After fixing the spider and sidepods I moved onto the front splitter, as this is going to support the front, and moreover everyone kept tripping over the rather extended splitter walking between shops.
Not really sure why, but for some reason, probably positioning, the rear of the splitter no longer lined up with the body, so I first of all had to trim a slither from the back of the splitter.
Here are some more pics of the bodywork on the car. This time though I had put it on the flat floor so the wheels are in the right places in the arches.
As promised I have finally uploaded a pic of the engine all complete, ignoring exhaust and wiring.
Its in the car here, and, more by luck then anything else, the orange colour of the bodywork is a reasonable match to the covers. As you can see I left small bits black, such as the filler bung, which I think look pretty snazzy. Nothing at all to do with the fact a left them behind by mistake when going to the powder coaters…
So, hopefully back to normal service on the updates. I decided to crack on with some of the bodywork. The list of jobs to do is still huge, but this is one of the jobs I have been dreading. Mainly because it takes ages and if you rush the car will look like tosh! The first stage was to get all of the body onto the car, although not attached to the chassis itself, so it can be positioned correctly. Which basically means looking at the body, particularly the wheel arches, measuring left and right and just getting it somewhere central. At this point I must say I have modified the bodywork, hopefully it will be an advantage, but obviously it may prove to be a backwards step!Now, the main piece of bodywork is the central ‘spider’, as all the other pieces hang from it. So if this is in the wrong place, ALL of it will be wrong! The rear bars obviously go through the ‘spider’ so holes had to be cut in the correct positions. I was going to try to make nice small openings so the body hugged the projections, but this proved to be quite difficult and pointless, so I cut some nice big holes with a hole saw and filed them oval.
So, I ordered a load of snap rings. I came across a bit of a problem, but it turned out to not be real. As the car is based on mini running gear, I just thought I would be able to order the snap rings from any mini dealer. However, when I spoke to them on the phone they said there were different snap rings on the outer (thicker) to the inner (thinner) ends of the shaft. Apparently if I were to use the inner ones on the outer the CV would fall apart…..! The inner ones they had massive stock of, but the outers were not made any more and I would have to get some off of some wreaked shafts. This was slightly confusing to me as the grooves in the shafts were the same both ends. I phoned jon and he said he just used the same both ends! This sounded more sensible to me, as if the snap ring thickness was so critical it would be stupid, so I just ordered all the inner ones.
So I pushed the rings onto the shafts and rammed them into the CV’s. Pushed the inners fully in, measured the position, then pulled it fully out, halved the distance and tacked the shafts. Then a quick check to ensure when on both full bump and full droop the shaft didnt bind up.
All that was left was to remove the shafts. Not the easiest thing and I had to take the huns off, and then hit the shafts out. As they were new snap rings were new they were quite tight!
So, now I just need to get some made. I will just send these welded shafts as templates. I am thinking of GKN gundrilled shafts to loose some weight. (Same as used on the 935). Just depends how pricey they are, think there is a deal to be done as we are looking to buy quite a few shafts in total, for all the CTR machines.
