Update - Jan 30th 2021

The interior trim has now been completed and the car has been back in my workshop for a couple of weeks. I will post some final pictures in my February update.

I now have a list of jobs finishing jobs which include preparation for the IVA test, enough to keep me busy during this current Covid lockdown (Jan 2021)

Windscreen wiper arms

Location hole drilled

Here is a job I didn't expect! I popped into the garage to do a couple of easy jobs. Surely bolting on the windscreen wiper arms and blades would be a 5 minute job. After much head scratching it turned out that the arms provided needed modifications.

The first thing required was to drill out the location holes.  

Nearside arm reshaped

The arm on the nearside then needed a bit of reshaping, so out with the Dremel. 

Before

  Then both arms needed the lower bush chopping off..

After

Release 10mm nut &

 refit to desired position

I adjusted the park position of the wipers by undoing the centre bolt on the mechanism and adjusting to the desired position

I also reshaped the end of the wiper arm reversing the angle,

A 5 minute job it was not!!!

Persistent Oil Leak

Oil leaks on the external oil filter pipes and brackets have been a reoccurring problem. I have removed all the components then cleaned  and rebuilt using thread sealer on all joints. Fingers crossed!

 

Turned the engine over and blew the oil filter ring gasket!! :-(

Seemed like the obvious culprit was one or both of the oil pressure release valves. On inspection it seems that both valves are stuck forcing all the oil into the filter. The joys of badly made Chinese parts!! 

Once removed (I'm waiting for a special tool as they are stuck) the exterior of the valves will be checked over and where required hand finished the with fine wet and dry then oiled and refitted. So this job is my current "in progress"

**Update**

Fitted standard VW springs and valves, also fitted new Fram oil filter all seems well...at the moment!

Clutch Adjust

Adjusted the clutch so the movement at the pedal was about 1/2 inch

Brake Adjust

Adjusted the pedal to master cylinder to gibe me an earlier firm pedal.

Windscreen fitted and heated screen wired

The windscreen has been fitted and the wiring connected for the heated screen.

Fog Lights Latch switch

The wiring loom supplied by Chesil didn't take into account the IVA rules relating to the switching on and off of the fog lights. and as such needed some modification. 

The latest IVA revision states that the rear fog light must turn off AND STAY OFF when the headlamps are switched off. That is to say, if the headlamps are switched off then back on again whilst the fog light switch remains in the on position then the rear fog light must NOT turn back on unless the user specifically activates the rear fog light switch.

To allow for this it required “hacking into the previously wired lights and fog light circuitry and adding in a Fog Latch switch. I hate having to go back to redo a job :-(

If anyone wants my diagram on how to wire this let me know

Seat Location Plates

Set of floor plates pre paint

I decided to add additional strength to the floor area where the seas are bolted in. 

I used 4mm steel which I epoxy primed and coated with Raptor paint to match the rest of the floor

In Primer

Raptor Coated.

Plates fitted

Exhaust

Fitted the Sebring tail pipe insert from Vintage Speed

Fitted Sebring tail pipe insert

Next jobs

• Test drive then IVA Prep

Build Hours

Update June 30th 2020

A few what sound like small jobs but were quite time consuming that I have managed to complete this month

•   Finalised clipping in all the wiring
•   Final fit on main switches and instruments

Steering Column

Having polished up the indicator stalk (see earlier blog) I decided to do the same to the component that sits behind the wheel 

Original

Original

 

 

Paint removed using
180 grade

 

 

After around 4 hours and lots of grades of wet and dry, all the way down to 7000 grit, here is the 

finished result

 

The steering column has now been finally fitted and all the cables neatly fixed in place.

Steering wheel for IVA

In order to get the car through the IVA test I need to fit an original VW beetle steering wheel. Most of these are now cracked and not good, as was the one I bought off ebay. So I set about repairing it with epoxy steel and my trusty dremel, then gave it a coat of paint.

Cracked steering wheel

Dashboard

The dials and all related cables have been finally fixed into place and the speedo cable fitted to both the speedometer and the nearside wheel.

Door furniture and window winding mechanisms

The door pull, opening handle and window winder mechanisms  have been fitted. I used riv nut fasteners on the door pull to ensure a secure fixing. The wood panel shown on the picture below may or may not be used when the final door cards are made, designs for which are still very vague. I'm not planning to use any of the interior kit available from Chesil, its not that there's anything wrong with it, I just want a more custom/unique look to the car.

Seats

Another IVA requirement is the design & function of the seats. Mazda MX5 seats are the seats of choice and are used in the majority of Chesils. I have had a set of custom buckets seats made, but I can't fit these for the IVA. So I have had to find and then will need to fit seats from the MX5, then post IVA remove and refit my bucket seats, which of course don't have the same mount points! So lots more work.

I found some MX5 seats and during the month I have marked up the fixing points which will be drilled in order to do a test fit next month.

Exhaust

I'm using an exhaust set up made by Vintage Speed. Once the correct set finally arrived (long story) I had the header tubes sent out for ceramic coating (https://www.zircotec.com/)

Uncoated J tubes

 

Ceramic Coated

Rear muffler

Slosh in the petrol tank

I decided as the tank is clean and new to give it some extra protection using Rustbuster Slosh tank sealer which is tested to be Ethanol proof and will resist petrol with over well over the current and proposed new fuel standards E10 - E15. Straight forward enough, bung up all the holes, pour in and slosh around then after a little while empty out any residual. https://www.rust.co.uk/product/slosh-petrol-tank-sealer-7

Next Jobs

• Fit exhausts
• Prepare seat mounts
• Final sound proofing to cabin
• Set up steering geometry
• Fit petrol tank and all pipes
• Make panels for under front bonnet

Update May 26th 2020

Hazard switch update

One of the things I wanted to do was swop out the supplied hazard switch for a rocker switch to match the rest of the switches used in the car.

Supplied switch and intended for use rocker switch

The only way this works is to consider the Hazard Switch as selecting either "...turn signals on via the turn signal switch when ignition is on..." or "...both left and right turn signals flashing; ignition on or off."

To accomplish this, the wiring harness needed to employ two flasher units, one for the regular turn signals (supplied with Chesil harness) and an additional flasher unit for the hazard system.

The additional hazards system flasher has +12V power at all times. When the hazard switch is ON, power comes to the switch from the flasher and goes to both the left and right turn signal circuits. Lights blink at all four corners of the car.

It took me ages to figure this out, I have the wiring diagram if anyone is planning to do this.

Ancillary circuits

Heated Seats

I extended the harness provided with the heating element to allow me to fit the two control switches into the lower dash, (see photo of the lower dash later in this update). The power was provided via relays situated in the rear of the car,

Audio

The main feed for the audio amp is in place

Additional switched fuse board

I have added another fuse board into the car. Rather than extend from the fuse board on the loom and trust that the wiring capacity was ok, I decided to run a new live fused feed from the battery then used a relay to switch on the fuse board.

The new fuse board was better than the one on the loom, so much so that I chopped out the original and replaced it with a new unit to match the additional board.

Original fuse board

New fuse board using central bus bar

Nearly finished wiring in the front.

Future electric heater

There is a chance that in the future I'm going to add an electric heater to the car. I have therefore made provision both in choice of battery and by using a 90 amp alternator ( I upgraded the loom to handle the more powerful alternator and added an inline fuse from the alternator for extra protection). It seemed worth adding the necessary circuits into the car now, so in the future I just have to connect the heater. It does of course pull a fair amount of power so I have used high power relays with suitable wire with an inline fuse on the circuit. I have left out the inline fuse so its not live.

Immobiliser

I have made a bracket to install the immobiliser key fob unit, and mounted it alongside the rocker switches. (see picture below)

Electrical harness tidy and clip

Now that all the circuits are in and tested, I have gone through most of the wiring, adding sleeve and clipping securely into place. The lower dash panel which is used for thel rocker switches has been finished using a carbon fibre shrink vinyl.

Original lower dash with some switches in place

Completed lower dash with carbon fibre covering (just needs the immobiliser sensor)

Car overview

Next jobs

• Finalise clipping in all the wiring
• Final fit on main switches and instruments
• Final fit on steering column

Update April 22nd 2020

A holiday took up the first 3 weeks of the March, then had lots of other stuff to do so I decided to skip the normal end of month report for March and jump to April.

It's all about the electrics, I am much happier with spanners!!! Anyway I am making good steady progress and I have listed some of the work I have been doing. Its a good project when we are all locked up due to the Covid virus.

One thing I am doing is compiling a electrical reference book which will be essential on future maintenance.

Switches

The body shell had a preformed area suitable for mounting and hiding away some of the switches that are needed. In order to plan this I created a scale diagram of the switch positions and used this as a template to cut out the required holes.

I'm not using the hazard switch provided by Chesil, instead I'm using a matching rocker switch. I have made provision for a USB output as well as the two control for the heated seats.

The picture below shows the main switches in position, the one that is missing is the Hazard swicth, which is causing me lots of grief.

Dash

I have temporary fitted the 3 main gauges and led warning lights

The steering column has been fiited, it will need a final adustment

Indicator stalk switch

Original

The replacement parts that are available are really poor in terms of finish and as this is very visible in the car I decided to do some remedial work

After a couple of hours work

I stripped the paint, then hand polished using many grades of wet and dry right down to 7000 to get the polished mirror finish. It looks much better and wil now match other parts of the internal trim.

Electric first switch on!

My plan was to fit and test all the main electrics, before fitting the additional circuits (Oil cooler, Audio, USB, Heated seats). I got there on 10th April (other than the hazard switch). here is a video of what happened.

I then checked over all the circuits and created a list of things to fix, here is the first list

Anything in red wasn't working, boxes with no colour had not been tested.

Once I tracked down each circuit, most were just a simple fix, in fact one fix cured all the lighting and fog light circuits.

One thing to watch out for, and I have now seen this on other builders blogs are the bulbs supplied with the rear indicator lights, the wattage is too low and will not trigger the flasher circuit, thsi took me a while to track down, big thank you to Steve at Chesil who had seen the problem before.

As of 22nd April the list looks like this,

Still a problem with the hazard switch, I know its the switch as if I wire in the Chesil supplied switch all works ok, something to work on.

Video overview

I have done a walk round video to give you a look at where I am at, enjoy.

PS.......Exhaust has arrived, 

More later!