02/07/2011

STILL waiting for leather and carpets so turned my attention to few of the little jobs, so first set about making up the petrol filler pipe and neck. I managed to source a filler next from a Mitsubishi L400 which is just about the same size as the rather odd 48mm inlet to the tank. I still needed to get some flexible filler hose and I need to make a reduced from part of the L400 filler neck which is too long. Still easy enough to do in the end.

Next job fit the battery, you need to get hold of a type 038, which is the same battery they used to use on the old Mini, the original beetle battery is too wide. Right so now to connect up and check all the electrics..

Blimey everything works, so I put a gallon of Petrol in and jacked dup the front of the car to get the fuel to run through to the back end, to save turning over the engine for half an hour just to pull the petrol through !

No leaks... so now the moment of truth.. turned the ignition on, all the correct lights came on, so good so far, turned the key further, the starter motor kicks in and Bingo, the engine fires up , great when you think I have not yet setup the carbs or timing.

Result :-)

17/07/2011

At last some of the outstanding parts have arrived... seats, carpets, leather and hood. So first job was to finish the dash, first thing was to cover the dash with leather, you need to remove the windscreen for this (again), once off I laid out the leather and cut roughly to shape. Now the scary bit, after masking off the area, spray the adhesive all over the dash and with your heart in your mouth very carefully lay the leather on and smooth out from the center outwards being very careful around the 'hump'. The leather is such good quality, lovely and soft, it was easy to apply without getting any creases. Next made up the padding and applied the piping buy sticking with super glue, the screwed the pads into place.

Rather nice Job I think.

You can see I also started to fit the carpet under the dash in the foot well area, next fitted the panels around the back and the 'seat'.

Now it was time to fit the carpets and door cards, so started off with the carpets which were quite simple to fit as they are cut quite well, the tunnel doesn't fit round the handbrake very well so I need to 'adjust' this at some point. The door cards were a pain to fit as you can't fit the door capping with the cards in place , but you cant fit the capping's with the wind up windows in place, very fiddly but got there in the end. Next I just placed the seats in position to see what they looked like.

Now starting to look like a car :-)