Chris, Olly and Jim turned up to give me a hand, many thanks chaps.
Fitted exhausts, screen, wheels, wiper motor plus a few other bits.
Richards Dax Cobra Kit Car Build |
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Today was my 1st available day to start the rebuild since the body came back from the painters. Chris, Olly and Jim turned up to give me a hand, many thanks chaps. Fitted exhausts, screen, wheels, wiper motor plus a few other bits. She's getting there slowly.
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The car was delivered back from SMS on Friday.
All I can say is I'm delighted. They have done a FANTASTIC job. The rebuild starts next weekend. Due to both the body and trim being away at the moment I have very little to report. Due to SMS not being able to get paint in the colour I wanted I had to run 5 litres of Ultramarine black over to them this morning. They were all shut up for the Christmas break but I did manage to get a few pictures of the body. The body should be painted by the 2nd week in Jan so more news then.
I have little to report except to say that the painters rang me to say the body is now in primer and may be back this year. The seats, dash and steering column cover have been delivered to the trimmers along with 5 cows worth of leather. I had to strip the dash down before it went which was fairly depressing. Nothing will be back until end of Jan at the earliest but to be honest It will take me a fair amount of time to rebuild the car when she returns form the painters.
I have also added a useful contacts page following a request by Bob H for more info on who I have used. Last Sunday I spent doing all the final jobs necessary prior to sending the car to SMS on the Friday just gone.It's amazing how many little jobs you need to do that you have forgotten about. Any way she has gone. A very nice chap called Bev Fawkes collected her at 7.15 Friday morning. I followed him over to SMS and spent some time with Steve taking him through what I wanted. He specialises in painting Cobra's so hopefully should do a good job. Whilst she is away, I need to get the seats off to the trimmers along with the dash, everything else trim wise I think it is best left until the car is fully built back up.
I can also clean the garage floor which has not been seen for several years !!!! I have booked the transport to SMS Autospray over the weekend for Friday 27th of this month so the race is on to make sure it is ready to go. I started the weekend off finishing off the mirror mountings which involved cutting holes in the A pillar mouldings and fitting the small stainless spacer tooling and equipment made for me. Above is the spacer before cutting the hole. Above and below is once finished. I then fitted the boot seal as SMS need it fitted to set the boot. Next was the windscreen escutcheons. No idea how they are supposed to fit but they took a fair bit of modification (filing of the slot) to make them fit. I then stripped everything off ready for painting. I have also received this weekend my latest batch of stainless bits . Headrest plates and mounting bars . Boot lock cover and boot handle slot cover. Finally I visited JIm in Heanor who is building a Dax the same as mine.
He kindly gave me various stainless bits and bobs (Handbrake cable, brackets, lower wishbone plates etc) which I will try and fit before the car goes. Many thanks Jim. I have spent this weekend trying to finish off all those little jobs that are better done before the body goes off to the painters. I have fitted the passengers seat. I have also fitted the passengers side hinge escutcheon. I had been waiting for the door to come back.Its a tight fit ( the perils of designing your own) but I think when the door is fitted it will be fine. I have also made up the door trim substrates and cut out the lead sheets to go inside the doors to make them feel slightly heavier. The next job I tackled was to fit the near side stainless fittings I had made for the hard top plus replace various rivets with stainless bolts and nuts. The final job was to try and decide which mirrors to fit to the car. I have a pair of XCS mirrors-which I bought before I decided to have a hard top. They are lovely and I was going to fit them despite the complex modification to the A pillar cover required. Sadly I remembered something Andy Hatton had mentioned to me about them restricting the opening of the side windows. Sure enough he was right.
My other idea was to fit body mounted mirrors but I just cant warm to the idea so the only other option was to fit the original Dax mirrors I have. There are 2 holes in the A pillar covers which look like they were designed for the mirrors but I need to get some spacers made up to get them to fit correctly. I have drilled 2 holes in the covers........ so there is no turning back ( without a bit of filling ) I had a visitor on Saturday, Jim Diment from Heanor who is also building a De dion Dax. It was great to swop stories, problems and solutions. Last weekend I started fitting my immobiliser. To ensure everything was working before I tapped into various circuits, I refitted the dash and started the engine. The fuel pump was still noisy (and to be frank pissing me off) so I decided to have one more go at quietening it down. I ordered some jaguar fuel pump mounting bobbins which arrived last week. I fitted them today .......... and WOW what a difference. Highly recommended. I then finished off fitting the immobiliser. Not going to give many details on a public blog but suffice to say it works a treat.
I took the opportunity to connect everything up as a last final check. Everything worked except the indicators. I suspected the column switch which had been away to have the stainless stalks fitted. I striped it down and gave it a clean. Hey Presto back working. Just final fettling left before the complete strip down of the body before she goes off for the paint job. I fitted the untrimmed drivers seat this weekend. I have had 4 aluminium blocks made to space the seat off the floor but stupidly only ordered enough for one seat ( hence only one seat fitted) I have fitted runners as I am hoping Sally (the wife) will drive the car once it is finished and she is somewhat smaller than me. These have made the seat quite high but I am ok with that. The seat have come with headrests which I will use for the IVA. I will then remove and fit roll bar mounted headrests. I am having the bits to make these fabricated at the moment. Below is a picture of the seat fully forward. As in most Dax, the seat is not parallel to the centre line of the car due to space. I am OK with this as long as I can get both seats to by symmetrical. Following the seats I returned to wiring.
I am truly nearly there now. I have finished the courtesy and handbrake warning lights and tidied up the spaghetti behind the dash. I think 1 more day and it will all be finished..... except all the dash wiring needs to be removed for the dash to be leather covered. Not a huge amount of progress since my last post but jobs keep getting ticked off the list. The latest parts from Tooling and Equipment have arrived, the boot ram mountings, so they have been fitted. The next batch off drawings have been dispatched to Tooling and Design;
A boot lock cover and some headrest mounting bits. I also received my metal stalks back from David Gardner, absolutely stunning. |
AuthorRichard Humbert Archives
September 2015
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