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[Doctor Gollum]

Weld or otherwise attached a small tab at each bolt and wire lock them once torqued. That way you can safely bolt them from underneath

[Nick W]

Weld or otherwise attached a small tab at each bolt and wire lock them once torqued. That way you can safely bolt them from underneath

why sod about with wire-locking?



weld the bolt to the top of the runner when the seat is next out, and use a nyloc nut under the car.

[Doctor Gollum]

 

Good point, well presented

Would also make the seats a doddle to locate

[aaronjb]

It's not the runners that are the problem I did actually consider welding the bolts to the runners, but since they aren't at 90º to the runners, that proves tricky to accomplish and still be able to get the bolts through the car.. (runners are on an angle, there are 5º wedges under the front bolts, 0º on the rear)

It's the seats being bolted to the runners that you can't reach underneath once the seat is in.. so weld nuts to the underneath of the runners where the seats bolt in and I could bolt them in without having to have the runners half unbolted from the car.

[aaronjb]

Much easier to demonstrate the problem in a picture .. but I don't have one; it's all because the floorpan isn't flat and the seats don't go very far forward because of the incredibly narrow footwells

I popped the current (possibly temporary) dash back in again; I'm sure it will need re-working, possibly for radius requirements and probably because there will inevitably be electrical gremlins.. I'm still not sure how the radiator fan is supposed to be switched in the wiring loom I have (which came with very, very basic instructions from S-V-C), for example, so that will be interesting. Still, the immobiliser still works, and I've properly fitted the little red LED now so the IVA man can see it go blinky blinky.



Does look a lot more like a car with some floor carpets, seats and dash in. Just still missing the bit that makes all the noise..

[aaronjb]

My better half is away this weekend (visiting her family in Wales .. I can't remember which weekend this actually was - before Christmas, anyway!) so I thought I'd spend lots of time in the garage - work (the kind they pay me to do) had better ideas though, so I split my time between my desk and the garage in the end.

Still, I did make some progress - after dropping the dash in yesterday I spent some time with the knock-on adapters and a rear wheel, trying to get it to clear the rear brakes. The only other person I know who has been there & done that with a DeDion had to machine a little off the caliper, but I think a 3mm spacer will probably move the wheel out enough that the wheel clears the caliper and the tyre still stays inside the arch - time will tell, as I have to wait for them to turn up. So the steel build wheel went back on for now (as I think I mentioned earlier - I have 3x 16" alloys and 1x 15" steelie on the car - the 15" steelie clears the caliper because it doesn't have the 'lump' inside that the alloys do).

I turned my attention to the in-fill panels needed to finish off the footwells prior to carpet today, and set to with a little Cardboard Aided Design:


The mock up cleared the hinges and clipped to the scuttle hoop with terry clips, and then I used that as a template to cut out a sheet of ali using an air nibbler and manual tin snips:


I think with a little more trimming (just a hair) it will fit pretty well, and once covered in carpet you'll never see the amateurville metalwork! I don't have a sheet bender, so the bends were all formed with blocks of wood and clamps, and my hands, so they're not precisely regular along their length.. but they'll do!

Need to order some more ali now so I can do the drivers side as well.. and then try and figure out how all the carpet is going to fit on top of all this!

[Andy B]

....
mk 3/4/5 Cortina:
Open the bonnet
Undo 3 self tapping screws that secure the heater box cover
Undo both jubilee clips, and pull off the hoses.
Swap the heater matrix.
Reverse the above list, top up the coolant and call it done.


Granadas are very simi!ar.

So is a Mk1 Cavalier 

[Marks DTM Calib]

....
mk 3/4/5 Cortina:
Open the bonnet
Undo 3 self tapping screws that secure the heater box cover
Undo both jubilee clips, and pull off the hoses.
Swap the heater matrix.
Reverse the above list, top up the coolant and call it done.


Granadas are very simi!ar.

So is a Mk1 Cavalier 

Sadly the modern ones are huge, gone are the days of  few cables, heater matrix, couple of flaps and some tubing.

Its now, heater matrix (or two), multiple flaps for each side plus also potentially the rear, evaporator, servo motors, electric heater etc etc, fricking huge and all eating up real estate I would rather like to get my hands on for my own kit.

[Varche]

....
mk 3/4/5 Cortina:
Open the bonnet
Undo 3 self tapping screws that secure the heater box cover
Undo both jubilee clips, and pull off the hoses.
Swap the heater matrix.
Reverse the above list, top up the coolant and call it done.


Granadas are very simi!ar.

So is a Mk1 Cavalier 

Sadly the modern ones are huge, gone are the days of  few cables, heater matrix, couple of flaps and some tubing.

Its now, heater matrix (or two), multiple flaps for each side plus also potentially the rear, evaporator, servo motors, electric heater etc etc, fricking huge and all eating up real estate I would rather like to get my hands on for my own kit.

Oo have you got a kit car in prorgess? Can we have a thread on it too? My adventurism nowadays extends to swapping a 4x4 for an MX 5 ( with gears no less)

[Marks DTM Calib]

....
mk 3/4/5 Cortina:
Open the bonnet
Undo 3 self tapping screws that secure the heater box cover
Undo both jubilee clips, and pull off the hoses.
Swap the heater matrix.
Reverse the above list, top up the coolant and call it done.


Granadas are very simi!ar.

So is a Mk1 Cavalier 

Sadly the modern ones are huge, gone are the days of  few cables, heater matrix, couple of flaps and some tubing.

Its now, heater matrix (or two), multiple flaps for each side plus also potentially the rear, evaporator, servo motors, electric heater etc etc, fricking huge and all eating up real estate I would rather like to get my hands on for my own kit.

Oo have you got a kit car in prorgess? Can we have a thread on it too? My adventurism nowadays extends to swapping a 4x4 for an MX 5 ( with gears no less)

Sadly not, this is the day job, I could do with space in the dash to mount a module or two but its crammed

[aaronjb]

A delivery arrived so I took a quick half hour to work on the rear wheel fitment.. this image shows both the problem and the solution in one:


You can see here the area of paint I've removed from the caliper - due to the offset (backspacing, whatever we're calling it) the 'ridge' inside the wheel coincides almost exactly with the brake caliper. An extra 1/4" of outset (or .. 1/4" less backspacing) would probably put the wheel about perfect but as far as I know I'm only the second person to put knock-ons onto a DeDion, so all I had to go on was Kev Davies' measurements

For the record, I'm talking about the 'other side' of this ridge:


So I have two choices - shave a little off the caliper (which gives me the heeby jeebies!) or see if a spacer gives me enough movement, so I bought some universal 3mm spacers.


They still leave plenty of centre bore remaining for the knock-on adapters to sit on and they move the wheel out just enough (to the tune of about 2mm!) that it now clears the caliper, while the wheel remains nicely inside the arch and should pass an IVA with tyres on. We'll see once I have the tyres, maybe I'll have to revisit the calipers after all..


They do look good, though!



The spacers are cheap and nasty and need a little filing to fit, despite being 'right' on paper. There are much better made options out there (machined, rather than cast) so I'll probably invest in a set of those if this does turn out to be the answer.

[Nick W]

Your sliding caliper can be safely ground where you've marked it, because it has no internal parts to worry about. Unlike fitting 4 piston Princess calipers which need quite a lot of grinding to fit under 13" wheels. I discovered that the castings weren't even when a heavy brake application broke the seal out of an over thinned casting . We checked all our cars, and went back to ordinary M16 calipers........


The angle-iron type metal folder from Machine Mart will save you a lot of hassle, and is cheap enough that it's not worth making one. If I ever build a work bench, it will have a length of heavy angle along the front edge, drilled and tapped on 100mm centres to clamp on another piece to make a long bender. It will be handy for straightening flanges too.


If you ever find a shoemaker's last, grab it; the various curved shapes on a stable base are very handy for sheetmetal work.

[aaronjb]

Cheers Nick  I had visions of grinding material away there and then the outside of the brake caliper falling off the first time I got enthusiastic with the brakes

Funny you should mention a metal folder - I have one now, after I made the in-fill panels for the footwells I went out and bought one.. as you say, they're cheap enough that it isn't worth messing about trying to make one. Just need to assemble it and find it a home in the workshop!

[aaronjb]

We dropped a 'buck' engine in so that we can start on exhausts etc along with the final gearbox. Now, let me preface this by saying that since Dax didn't have jigs for an FE+T56 combination, the mounts were placed using my buck engine plus a GM T56 and its now an FE+Ford T56 Magnum which has a slightly different mounting flange arrangement at the back - I think it might be a sniff wider, which has become a slight problem!

We're alright up the front end with the engine:


There's even acres of room for the exhaust headers:


But it's pretty tight down the tail end of the gearbox:


In fact, the tail end bracket is pretty much touching chassis:



Two things became apparent during this - a) my old gearbox had a GM style rubber mount on it which is narrower than the mount that MDL supply, b) the new mount is too wide for the steel plate welded to the chassis because the bolts are farther apart than the GM style.

Oh, and c) The gearbox needs to share the same space as my fuel line and my main battery cable .. in fact we all but severed the main battery cable with the gearbox, so that now needs replacing (BUGGER!) as does the fuel line (less annoying to replace). Good job the battery was disconnected!

I also need to source a new GM style transmission mount, and then figure out how much packing it'll need to ensure the gearbox output flange and diff input flange are parallel-but-offset (possibly none, we'll see!)

Still.. that battery cable. BUGGER. BALLS. ETC. I said worse in my head, but not out loud, because my Dad was giving me a hand to do all this...

[aaronjb]

So while pondering gearboxes and stuff like that, I thought I'd chip away at odds and sods, getting ready for the real engine - that kind of thing..

Refitted the wing mirrors tonight at a more reasonable height with the aid of some slightly longer BA screws (but not too long!)


Fitted the alternator to the buck engine - this isn't the final alternator (or engine!); this one sounds like gravel in a cement mixer so clearly needs a rebuild!


Not much space back there, but these are the original FE brackets so must be right..


Also 3D printed some bits in preparation for exhaust work.. progress, little by little. And my gearbox mounts are now on the way..