Rebuilding an entire car is a big job.....
I blindly started down this road not really understanding how much work I was in for - as once you complete one component to a high standard, the rest needs to follow suit. I'm sure this is not unusual and many others have had the same issue, but if I could cut out "re work" I would be done by now.
You see, we are all good at certain aspects of a rebuild, but not everything. So the things that don't come naturally take extra time/effort or a heap of "rework" to get right.
For example: my nice new Electric Life window actuators. I purchased them as well as the matching wiring looms and chrome switches to make things easier. No such luck. I spent 2 days or more (that means more than 2 weekends) ferreting out a bug that had me truly baffled for a while.
The wiring diagram is nice and simple, you splice the left-hand and right-hand looms together by splicing together just two (same coloured) wires. Easy right? You then run the two pairs of already bundled (blue and black) wires to each motor. Lastly, you connect the red power wire to a fused battery + source and ground the (very obvious) single black earth lead. Wrong! If anyone gets the following symptoms - this may be your problem.
My gremlin was that the passenger side worked fine from either the drivers side or passenger switch, and the drivers side would wind down ok but would blow the power fuse when I try and switch the window "up". If I reversed the wires to the motor the window wound up ok - so the motor is fine. Bad switch I think (even though the switch pins out ok when testing via an Ohm-meter) so I get another, but still the same problem! After much cursing and 20+ blown fuses later, it turns out the earth in the loom went to the wrong terminal that plugs into the drivers side switch. There are 3 black wires in the loom you see (1 earth and 1 for each motor), and somehow at manufacture the black earth wire got swapped with a black motor wire. Easily fixed of course (once diagnosed) by pulling the loom end apart and swapping the two offending black wires at the terminal - but what a complete waste of time. And this is just one example along this journey, it was never going to be easy.
A major recent advance was that I managed to book a visit from my vehicle engineer to do an inspection. It was all good and he found a few items to fix or otherwise look out for. Nothing major thankfully. What I do have to do is relocate my brake biasing valve to "outside" the cabin. This is a compliance rule apparently. Not a hard fix, but fiddly none the less.
Other than that, I just need to ensure I have the mandatory minimum 10mm clearance all around the motor and ancillaries. This includes the headers to steering linkages, dry-sump pump to engine bay, rear of the heads to firewall, exhaust pipes to fuel tank and diff', etc, etc.
I have complete control over this so all good there.
My next inspection will be to have the car go over the pits for its final "exam". This is where all those clearances are checked, the brakes are put thru their paces (they run the car quite hard apparently), noise is checked to be 96Db or below at 3500 RPM, and so on.
Apart from the specific engineering items mentioned above that I need to manage, I've also been able to complete the rear seat area such that I could re-install the rear glass and stainless trim. You really do need to get the complete rear interior finished before putting that window back in - as access is so much easier when it is out. The trickiest bit? Positioning the inner fastback panelling such that any holes drilled into them would line up correctly with my lap/sash seatbelt fastening bolts. The obvious tip is to drill any initial hole very small and gradually expand it as you test fit several times.
Righto - here are some photos that help describe all of the above..........
Starting on re-trimming the rear seats in matching leather.
Test fitting the completed rear seats. You can also see the sound & heat shielding I've installed.
Below are the mounting plates for the shoulder pivot of the rear passenger lap/sash belts.
These babies aren't going anywhere.
And here is how it all looks with the seats, seat belts, and interior panels installed.
I will tighten up the lower seat leather trimming to remove those small wrinkles that you can see in the middle.
And this is how the rear parcel area looks now. Despite the slightly tubbed wheel wells, all the standard seats, trap-door and interior panels remain in place and functional.
In regards to making sure I have all my clearances implemented correctly, this photo gives some idea as to what needs to be done to get a 3" exhaust around a coil-over rear axle setup and make it around the petrol tank in order to exit out thru the standard rear valence. Heaps of work required in all areas!
The newly re-installed original rear window. This make a big difference to the look of the car.
And a photo of the car outside of the car-port. Starting to get there.
Current activity is to finish off the console, dash, and gauge cluster. This photo gives an idea of where things are at.
All the gauges have been in and tested. I have only removed them to finish the aluminium metal-work needed around the cluster itself. I am also fabricating a glove-box and mounting the heater core.
All this will be in the next post.
