A 3 day stint
I took Friday off work to focus in the garage for 3 days, really trying to get it to a stage where the body can stay on.
A lot of kit builders dont realise that the bare grp side of the bodyshell will eventually absorb water which will then pop the other side, it will take some time but it will happen. On this note I took advantage of the lovely Nov weather and undersealed the body, the UPOL stuff is the best as a lot of the others eventually flake.
I started doing it with the compressor..
But for some reason once the 1st bottle was finished it would not come of the gun.
Like it really wouldnt, I thought it might be air pressure but I disconnected the air hose and punctured the bottle but still not budging.
So I cracked on by hand which didnt take too long and I quite enjoyed it, in the sunshine in November in a tshirt!
I concentrated a lot on the arches for obvious reasons.
The finish is great
It also gave me the chance to correctly align and final fix the grill in place.
Now on to the front body mounts. With the body on and square I marked up the scuttle for the factory supplied mounts. There's not a lot written about this on various build threads.
So I took these pics to help anyone else that is getting to this stage.
To get in to drill the holes for the nuts and bolts you need a 90 degree chuck adaptor.
Photo below you will see I have relocated the busbar to the firewall
Rubbers from Oem Mazda shocks
So that was Friday, on to Saturday.....
I want to get my compressor over to my other lock up which means a last outing for the air riveter.
I only had the scuttles, the front centre firewall and the rear upper panel to fit.
You'll see below that I have cut out the ali around the harness mount. I really wanted to wrap my harnesses rather than trying to mount a 4 point like a 3 point. However after some measuring and a read of the IVA manual the bar will be too low. Its one thing I would change on the kit as it makes no sense at all.
I didnt want to Tigerseal it in case I want to take it off in the future but with it being a large panel I was worried about it rattling. I bought some stick on external foam draught excluder from Homebase.
I degreased the chassis and stuck it in place, this will not only stop rattles as it will also stop water ingress.
All finished, just need some more edge trim
I decided to relocate my Sytec fuel filler, reason being is that where I place it before made it difficult to secure the hoses.
Then removed all the evap can gubbins and kept the breather and oem roll over valve.
To finish off Saturday I went through the gauge spur and individually marked them ready for tomorrows work and also wired and tested my horns and all good.
Onto Sunday, I did half a day today as I wanted to get out with the Missus and the dog for a decent walk.
The loom I have is great and all the gauges are catered for, all of them share an earth, a live and illum so you have to loop those in a daisy chain.
My gauges are VDO and for the oil pressure I bought a matvched sensor which is screwed into the block via a thread adaptor.
Hey presto perfect 1st time
And again
Last one for today was the water temp and thats also working so pretty pleased all round. Tbh none of the ones I have done so far should be a challenge any way. Its the speedo and tacho that can sometimes be a challenge and I'll be using my ecu feed for the tach and the Mazda gearbox speed sensor.
Thats all for now, Im going to try and get a few hours at it this week as I want to have a clean up because my seats should arrive soon.
