Side Pipes

Had a visit from my mate Bill Holden and his twin brother Jim which was timely as I needed some help sorting out the side pipe outlets. I'd previously cut the holes in the lower wings by inserting some short lengths of plastic waste pipe in the manifold pipes and using this as a guide to line up the cuts.

My original plan was to fit the stainless escutheon plates I bought from AK, however when offering these up to the body, there was no way these were going to fit neatly due to the complex curves. So I abandoned that idea and concentrated on getting a neat finish to the outlets. This required marking up and several fits/removal of the pipes to arrive at a good shape. I've allowed a good 10mm gap all round which seems to be the norm talking to other builders.

I reckon we had each pipe on/off 4 times which is pretty hard work so thanks to the lads for their help.

The Chuckle Brothers in action!

Bonnet and Boot

Bonnet and boot fitting

Started with the boot as it looked easier. Fitted the U channel seal I bought from Woolies and offered up the boot lid. The idea is to ensure that the panel is flush on all sides an the gap is even all round. I might have been lucky as it was a pretty good fit straight away. A small amount of sanding was needed on the flange that the U channel seal sits on the lower the boot lid in one corner.
Fitting the hinges just requires marking a centre line then even spacing 9" either side. I used the traditional external hinges - some builders are fitting internal hinges - but that just seems like lots of work for little return.Note that the external hinges are handed.

The boot lock took a lot longer to fit and still needs some work. I fitted the locking hoop to the boot floor but what a faf fitting the nuts underneath - just no room to work in. The hoop has to be fitted as close to the boot lip as possible.

The next step is to cut a recess in the back of the lid to take the catch. the idea is this is supposed to fit inside the recess. Problem I have is that when fitted inside, the claw was hitting the edge of the hook  - in other words its too close of the edge of boot. At first I thought it may be the boot lid being too too proud - but no. So for now its fitted as above.

Fitting the bonnet needed a bit of patience to level off the panel by judicious sanding of the U channel flange. Then discovered that the only practical way of fitting the hinge bolts is to remove the headlights to get access.......

Next up to fit the gas struts. These come highly pressurised and immovable  so you have to release some gas using a small allen screw until the right level of pressure is achieved. The front struts need more pressure than the rear so best advice is to do bonnet first  - so if you release too much gas they will still work on the boot. - Well that was my plan, however the first one I tried - the grub screw was really stiff then wouldn't close so let all the gas out! Fortunately the other 3 were fine so now have to look at getting the faulty one replaced.

For the bonnet. its a case of fitting the triangular lower brackets to the inner wing, approximately 1" rearwards of the suspension cross member. Then measure from the bracket 11" along the wing and transferring this mark to the bonnet to fit the bonnet bracket. I fitted these with self tappers. To get the pressure right, with both struts fitted I just opened each release valve in turn for 1 second burst until I could manually compress the struts. Then fit them to the brackets and adjust the gas pressure until the right action is achieved.

The boot struts are a similar process except that the lower brackets are stainless steel plates that need to be bent to follow the inside wing profile then glued in place using P38 or similar. For both the bonnet and boot, I fitted a stainless steel flush set screw through the rain channel as an extra brace.

Inside boot  - bracket fixed with P38

Flush screw through rain channel

Wheels

Having seen a few posts on the forum around American Racing Wheels from the US, I decided these were the business so contacted Bob Lacey at Vintage Wheels.
Bob offers a number of styles however I stuck with the more traditional 427 model that has a step in the rim. There are some smooth rims (407) model, that are slightly dearer and the extra cost helped make up my mind!
Bob proved to be a great guy to deal with and has supplied a number of AK customers previously. This is handy as it means that Bob knows all the sizes and offsets needed.
All I needed to do was decide on the wheel style and the diameter. I went for 17" rims to avoid the rubber band look of the 18"wheels and to give a little more comfort on poor UK roads.
having placed the order and paid up front, it took about a month for the wheels to arrive and I think they look amazing.

The spinners are really nice - there is a threaded boss that inserts from the back of the wheel which presents a thread at the front that the spinner screws on to. There's a grub screw that prevents the spinner coming loose.

 The wheels come complete with chromed nuts and I paid extra for the 'lug covers' as our US friends call them. These are really well designed and make the wheels look like proper knock-off types.

The wheel sizes supplied by Bob were 8 x 17" front and 9.5 x 17" rears.

Tyres took a bit of research.
The AK manual suggests 215/50 17" front and 255/45 17" rears, however when visiting the AK open day, I noticed that they were fitting 225/50 fronts - which Jon confirmed.

Quite tricky finding a matched set of tyres at the differing sizes (and of a make I had heard of!) but I eventually found continental Sport Contact 5's for around £530 fitted. A quick word with the fitter made sure that due care was paid to not damaging my expensive wheels - so a shout out for F1 AutoCentre in Kidderminster for doing a great job.

All in, including import duty, VAT, tyres came to around £2600 which is about £100 less than AK can supply Image Wheels. Unfortunately, Brexit probably added £200 to my bill!.

Anyhow - here's the final effect:

Final Body Fit

I've been following the various forum threads and there seems to be a split opinion on sealing the body to the chassis. AK use a silicone sealant whereas other builders have used neoprene self adhesive strips or silentcoat sound insulation as a means of effecting a flexible joint that allows the body to be removed in future if necessary.
I spoke to AK and they said either method is OK so I opted for the neoprene strips.

I sourced 14 meters of 10mm self adhesive strip from CBS and applied it in two runs as above.  

Next I arranged for some of the lads from the local car club (Midlands Ring'ers) to call in on their way back from a meet and help lift the body on for hopefully the final time.

This entertained the neighbors with an RS5, Porche Boxster and Ferrari 360 blocking the shared drive!

The lift proved uneventful as its been on and off at least 4 times now.

So that's generated some space in the garage!

In the meantime Iv'e ordered the wheels from Vintage Wheels in the US and managed to get in just before the Brexit vandals ruined the exchange rate! Hoping these will not be too long in arriving.

Handbrake

AK Handbrake performance is pretty marginal according to the various forums. There are many accounts of folks having bad experiences at IVA. I managed to get the standard setup working reasonably effectively by spending a lot of time adjusting the various pivots and the brake shoe adjusters, however it took a mighty pull on the lever to lock up the wheels and would be difficult for the wife to operate. Now in many ways that wouldn't be a bad thing however as I'm technically building this car for her I needed a solution.
A number of guys have gone down the route of fitting electric actuators, however I didn't fancy that route as I prefer to be able to hold the car on the handbrake during hill starts which is a right pain if you have to jab buttons, plus the handbrake is very much on or off.
Now as luck would have it, AK have been working on this problem and have modified the system for new builds. Fortunately they have a kit available for retro fit for £30 excl VAT.

The new system implements a pulley wheel on the end of the actuation lever which allows the cable from the actuation lever to the handbrake lever to exert double effort, thus halving the pull needed on the handbrake.

The kit comprises  a modified handbrake cable, a couple of angled steel ferules and the pulley wheel and shoulder bolt.

This is the installed kit. The installation requires drilling a 12mm hole at an angle through the chassis plate to achieve a suitable angle for the cable to wrap around the pulley. The pulley fits into the hole on the actuating lever where the original cable pull located.. The threaded cable end  is inserted through the two angled ferules which are then clamped in place using the two nuts. This is quite clever in that it avoids the need for any welding. 

 The cable end needs to sit in a locating recess on the chassis plate. I found the easiest way to achieve this was to simply drill a small recess as above.

The net result is a much improved handbrake action with much lower effort. Well worth the cost.

Getting ready for final body fitting

After the relative success of getting the engine running I thought it would be a good idea to do another test fit of the body. Bear in mind up to now I've not had the body on with the engine in situ. I also had a nagging doubt that the bonnet would close over the air cleaner.

So ripped out all the temporary wiring that took me so long to work out, removed the side pipes (which took a bit of persuasion) and enlisted the neighbors to help me and my mate, Bill Holden, to lift the body on. This turned out a bit trickier with the motor in and the technique seems to be slightly higher at the back to ease the footwells past the exhaust manifolds.

And here it is:

header tank mounted too high - adjusted the support rails to drop below the bonnet line

Couldn't resist fitting the headlamps.

All bolted down so next job is to start cutting the holes for the side exhaust.

A bit of fine tuning

Well after the relative success of first engine fire I set about trying to get the engine running smoothly before making it all harder with the body on.

I bought a new timing light - this time one of the more advanced type that allows you to program in the advance required. Its so much easier than trying to work out where 15 degrees advance is with this gadget rather than guessing some point off the end of the pulley gauge. The unit I got also has a digital rev counter which comes in handy when setting the idle speed.

When I got the engine running originally, I managed to get the idle speed down to about 850 rpm as recommended, however I noticed there was fuel dripping from the venturi boosters which didn't seem right. Several hours of research later and the main reason appeared to be excess fuel pressure. Apparently these Edelbrock carb's don't like more than 6.5 psi. I'm running a Carter electric pump rated at 6psi so that shouldn't have been an issue.  Just to check things out I added yet another gadget to the portfolio with a Draper Vacuum gauge which also serves as a fuel pressure tester. This measured the Carter output at 5.5psi so well within the spec for the carb.

A bit more research suggested the idle circuit could be the culprit. If its not feeding the system suitably to hold an idle, you have to set the idle screw such that the throttle plates are open more than necessary, thus using the primary boosters to supply idle fuel. When I checked out my setup, the throttle plates were definitely open more than you would expect. So, approach I took was to disassemble the carb and used an airline to blow out all jets and passages including the idle mixture threads. While I was at it, I dismantled all the choke bits as they are completely unnecessary on these engines and just get in the way.
Anyhow, put is all back together and started her up - and good news - managed to set the idle down to 850 with the throttle pretty much closed and no drips from the boosters! Happy days!

After this success, I hooked up the vacuum gauge and measured the vacuum at 15"Hg which appears to be ballpark for a medium tuned engine.I played around with the idle mixture screws as per the carb manual until engine was running smoothly with no stumbling.

I think there's more fiddling to do with this setup in future but I reckon I now have a good base.