My rear end and a speedo test

Well I gave an update yesterday but kinda skimped on the photos and video, so today I took my camera down and so as to shoot as much multimedia as blogspot will let me upload (almost).

I started today focusing on the rear end more specifically the tail lights and one of the top body panels. I had finished last night by putting on the rear wheel covers on and this morning the next obvious step was to fit the last two tail light clusters. I cut the holes out of the GFRP with a dremel, and although I had seen that in some kitcar magazines people had opted to drill or saw these holes out, the dremel worked a dream. In fact I would say that if you are doing the same thing then invest in one, it makes life so much easier and makes it almost impossible to crack the gel coat layer. With the Holes cut I simply held the light boxes in place with a few spots of glue gun on the outside and with them positioned as desired put a full bead around them under the wheel arch. Then wired them up and tested.

I got a shock (not literally) when I found one of the wires was not working but it simply turned out to be a blown fuse. Stupidly, I only discovered this having tried about 3 different bulbs and traced the wire half way back through the car looking for a brake.

The next piece fabricated was the top left boot panel and there is not much to say about that, all went in fine. I did manage to damage the passenger seat ever so slightly when drilling a hole but it was just where the side of the drill chuck rubbed on it. A bit of a pain though.

I thought I would include some pics of how it looks at the moment as I have not done so in a while so here is front back left and right views of it in its current state. You will notice we now have a silencer!!

Finally today I managed to attach the speedo cable. This was a complete b**ch of a job as the cable attaches to the gearbox at right angles to it, right underneath where the gearstick is. The space to work in the drive channel is so small that I almost crippled myself contorting my hand into a position allowing me access. However I did get it done. The other end required a different attachment than the sierra's in order to attach to my new speedo. I did not want to buy a new cable or a converter. So I used what I thought was a fairly novel idea, which was to attach the cable terminator to the thread on the speedo by moulding polymorph around it. This is a smart material, specifically a low melting point thermo polymer that becomes workable at about 80 deg C and sets quite hard as it cools. Its unlike a glue as it does not have any real adhesive properties at these temperatures but it does take to the relief of the two parts very well, basically making a custom connector. At this point I needed to test it and what better to do so than a quick drive up and down the road.

It worked and I managed to make it up to 40mph as you can see on the dash if you look closely and don’t tell anyone. Rev counter is also working. The bottom three dials I am not so sure about at the moment, oil pressure is playing up and there is not enough fuel in the tank to check that one, as for water temp I am too scared to run it long enough to check that one.

Keep checking in for more progress updates.