Sunday, July 20, 2008

That's all continued


Probably not too apparent here but this is the base of one of the front legs about to be trimmed - gulp!

We took off 25mm and then 3 more lots of 10 mm whilst continuing to offfer it up in the car.

What can't be seen here is the way that there is a dashboard supporting rail that goes just where this leg ideally wants to be.

Rather than cut straight through this rail we then trimmed back the dashboard to look at the rather more substantial rail on the offside.

At this point we decided to call a halt whilst we ponder the next move - as the car needs to be MOTd and ready for August 8th we will come back to the roll cage later in the year.

The roll cage isn't needed for the Little Devils anyway but seats and harnesses need to be in the car for the MOT so that's where we focussed our attention next.

Here's the seats and harnesses in place and they are fine but --

the seats need positioning for the ideal place for both the driver and co-driver.

We'll go for that on the day before the Little Devils if we have time when Sarah will be available for a trial fitting!

Then once the seats are in the right place the harnesses need "fettling" so that buckles are in a comfortable place and everything fits snugly.

All of that could easily take an hour for each side!

Still - next is MOT time in a couple of weeks.

Much has to go right yet, BRP has to pass it's MOT, I need to get my licence, we need to set the car up as described above, we should try a bit of navigational practice, the engine has to hold together after the head gasket change (maybe I should re-torque the head if there's any time) and of course we need it to keep going whilst the crew work together harmoniously on the Little Devils itself.

Not much then really.

That's all for now on the roll cage

Spent another 3 hours on the roll cage today with Bryce but I was amazed at how much work he had already done whilst I was away on holiday.

Here's some of his excellent work

The top mopunting brackets for the harnesses are vsiible here - the outer ones go into the standard production fixing points for the inertial reel seatbelts but the inner ones have been fitted using a patented method Bryce devised.

This involved much ingenuity and patience but means there's a reinforcing plate underneath the shelf here which sits above the fuel tank.

He has also made up brackets for the front harness fixing points just behind the cross rail on the floor - this is where the two front harnneses locate.

They then come up through the front seatbase and between your legs (ahemm) to stop the driver/co-driver "submarining" - ie - sliding forward under the harness.

The rear floor mountings are behind the seat frame and are re-inforced on the floor.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Roll cage update

Have spoken to Stuart @ Rollcentre who has proven very helpful all the way through this.

He agrees that the front leg should sit on top of the sill and that we can either adapt the "bottom plate" to fit back to the sill with a blanking plate made to fit or have the same kind of fitting as the rear cage.

We are going to go with option 2 so Stuart is going to make and post out a couple of angle brackets for us like the rear ones. Thanks Stuart.

Time is running out though for the car to be ready so the plan now is to get the rear cage in only, get the harnesses in correctly along with the comp seats and obtain an MOT. I must thank Bryce for his excellent work on the car - there's no way I would have the car this far forward this quickly without him.

After the Little Devils we can return to fully fitting the whole cage and then move onto the fire extinguisher system - it's all getting very real now this rally driving busines.

Sunday, July 06, 2008

Roll with it!



The first trial fit of the rear cage and it looks really good - well made and sits really well in place.


















The bracket on the sill - the sill itself has to be cut out under the bolt holes to allow the captive nuts to sit "inside it".














Then the front leg has to go down the side of the A pillar which means removal of some of the dashboard - here's Bryce at work on this.










Next is a case of getting the position of the front cage "leg" in the right position - here it is held by cable ties well up on the roof rail. It's important to get it as high as possible so as not to intrude on the cockpit area and be too close to the occupants heads!











But then there's an "issue" at the base of the leg where it fits onto a bracket - as can be seen here the bracket itself is sat on a block of wood to enable it to meet up with the leg.

Advice is currently being sought from the roll cage manufacturer!

No pictures at the moment but we also moved on to re-fit the seats and look at fixing the harnesses.

I had intended using a harness bar welded to the roll cage but the seats are too close to the rear hoop and there's no space so that idea has had to be abandoned (but at least there's a weight saving without that bar!).

A few more brackets will need to be made up and welded in - thank goodness Bryce is an excellent automotive engineer.