I dare say I will be back for more bits to do like a custom aluminium control panel for the switches and electrical stuff, brackets, etc...just let me have sketches of bits you need and I will sort the rest.
Hans

 

Hope you had a good drive back mate, think I spotted you on the roundabout after picking the missus up.

Am so impressed with the fabrication quality, Zen 08 car is going to be the standard to follow, am sure the other cars will be following it once the season starts and shes on the circuit

 

I did! Posted from home this time!

Pics will be forthcoming, don't worry.

 

 

Fortunately for me Paul takes as long to process Pictures as he does Credit card transactions it would appear

 

^^^^^^^^^

 

latest pic links down comeon we wanna see!!!!!!

 

Coming along nicely Paul! How's the nails now Liz?

 

Our website has recently been migrated to a new system and I haven't had time to do stuff like, relocate photos of project car. Sorry! We are v busy with customer work atm. Edited to add: nothing I can do about this right now, may be not even until Monday, so you will all have to wait! You will have to take my word for it looking good and nearly ready to go to the bodyshop.

John Felstead, nails are fine

John Stevenson, sent you a PM on 22b about that

Liz

 

Uh oh John, Liz is on the case now

 

Should have kept my trap shut, probably Bankrupt now !!!!

---john---

 

Absolutely shattered. Completely run down and have no energy whatsoever, I had to finish at just 11.30 tonight, and it's still not done.

I was thinking what it was that we had actually acheived so far, and the time spent to get there. When we pickup up the shell there wasn't a single piece of welding done, just a hell of a lot of drilled out spot welds and missing panels. The actual sequence of works goes something like this:

Receive shell and plan work.
Grind down hundreds of spot weld blanks left from missing panels (welds were cut around, not removed).
Clean up edges and rust spots
Seam weld interior and engine bay
Mount on roll over jig (the point where work started seriously, about 4 weeks ago)
Clean spotwelds on underside
Seamweld underside
Modify rear turret tops, clean up after removal (shell came without)
Weld in new turret tops
Begin cage fitting
Weld in tubular jacking points
Seat fitting with driver, sort pedal box and steering column postion
Make blanks for all non-round holes to be filled
Weld in blanks for around 50 holes of one sort or another
Begin front arch modifications, removing material to create profile
More cage fitting
Reform inner arches and tack weld in place
More cage fitting
Weld up inner arches
More cage fitting
Create and weld in pedal box mounting
Profile seat rails and floor for fitting
Weld set rails in place
More hole filling where spotwelds have been removed too far!
More cage fitting
Remove boot floor and tidy edges
Add flange to rear of boot floor
Create new upper sills (entire outer sill previously removed from shell)
Remove inner panels of c pillar
Modify rear inner arch profile and recreate from scratch
Make good cosmetic surfaces of front inner arches
Fill more holes (including pinholes etc)
Create airjack mountings brakets and cut/weld in place
Create new rear diff mounting structure
Create new front turret tops and weld in place
Create new mounting point for rear ARB
Create new rear subframe mounting points
Modify front slam panel and make provision for bonnet pins
Modify headlamp panels to restore stiffness lost from slam panel removal
Modify front chassis rails

I'm sure i've forgotten stuff, and there is more to do, but now it's only a little bit and the end is really, really in sight!

 

Keep up the good work m8 , you can have a break while Neil works his Magic !

 

You are doing really well to tick down that list and do the day-to-day stuff too.
I think you would find an army of people would be at your door if they were closer, even just to make coffee and take pics for the threads.

I remember what big builds are like doing all the bespoke fabrication on hot rods way back, which is why I don't do them any more.

At least you havn't fallen out with The Boss yet...now that would be knackering.

Keep it going!

Graham

 

awesome stuff paul, cant wait to see it up and running on the tracks.

 

I have seen it last few days and its getting there low is not the word, like paul said so many spot welds and fabrications to be done but its looking good, i would of taken some pics but didnt think that was right at the time, keep it up be well worth it when u do some track damage,like i said when u need it testing just give me a shout ok might just squeze me in lol.

ps front drive shaft went on my way home paul looks like u made it go to fast after all

 

You're bang on there Graham ! I also used to do this sort of thing.
Tarmac spec wide arched Group 4 RS1800 BDA Escort, fully welded and caged shell with all World cup rally car kit on it, I can't believe that was 30 yrs ago

Now just reading about it is enough !

Keep up the good work guys

 

Cheers guys, it helps to see posts like that it really does. Just back in after some family time (what's that?) this morning, and now I'm read to finish it.

I think by the time it goes to Neil, it will have had about 300 hours spent on it. Which is 8 man weeks of work, in the space of about 6 weeks, with all our regular customer work aswell.

 

Sorry I couldnt make it down this weekend to help.. been that busy with work and trying to fix my road car so I can get about

David

 

I cant see any of the pics? Sounds fantastic tho!