2hr
 

Being New Years day very little constructive got done other than painting of the air filter canister, cleaning the disc brakes and fitting the wheels , checking tyre pressures.

Preparation to Transport to Nostalgia

This was a full day. Starting with finding that the trolley jack which has served faithfully through the building and running of the Westfield and the building of the Classic 120 has expired, with no time to get it repaired I bought a new one. At £37.50 from Halfords it would probably have cost more ot get it  repaired anyway.  The new jack worked well, straight out of the box, and I soon had the car off the axel stand and  down on it's wheels.  I torque tightened the wheel nuts to 61 nm. I filled the engine with oil. The rest of the morning went in various tidying up jobs.

This afternoon I picked up the Trailer from Sterling Garages in Newbury. A Brian James tilt bed trailer in pretty good nick. Hire at £50 +vat per day is very reasonable and includes straps to anchor the vehicle down.  The only difficulty with getting the trailer home was negotiating the parked vehicles in the industrial estate. Once home Greg, my son in law, and it got the car on to the trailer. It was a fairly easy job using the trailer winch and the tilt bed.  In the absence of towing eyes I attached the winch to an old seat belt tied around the front chassis member. With Greg  on the winch and me steering it was an easy matter.  After supper the rest of the evening was spent find out how to strap the car down and cover it with a tarpaulin because the weather forecast is not good for tomorrow.  Last job of the day was to gather together all the bits I had not fitted such as door sills, scuttle closing panel , fuel interjection air flow meter , air filter and pipe work, wing and interior mirrors and put them in a box.

Nostalgia & Finished colour Scheme.

The weather was as forecast dull, windy and occasional showers.  We connected up the trailer and set off just after 9:00 am  the Journey was uneventful. Just a couple of stops to tighten up the straps and make sure the tarpaulin was secure.  We finally arrived at Nostalgias new premises  about  12:30 p.m.  The New premises are a marked step up from the old ones at Riverside. Much lighter, more space, cleaner and presentable.  We discussed the outstanding jobs and settled on the finished colour.  Black with Sahara  (Sandy ) leather upholstery and fawn carpet.  That done it was time to leave. I'll get the estimate of the cost in a few days.  We got back around 4:30 exhilarated and looking forward to the summer.
 

7hrs

The estimate arrived from Nostalgia for finishing the car on  Saturday morning.   The  intake of breath that followed the opening could be heard miles away.   I took some time to study it  and there were clearly things that I could and may be should have done rather than leave then for Nostalgia to do.  All was not gloom and doom and I could not disagree with the final figure.   However it did force a reality check. Having thought it over I called Nostalgia on Monday  and agreed with them the items that  I would carry out  to reduce the bill.   Nostalgia also agreed that I could do the work at their premises and avoid having to move the car backwards and forwards between them and home.

I ended up the day discussing the fitting of the air flow meter, air filter and associated pipe work.  I left a group of Nostalgia Staff scratching their heads and trying to work it out. I will return nest week to complete the job.
 

6hrs

Bodywork

Air flow Meter Fitting  (Fuel Injection)

Two weeks have elapsed since my last visit to Nostalgia. Last weeks planned trip was aborted because of the high winds and bad weather.  it was interesting to see what progress had been made in the mean time.  Chris has reset the LH door to lower the rear of the door and reduce the gap at the front. This has made a big difference. While they were working on the door they found that I had set the "B" Post too far inboard and pulled it outwards to adjust and improve the line longitudinal line between the door and the rear wing.  All of his work meant that the door lock needed repositioning and adjusting such that it locks on the 2nd of two clicks when closed.  Chris showed me that I have a similar problem on the RH door in that it will only close one click. and the longitudinal line is "V" shaped because the "B" post is too far in. Because these finish lines are important and I want the best possible fit I have agreed that Nostalgia will correct these problems rather than do it myself,  Chris has also done some reshaping of the top LHS of the body shell above the "B" Post so that the profile agrees with the rear of the door.   It also looks as though they have done some work on profiling the scuttle where the Windscreen fits.  The bonnet has been removed and sent back to the fibre glass fabricator, they are going to remove the strengthening bar at the back of the bonnet and fit a shorter one.  Put the bonnet back in the mould to push the side in and improve the contour so that it matches the scuttle.  Chris was continuing to work on the boot lid and rear body today  He has  adjusted the fit of the boot lid by thinning down the GRP at the front and straightening the line of the boot lid across the body.  This enabled the boot lid to be pushed further forward to improve the contour at the back . This also meant that the boot lock had to be adjusted.  Chris has spent most of today filling and profiling the boot lid and rear wings. Gapping the boot lid to the boot well opening.  By the time I left it was looking pretty good.    

I spent the day fitting the air flow meter.  I got the build manual out and gathered together the bracket I had made according to the drawings in the manual .the air flow meter, protective cover,  air filter canister and associated pipe work.  We all had a design discussion on how it should fit and this together with looking at the prototype 120 (which was mounted slightly differently) lead us to the conclusion that we needed to make some new brackets . the problem seemed to be caused by the anti-vibration mounts . The original brackets in the manual appeared to be too short once the AV mounts were fitted.  I made some new brackets from 20mm x 3mm stainless steel. Referring to the build manual fig 3-31 the twisted bracket was extended by  30mm  to 150 mm. the twist was inserted in it from the half way pint (75mm) to about 25- 30mm from the end.  This was to ensure that the bracket would not foul the electrical connection. The "L" shaped bracket was extended by 25mm vertically, the other dimensions remain the same.   The AV mounts were fitted by replacing the top rear mounting bolt with one AV mount and attaching he twisted bracket to it.  It was necessary to put some packing washers under the AV mount to make sure the electrical connection could be fitted and would not foul the bracket.  The seconds AV mount is mounted to the front bottom mounting hole (on the portion of the bracket that was modified by bending it flat ) pointing downwards. The L shaped bracket connects ot the bottom of the AV mount .  The top of the "L" shaped bracket and  forward end of the twisted bracket  line up in a single hole to mount to the inner wing valance.  The brackets made and the holes did line up I worked with Matt to fit he meter. We removed the rear closing panel the top RH corner of this panel needs to be modified to allow for the fitting of the air flow meter and the protective cover.  With he panel out of he way we fitted the pipe work and elbow joint to the throttle body and then  joined the air flow meter to the elbow.  you need to connection the pipe work to help support the air flow meter  determine the position of  the supporting bracket and where to drill the wing valence.  We marked the position, and drilled a 6mm hole.  With the meter now in place we  paused to work out where to fit the Air filer can.  The best place to fit is as high up as possible such that it is central. fore and aft, above the suspension mounting post.  In this position it cannot be touched by the road wheels when turning. I had retained the air filter mounting bracket  from the XJ6 and this, slightly, modified by flattening the base proved to be ideal.  We offered up the canister and bracket and marked their position of the wing valence. We found it necessary to slightly lower the mounting bracket position because the top mounting hole was too close to the edge of the metal side panel.  We fitted the canister and checked there was plenty of clearance between it and the road wheel.  We did some measurements to determine how much to cut from the rear closing panel. Approximately 9" down from the top  and 7" from the inboard. We cut this out and refitted the rear closing panel. At this point Matt took over the fitting of the cover. We had worked out the  cover  also bolted to the bottom of the front AV mount. Matt offered up the cover and marked the position for the hole.  We put seal edging strip along the edges of the cut out in the rear closing panel we had just made. This acted a lower support for the cover when it was bolted in place.   We still had a gap above the cover between it and the top of the wing.  Rather than make a new "taller" cover to fill the gap mat made a filler  from aluminium alloy, contoured to the shape of the wing and  overlapping the cover at the bottom.  The top contour was fitted with a seal and offered up under the wing as a tight fit. then pop riveted in place. The whole thing makes a very firm structure to support the air flow meter whilst keeping the dirt out. I am left with finding out how best to connect the air flow meter to the air filter and the air filter to the ram inlet pipe before my next trip to Nostalgia.
 

Total Number of Hours this Month = 15 hrs

Total Number of hours to date = 

2031.0 hrs