Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman Posted January 10, 2012 Author Share Posted January 10, 2012 The "hatch" access panel (to the back of the DL1 data logger and Dash2 is staying, though I want to neaten up how the aluminium cover plate fixes in place. But as you can see, there are a number of holes and fixing points for wiring, catch tanks etc that the cars picked up over the years, not to mention the mounting points for the aeroscreen and mirrors. All would need dealing with, as having done quite a bit to the car, this was definitely a "budget" mod and a new scuttle is surprisingly dear [/tightwad] As you can see, once all the fittings had been removed, there were a surprising amount of holes to deal with The next step was the messy bit, unfortunately because of this, I used an old digital compact to record the steps, not realising it was trashing the compact flash card it was saving too as it went Essentially though, after temporarily reinforcing the scuttle above the steering column cut out all the bolt/rivet holes were covered over from inside the scuttle with three layers of fresh chopped strand mat, and the holes then filled proud of the surface with fresh gel coat. (I found it more successful this way round on small holes, shrinkage of the gel coat was much less of an issue) The two larger round holes, (for the battery cut out switch cables) and the larger slotted hole on the bottom edge near the access "hatch" were done differently; with these, I made up aluminium cover plates, and after giving them three coats of wax as a release agent, clamped them over the holes - from the engine bay side. They were then gel coated and given the CSM treatment from inside the scuttle. Once that had been done, I cut three lengths of 15 x 5 mm aluminium strip to fit around the top three sides of the access hatch. This was fibreglassed in place from the inside, and then drilled out through the original scuttles holes and tapped so that the existing cover would now screw back with dome headed Allen bolts. Much neater, and more importantly, gives a better seal should rain get down the bonnet/scuttle joint. The whole scuttle was then heavily wet and dried - starting with a 240 grit in places to get rid of the worst of six years life. And finally machine polished back to shiny glory! Look closely and you can see the slight colour variation in the black gel coat, but from a normal distance I'm pleased it turned out as well as it did, I was having my doubts by the half way stage! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XTR2Turbo Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 Stop stop - My MOJO is close to bursting :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman Posted January 10, 2012 Author Share Posted January 10, 2012 While the scuttle was off, there were a few more jobs I wanted to do. The wiring needed a bit of a tidy again - especially after digging out the wiper/washer related connections, (oh, how close i came to chopping those out when I built the car ) The factory also seems to have come up with a much neater way of mounting the ecu since i took the photos of cars "in-build" when I ordered my kit. So I wanted to add the hinged aluminium plate for the ecu, relays and it would also give me somewhere to fit the accessory power socket. (I previously couldn't bring myself to cut a big hole for it in Micks masterpiece of carbon fibre). I already had a piece of sheet alloy the perfect size, so having decided where all the bits had to go, it just needed drilling for the mounting bolts and a 20mm hole cutting for the power socket. Once drilled, I didn't like the idea of a couple of self tappers holding it on to the scuttle rail, so I fitted a Dzus fastener. (And riveted on a cable tie base, to give good solid support to the plug end of the engine loom). Having read about the Captain's dashboard exploits, I'd already managed to pick up a crashpad (that would need modifying and recovering), and by way of practice, had redone the kick strips and dug my old carper/tub finisher strip out of the oft and recovered that. So now, the naked alloy panel in the passenger foot-well looked wrong. Out with the Captain's patent high strength contact adhesive - fortunately, stocked by Martrim and some foam padding and black vinyl. All it needed then was the ecu etc fitting. Plate complete, and fitted. It then was back to the scuttle free car, I spent a weekend armed with plenty of tiewraps and snips, removing redundant sensor wires - I fitted a direct interface lead between the Dash2/DL1 and ecu, so didn't need all secondary the water temp, tps, lambda sensor wires that had gone direct to the DL1. Re-routing the engine wiring harness and battery master cut from across the scuttle top to the transmission tunnel and generally, neatening things up a bit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman Posted January 10, 2012 Author Share Posted January 10, 2012 Poor weather for the next few weekends meant that the scuttle rebuild and its fitting back on to the car mostly took place in the evenings, so I didn't really get much of a chance to take photos. But I celebrated having a freshly drivable WINDSCREENED car by a hop over to Conway for a site meeting one Saturday morning, with a return trip that took in the Evo Triangle, Horse Shoe Pass, late lunch at the Ponderossa cafe, (actually above the cloud layer ) and a quick call in at Demon Tweaks on the way home. A fantastic Saturday, and absolutely loved the car with a screen on yes, i know all about the airbrake side of it, but frankly its one of the "silly power", (for the road) cars anyway, so it's not as significant as i guess it may be for other cars. (Ultimately, I admit, I would like to make it more interchangeable though) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lippydave Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 Nice thread Dave, helping to while away some server downtime at work.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman Posted January 10, 2012 Author Share Posted January 10, 2012 Now the scuttle and screen were on the car, i could make a start on the crash pad. Now, i probably need to explain a bit first. (Forgive the rambling, I'll try not to turn into XI***, promise ) The standard crashpad for my style bodywork is a narrow strip that goes completely around the cockpit side of the scuttle, overlapping the dash, but only going half way or so towards the windscreen. I've never liked this arrangement, I always preferred the one for the older style bodywork, that ran right up to the screen and had more of a pronounced "roll" where it wraps around onto the dash. This one doesn't go all the way down to meet the kick strips, but I can live with that. It also has the advantage, that going right up to the screen, it would hide where, to fit the pedestal rear view mirror, I'd had to Dremmel the scuttle top flat near the screen vent - something extremely difficult to repair cosmetically. Trouble is, it's not designed to fit my, slightly wider at the top, scuttle. Fortunately, the one I'd picked up was cheap as it had been drilled for wingmirrors etc, so I didn't mind experimenting. Boy, is it a complicated thing to trim though, so first off, lots of picks of how it had been done. (I won't bore you with them all ) This is basically what it looked like from the back though. While this is the more exaggerated "roll" It's also slotted to clear the demister vents, and angled where it runs almost up to the screen uprights. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman Posted January 10, 2012 Author Share Posted January 10, 2012 Nice thread Dave, helping to while away some server downtime at work.... Its called avoidance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterm135 Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 Good thread, but its giving me too many ideas, already added to my to do list ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman Posted January 10, 2012 Author Share Posted January 10, 2012 Stripping it completely back to GRP was just a foul sticky, messy job, but once done, I had a shell to work with. I then had one of those chicken and egg moments, it needed altering in at least four places at once to assess the fit in any one of them! i started by a bit at a time trimming where it butted up to the screen uprights. You can also see where it had existing holes for press studs and the wing mirrors. These were glassed over, though as the whole thing would be trimmed, it was just a resin and mat operation. (Though as I needed strength but couldn't make the shell too much thicker, most of the grp work has used woven mat, not CSM) You can see from this shot, how close to the mirror mount holes the trimming needed to be. In the final stages, it actually would have broken through the first screw holes if they hadn't been solidly filled. Because I'm using the Race Technology Dash2 the Pronounce "roll" effect would have clipped the raised top edge of the Dash, so the shell needed a bit more trimming there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman Posted January 10, 2012 Author Share Posted January 10, 2012 Having got to the stage where the shell of the crash pad actually "fit" very roughly, and with a bit of distortion on the scuttle, I could see how it would need modifying for it's final fit. In the end I decided that the simplest and neatest looking way would be to literally chop it in half and widen it by about 18mm. Having it in two pieces would also let me fit it round the uprights more straightforwardly. And the same time, now I could hold it properly in place on the car, the "roll" section above the Dash2 looked wrong - it needed to curve up to follow the line of the Dash2 like a "proper car" would So after chopping it in half, I found some hose that roughly matched the inner diameter of the "roll" And started cutting a slot for it to poke through You can also see to the left of the chopped back edge for the Dash2 a trimmed back section to clear the switches that run along the line of the steering wheel to the left of the dash2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman Posted January 10, 2012 Author Share Posted January 10, 2012 The next step, was to hot melt glue the length as silicone hose in to the slot to act as a former for the grp. After the usual waxing up, it then got three layers of woven mat, which were overlapped a good distance out on to the solid grp shell. Once cured, and trimmed the two halves were test fitted back on the car, and after a bit of indecision about the best way to re-join them, in the end i settled on clamping both halves to a length of angle iron with waxed card behind to support the mat as it bridged the gap. After it had set, it was simply flipped the other way up, and the same process repeated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman Posted January 10, 2012 Author Share Posted January 10, 2012 (edited) Woops, missed the last pic! The aluminium strip and clothes pegs get three layers of wax, and can then be used to clamp the still wet mat into place to follow the tight curves of the return edge. The wax stops them sticking and they're easy to remove once the whole thing has gone green. Edited January 15, 2012 by Gadgetman Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KugaWestie Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 This is some brave stuff! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman Posted January 10, 2012 Author Share Posted January 10, 2012 On to the home straight for this part now I needed to leave the shell a good week or so now to cure, as it would, even still clamped on to the angle iron need quite a bit of sanding and filling in order to blend the new curves and hide any edges of mat - I deliberately made each successive woven mat patch half an inch or so smaller all round than the last where they would be sitting on top of existing fibreglass. Fortunately, the woven mat is really nice to work like this and with a little bondo (Isopon P38) filler, which is essentially a Pollyester filler ideal for grp, the new and old bits were soon blended together. I also decided while I was at this stage, that while I haven't got a heater at the moment, It's not impossible in the future I am getting old It would make sense to add the third demister slot so as to match my ZK style three slot scuttle. You can see where it's just been cut in the shot above. And that was it for the grp work, the trimming that I'd been dreading for so long was now upon me. Except, I bottled it a little bit, having only done simple shapes so far. I decided as I'd got loads of vinyl, (and I was still trying to find suitable 3mm thick foam padding) to have a go at something part way between the two in complexity! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman Posted January 10, 2012 Author Share Posted January 10, 2012 This is some brave stuff! No guts, no glory, it's the wide bodied way Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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