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(Continued from page 16)
would have made the chassis beam test a bit better as well. I fitted the newly formed fuel filler and cut out small windows to allow for the headlight mounting brackets to fit to the chassis at the front.
The springs arrived and Ben, my son, and I fitted them to see how they look. Absolutely perfect. The load length is 190mm and the rate stiffness is now about right. The adjustable rate shocks allow for the perfect amount of stiffness to be added to the spring rate. With no chock affect the spring has good movement (a bit on the light side) and with the shocks adjusted to about 30% the movement is firm.
That brings me to about the end of March. I've got one week left but plan to do very little to the car for the rest of the month. Come the 27th I will be on holiday and plan to take the family out of Weipa for 6 weeks.
April 2000
I'm will be on holidays from March the 27th until May the 19th. See you all on my return. The car is now 100% mechanically finished and the work left is purely paneling and lights. If anyone has any questions please send me an e-mail and I'II try to get back to you within 24hrs. Cheers.
May 2000
After about a 7-week break I am ready to start work on the last phase of the car. But before I did I started up the little Nissan engine and moved it bearings and off it's resting tire spots, also to get a feel for it again.
Getting the body panels fitted and finishing of the external fixtures is the last block of work and I expect it will take me 2 months to do if I don't get too many interruptions. After only one day back at work I was sent off to Tassie for a week so the car suffered again. At least the little time I have had has produces some progress. The Scuttle is now completely finished and the molding I made for the Nissan dash has been glassed in place. The passenger side panel in complete and I have decided to leave the glove compartment until I get the car on the road.
I have modified the fuel filler again and am now filling the tank from the top of the rear top panel instead of the side quarter panel. I found I needed to raise the rear guards to get a nice profile line with the top of the tyre and this left me with just too little space for the filler. So I glassed up the whole and moved it.
With all of the mechanical parts finished I decided it was time to fit the rear aluminum panel between the cockpit and the fuel tank. This took me about 3 hours. Out came the seats so that I could pre drilled all the pop rivet holes and fastened it in place with a bed of marine grade silicon adhesive.
I just heard I would be part of a group working on some new work over the next 3 months and will away form home for most of that time. Apart from the obvious disappointment of being away form family, progress on the car will suffer a serious set back and I am not very happy about the whole thing.
June 2000
I got about 2 weeks of broken time on the car this month. The paneling work is still the main focus of my time and the scuttle/dash is taking up most of it. The scuttle is now finished and has been sent off to the motor trimmer in Cairns. The dash needs to be padded to satisfy our friendly ADR's. I expect it back during the first week of July. In the mean time I've been filling and fairing the rest of the panels and guards. The nose cone and guards are finished so the rear quarter panels are next. They are a bit more complicated because I will be glassing them together with the back section into a single bucket type fitting and fairing the whole lot as a single panel rather than three pieces. Each has been faired individually and is now being set as a single unit.
I've spoken to my engineer and we are looking at the end of the first week of August for the big weekend otherwise it will be at the end of August. Testing, testing more testing and lots of paperwork. At the end of it I hope will be the compliance I've been working towards.
I've made a final short list of things left outstanding and have grouped them into mechanical, body, electrical, chassis and safety. All I've got to do is stay in town and get the work done.
I am having trouble deciding on the windscreen wiper position and wiping action. I've read the code of practice and the ADR but still no wiser for it. I will have a look at how other cars of this type have solved the wiping area issue and follow suit. The problem is with the shortened wiper blade with cars with very vertical type windscreens. If you have a long sloping screen you can get better wipe coverage buy having longer blades yet the screen width remains the same. Where a short screen is used you have trouble positioning the wiper to comfortably satisfy the ADR. However, there is a way, I just haven't found it yet. As soon and the scuttle gets back, the wipers and the windscreen frame are the two issues to resolve. Hopefully I will have the other panels and guards painted and fitted by then so the last thing to fit will be the scuttle.
I haven't taken any photos for a while so perhaps I'll do that as well.
July 2000
I've ordered my spare wheel, new fuel filler pipe that is "ULP ADR compliant", 21.3 mm ID and have decided to change my seat belts for a set of 4 point harness type. For the new belts I have added two new anchor point behind the seats and one to replace (Continued on page 18)
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