Cage Finished

First off, if you haven't noticed, we finally released the first issue of Vdubber magazine, thanks for all of your kind words, and support, it looks like it's a success. A big thanks to all of the contributers and also Melle Mel for typesetting the whole mag.

I picked up the oval this week as the cage has now been finished off. We lifted the body off today, and I stripped the front beam off and trial fited the new narrowed beam up. I had to keep the car rolling as i am going to a scrutineers meeting tomorrow and need to be able to get the car on and off of a trailer, so I temporarily fitted the new drums up too, but all of this will need to come off to be able to finish the pan.

Next stage is to finish the welding off on the pan - mostly the rear of the new pan halves and the IRS brackets, and run the fuel and oil lines through the tunnel, before giving the pan a quick paint. Then I need to figure out the gearbox / engine mountings and fix up the gearbox selector shaft. I have got a repro hurst shifter from the states, but I need to modify the gate to allow selection of 5th gear. There's also a scatter shield to fabricate too.

My shipment of goodies finally arrived from CB performance, so I now have the plenums for the turbo induction, as well as lots of other stuff. I also received my el cheapo tacho and guages from ebay too. I just need to fabricate up a tee piece to join the throttle body to the plenums and the induction is sorted. For the present I will run without an intercooler, and see what happens.

I've been deliving in to the EFI system and figuring out what i need to get it all running. All I'm missing are some injectors and a MAP sensor, which i will sort out next week. I confirmed that the two lambda sensors I have are both good to use, and that the water temp sender will work fine as an oil temp sender instead. I have drafted up teh wiring diagram and just need to go buy the wire and switches to make up the loom. not a big job, but one that needs to be  done right.

Also sourced a better steering wheel as the one I had was cracked around the centre boss, and another boot (engine) lid so that I can cut a hole in it to allow the Porsche 911 fan setup to be used. I decided that this was the simplest, cheapest and quickest solution. It might not look quite right but at this stage I need to save every little bit of time that I can. I'm aiming at cuting a hole in it so that the fan doesn't foul it, and then adding an air scoop for additional cooling and induction to cover the hole. Fortunately the class that I am running in allows bonnect scoops, and spoilers. I didn't really want to fit a spoiler, as I wanted to leave the car relatively stock, bodywise, but I may have an issue with high speed stability, so at the moment I am a little undecided about this. I might make up one up, but not fit it so that I can trial it out whilst we are there.

This week i aim at getting the pan completely finished off, including all running gear - suspension, brakes, steering, gearbox mounted and engine installed. This only really amounts to assembly as i have purchased all new components. I would like to be in a position where I can start fabricating the headers at the end of the week. If I can achieve this, then I should be on track to firing up the engine the following week. My big job for Monday is to get the drive shafts underway, as these are probably the last item to have outsourced.

As Stevie Miller said... "Time keeps on ticking"