Just thought if post a brief update of what has happened with my kit at over the last 18 months

I purchased the kit part built back in November 2011 from the dad of the owner of sliders guest house after staying there in the October. Day I collected it looked like this:



it came with a 2.0 pinto installed and a box of bits, most of which have turned out to be not much use. The screen and wiper mechanism etc was removed and sold on and an aeroscreen bought to replace it.

The engine was then determined to be duff, and i realised i should concentrate on the more importnt bits first, so out it came and was replaced with a known good 1.6 pinto.

Old engine out


New engine in



Then after a bit of faffing about with the ignition timing, it lived! Link to video - http://i1128.photobucket.com/albums/m492/stumac1985/c438f366.mp4


Shortly after this I bolted the front end back on and "drove it" for the very first time. Link to video -
http://i1128.photobucket.com/albums/m492/stumac1985/A37B24DA-DCA3-4B0F-A288-4346563BCC04-1174-0000017DAC6019D7-1.mp4

attention then turned to wiring (thanks rich for his help with this) and the dash / centre console. I had a dash panel almost the right size and so set about making this up properly.

roughly how it looked to start with some bits sat in place


the finished dash


in place in the car, you can see the mess the wiring was in at the bottom of the picture


the wiring has since been stripped back to only include the bits required but have left in things like wiper, washer and water wiring incase I ever decide to go back to a full screen. If by the time I decide to do a scratch built loom its still not got a full screen I wot be putting it back in.


During this time I have been through just a few sets of seats...

Seats that came with the kit, hardly all them a seat and not IVA compliant


The industrial carbon fibre seat, comfiest seat in the world, but didnt fit the car


Westfield GRP seat, too big for the car!


cobra clubman. Too small for me and a right fit in the car


So it became obvious finding a bucket seat that fitted in the car and I fitted in would be impossible. That's when I found these


they are cobra roadster 7's and fit me and the car perfectly, still to be fitted yet.

I also acquired a few wheels




they are from a Capri 2.8 special 13x7 et5!

more recently gaz made me some new headlight brackets (massive thanks due there) to replace the ones with the original clam shell wing supports and built in a bracket for my new front indicators



I also manage to source some original Robin Hood cycle wing brackets (thanks again gaz) which I forgot to take a photo of before painting as fitting.

This weekend was a bit of a reassembly time, mostly for my own motivation. So everything that could easily be bolted on was and got the car back to looking like this, please excuse the flat tyres, I took te photos while waiting for the compressor to be dropped round.








that brings it pretty much up to date. I have missed loads out as there are so many little and dull jobs I could spend hours typing up what has been done. Still lots to do to but I am confident I can have it ready for IVA, including painting it, before the end of the year.

Keep up the good work, you're getting there!

David

Well done!

Hope you meet you at one of the Brum meets soon!

All the best

Alex

Thanks both. It's taken me a long time to achieve what looks not a lot, but its really not too far off now, which is quite exciting!

Alex, should be at the next one hopefully. Be good to meet some more members.

Figured I'd update this thread rather than start another

Just started this morning on making my boot cover. I decided that I would opt for a fixed cover, so no actual boot. Makes IVA simpler and I much prefer that!

Had a good look at some cars at the last malt shovel meet and spoke to Gaz in detail about the best way to do it. So yesterday bought some materials and this morning have produced this



Pretty happy with it so far, and I think with some insets on the inside edge of the arches will look well. Time for a cup of tea and then I will crack on with making the arch inserts.

So as per the previous post i started making a boot cover and inserts for the rear wings, went to finish them off tonight only to realise the piece of leatherette I had that was "just the right size" wasn't

Sunday I got a bit of time in the garage and went about making and fitting my harness mount brace and fitted rear harness eyes. The brace runs the full width of the rear of the car so should keep VOSA happy come IVA



I also acquired some new cycle wings from stoneleigh national kit car show. They are wrap around type so cover a large portion of the tire and i think will suit the finished car well. Example of style




they required some adjustment as the holes in the sides of the wings were in the wrong place for my brackets, so set about repairing them. Id never used fibreglass, or filler for that matter, before so i am very pleases with the reaults. They will be painted in Renault black gold at a later date.





I also spent some time preparing the interior ready for carpeting etc as the next jobs on the list are fitting the harness eyes and load spreaders for the lap straps and fitting the seat load spreaders, with those done its time to carpet! so That's me about up to date again. Will hopefully get some more done this weekend.

Made a little progress today, fitted front harness eyes on drivers side and started making up the seat mounts. Going have to look at raising the rear harness mounts or fitting a bar to the roll bar for harness to run over as they are about 20mm lower than IVA man wants them to be.



have also refitted my mountney wheel as haven't for enough room with the sierra one fitted, so going to have to make a cover for the centre section for that as well.

Been working in the car today, cut the cycle wings so they now fitand re ready for paint, fittes remote reservoir and bled the brakes, which bled perfectly first time and in total about 10minutes!! Then had a small test drive, I cannot wait to get this finished now

Hi,

Good work! Could you post some more pictures of the harness mounts please though? From the current set of pictures, it seems that they are bolted to piece of 2 or 3mm thick steel strip. If so then that is not sufficient in the event of an accident and most likely will fail IVA. Unless of course they are more substantial than what it looks like.

I like everything else about the car, seems like good fun!

The rear harness mounts are bolted into 1.6mm steel and a further 4mm steel strip. The whole rear end is going to be further braced also. Another car has passed recently with similar setup.

ETA this is a stainless steel monocoque and not a spaceframe chassis

[Edited on 27/5/13 by theduck]

Ah, so a tried and tested solution? Good!

Have fun with the rest of the build (and driving it!)

Yep, the plan at the moment is to reinforce along the inside of the rear arches and then run an angle bar from the rear cage mount towards the front of now reinforeced rear arch area to triangulate the rear end.

With that done I will then strengthen the front supports for the roll bar by adding 5mm steel to the existing mount area and inside the boot and bolting through there as well. Lastly I'll be adding a "harness guide bar" to the roll bar which I currently am thinking I will bolt to the front uprights using crush tubes, as I wouldn't be able to weld it in place and I would have to dismantle half the car to remove it to Take it to someone else to be welded in. I think with a suitable crush tubes and high tensile M10 bolt it should be ok that way.

Couple of updates. Started on a bolt in harness bar, just waiting on brother in law to turn up some crush tubes at work next week before final fitting. Will be painted at later date. Also removed none iva compliant fog lights and fitted one compliant one.

It looks great.
Your old windscreen wiper mechanism is doing great work on my car. Its certainly been through it's paces with the wet weather weve been having.

Have you still got the clamshell wngs somewhere or did you sell them ?

Good to hear its being put to good use. Sold the clamshells on eBay for £50!!

Crush tubes have been made today so will be fitting them sometime this week.

Late start on the car today, didn't get out there until 11am and generally just plodded along. Worked mostly on the seat mounts and finally got a fit I am happy with in the drivers seat and all properly bolted into place. I have found the seat mounts a right faff of a job and it took me until 4pm to get it finished and put everything away again.

I then was told I had not done my "chores" so nipped out to pick up some bits for swmbo and the bits I needed to fix the lawn mower. Lawn mower repaired, grass cut and I found I had a little time before I would be moaned at to come in for the night, so back to the garage I went!

Decided I had just enough time to fit the type r oil pressure gauge I had picked up at stoneleigh. This poor neglected gauge has been owned by numerous Rhocar members but never has anyone actually fitted it to a car! Today, that has changed. It is now fitted and working in my car a I have to say I love the look. May even swap to all type r gauges at a later date. The only issue I had was the thread on the sender was wrong for the pinto, thankfuly in my box of bits I had a suitable thread adaptor so all is well and no leaks.

So despite the budget nature if this build, I just couldn't resist these...

Looking good!

You want to ditch the O rings and mountings and get yourself some MISAB washers though. They work better in my experience.

Cheers for the heads up. Will look into them.

So following on from this thread http://www.locostbuilders.co.uk/forum/viewthread.php?tid=183086&page=1

The twin 40s are now fitted and running.



​Video later in the week when choke linkage arrives and I get chance to tidy it all up a bit

It might just be how the harnesses are resting, but in your 'first drive' photo the harnesses are resting on the top of the seat. Is that how they route when you're in the seat? I'm unsure if it'll fail the IVA because of that but it's really unsafe regardless as the seat would probably snap in half from the impact.

Not sure which photo you mean but a harness bar is being added.

Dellorto uk can't supply the cold start lever, they can supply every other part of the cold start system but not the lever, going to have to look at making something or having something made.

The cold start mechanism for twin 40s and 45s usually consists of:

Stamp on the throttle three or four times and start using a little throttle.

You then keep the revs up a bit for thirty seconds and you'll be good to go.

Don't know if its because my ignition timing is not 100% but that most certainly doesn't work. Started her up again last night and she starts with cold start valves used but needs revs to keep going. Tried to start immediately after without using the cold start valves and won't start even with revs.

Fair enough.

Is it possible to pick up some dead delortos to scavenge parts off - or are the Weber ones interchangeable?

It could be the timing that is the issue. Are you using a dizzy or a programmable one.

A friends pinto spins really well with a Megajolt on, as it has a specific setting for cranking advance.

Standard dizzy at the moment, would like to go programmable but can't justify the cost on this spec of engine.

Had not considered trying to use the weber parts so will look at that and also look at getting a better ignition setup. On the note of ignition should I run with vac advance or block it off? I have connection on the inlet for connecting it.


Edit: just seen the new accuspark programmeable ignition, very tempting.

[Edited on 10/7/13 by theduck]

Programmable ignitions make a real difference to a 25year old dizzy...

If you are planning to keep the engine, go for it.

If it's a standard engine it may be worth keeping the vacuum advance. Mine was tuned to 160bhp and had an altered dizzy with the vacuum advance disconnected.

Will be a 1.6 pinto with 2.0 cam and twin 40s. Later on i'll change to a 2.0 pinto with fast road cam. Pretty sure I'm going for the accuspark unit as its half the price.

2.0l pinto with an injection head, fast cam and twin 40s sounds like a fun package! Go for it

Just ordered accuspark stealth black box and locked distributor, should be here next week.

Accuspark bits arrived today, look good quality and excited to get them fitted. Will report back how I get on

Sounds good - keep us posted!

Couple of updates on progress so far today.

Fitted ETB rev counter and speedo






Unpacked the the new distributor with accuspark ignition fitted and mechanical advance locked out so that it can be used with the accuspark blackbox








Have fitted the distributor and will be wiring in the blackbox later.

Also for those interested in fitting a blackbox, below is my hand drawn wiring diagram. The manual is good, but isn't really written to accommodate people going from an old dizzy without accuspark straight to a blackbox install, so took a bit of working out.

Have wired in the blacbox now and after a faff got the software installed on a borrowed laptop. Software is very simple to use.



Don't pay attention to the figures, I was playing and have not uploaded anything to the blackbox yet, I need to work out what is a good base map before I upload it.

Ok, before anyone else says it, yes there are far more important jobs I should be doing on the build before what I have done today, but I felt the need to do something "visible". So yesterday an today were spent in prep and in carrying out some painting!

Because I removed the windscreen some filling was needed on the scuttle which meant I was always going to do need to paint it before IVA.

In etch primer


Mid-way through paint coats


Also painted part of the mirror base to match the scuttle leaving just the upright chrome


Gave the awroscreen a quick dusting of satin black and all reassembled



With this completed I decided to have a go at the nose cone.

Base of etch primer


And painted white


I think I'm going to mask off and paint the metal side panels in satin black, letting paint harden first though.

Pretty happy with the finish overall though think I may need another coat on the nose cone to get it looking perfect.

[Edited on 26/8/13 by theduck]

Bit fed up with the car at the moment, so decided to cheer myself up before settling down to watch the F1 qualifying




Might do some work on the cycle wing fittings once qualifying is over.

Not done a lot recently other than make an even bigger mess of the garage, so started sorting it back out so I can make some progress again. Also bought a clarke bandit compressor today as a belated Christmas gift to the build.

Try to get some time in now. It will all make sense when summer comes along again.

David

Right, quick update.

- The garage is cleared enough to be worked in!

- I bought a caterham heat shield for the exhaust which fits but needs tweaking to get it sat right.

- I sold all 12 of my wheels and so the kit is on stands and the ones I was intending to fit had too high an offset and so went back

- I have ordered tyres (195/50r15 PE2s)

- I am ordering Team Dynamics Prorace 1.2 15x7 wheels Monday finished in, well, see below:

Another bit of bling...



Also got a cracking ebay purchase thanks to Richard Stewarts clear out of the old robin hood lock up that I am waiting to turn up which will solve an IVA issue and also make for a neater result than what I had planned.

Brief update...

Interiors done









There are a few bits that still need covering just to finish the look. There was also a few bits of wiring that needed to be completed behind the dash, which have now all been done and so everything works as it should.


and new wheels purchased and fitted





Theres probably been lots of other small updates but these are the interesting bits.