Next set of work has all been around the back of the car, so I decided to turn it round and reverse into the garage so the boot is near the work bench. This was my next big milestone, the car made it's first move under its own power. Once the engine was up to temperature I made some gentle little rolls back and forward, the clutch seemed fine and the power steering was working OK.With no nasty noises or oil dripping anywhere, I made my first, tentative, 3 point turn - it's surprising how nerve racking this was, heart rate hasn't been this high since I explained to my wife that the £5000 for the kit might not be the only cost..
Over the last few weekends I've tackled fitting the boot, hinges & lock. Another job that took much longer than I expected.The first task is to get the boot lid fitting properly into the body. This means a fair bit of filing of the lip around the edge of the boot as it's too high. Most of the area that I needed to reduce was along the back edge. You also need to take account of the rubber seal that will be used. All in all it's a lot of fitting, filing, checking, removing and do it all again until there's a nice even fit across the body and boot lid. Then you need a centre line to work from. To do this I ran a strip of masking tape roughly down the middle of the car from front to back. Using some thread I ran a line from the front nudge bar to the rear valence, centering the thread on: The midpoint between the headlights, the middle nose vent (I have triple nose vents at the front), the centre of the screen and a midpoint between the rear fog & reverse lights - these were already centered around the midpoint between the rear lights. With the center line marked the two hinges can be measured up and placed around 230mm either side. Fitting the hinges is simply 4 holes for each and a large penny washer behind. Note - the hinges are handed but it's obvious which way round they go as they only fit the body shape one way
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| Boot hinges |
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| Boot Handle Hole |
The boot lock was a little more troublesome. Using the same centre line, find the position for the middle of the handle aligning it with the recess inside the boot lid that will house the mechanism. Usual story, drill the hole, slowly opening it up to take the handle and the locking tabs. I drilled all the way through to allow the bar from the handle to pass all the way through the latch and inside the boot lid, this is handy while you're adjusting it up.
Cut a slot in the recess inside the boot just large enough to take the lock mechanism. I ended up with the mechanism slightly out of place leaving me with a larger slot inside the boot than I had planned ( I might slim this down with some filler later). There is very little space inside the boot for the mechanism and the latch to make contact, this means the lock mechanism needs to be as far forward in the recess as it will allow and the latch as far back as possible. I filed back some of the inside of the boot lip to get a smooth fit. I then adjusted the height of the latch to ensure when in the lock position it gives a slight pull down on the boot. Oh and don't forget some grease on the moving parts.
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| Lock installed as close to the front as possible |
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| Latch Set as far to the rear as possible |
With the lock operating smoothly, I put a couple of rivnuts into the boot to fix the handle, these are small enough to be covered by the plate on the handle and I think will be more secure than the suggested self tappers. The final piece of this job was to fix the rear number plate light, there is a recess in the outside of the boot lid for this. I needed to file a little out of this to allow the light to sit centrally and square on the body.
While working on the boot I also got around fitting the fuel filler pipe. I used the standard method of a single piece of rubber fuel hose from the tank, through the wheel arch and up to the filler cap. The breather pipe follows the same path. I need to edge the hole in the wheel arch to complete this.
