IVA compliance.. slight redesign of the backend

The kit itself (exterior wise) although appears to meet a lot of the requirements that I can check at the moment without having it infront of me but does have a few areas which do not meet them. Areas I can tell without the kit in front of me are;

* Reversing lights to close to brake lights
* Exhaust edges too sharp
* No Fog light

So I have been messing around in photoshop in a very basic fashion to re-design the rear very slightly to make sure I can do what I need to. I can only estimate measurements of where lights are but everything looks fine on that front.

Firstly its now a pair of rear / stopping lights, This kept the backend looking very similar as I liked the look before. For the IVA it states fog and reversing lights cant be within a 100mm of a stopping light...hence goodbye reversing lights.

I think the solution below of having two lights of a smaller size within the centre area looks quite good. One fog / one reversing light.

The exhaust I've just opened up in to a single exit either side which will be turned back on itself so no sharp edges are on show. I haven't played too much with the photoshop of the image as other changes are down to my preference than meeting requirements.

Engine wise its still being rebuilt at the moment and ill put a post up as things progress and is worth posting.

On the down side I did find the cat after the turbo had destroyed itself and was being held up by the lamba sensor...I'm sure that would of been hampering performance before!

Update on Current Work

Well I decided to go a bit further on the engine cleaning then had planned and the block in the end was basically cleared of brackets etc... and painted.

At least it should be very clean when being put in the car!


** TIP **
On the other side of this block are two hoses that are nicknamed say hello to

The Hose from hell

The Hose from hell On Earth

I strongly suggest whilst the engine is apart you change them so you never have to once everything is back together. These hose's make MR2 owners cry when they leak, I'm sure its not as bad on a kitcar..but why take the risk of having the hassle.

The smaller one comes with clips and is about £15 the other about £30....money well spent!

Interior Choices...

The Interior of the car is a long way away at this point but as I mentioned at the beginning of this blog, the advantage of a long build is getting some parts cheaper if you're patient. One of them is bucket seats and relevant parts. The seats I've picked up look like new and were barely used. An easy way to tell other than wear marks whether seats have been used a lot is to feel the bolsters, does the foam / padding feel squashed? does it spring back?

As well as that, these seats came with subframes (adjustable) I can already see for IVA it will need some rubber protection on the corners of it, but that is nothing major. I may need to also adjust the mounts if the seats are two high within the car. As well as that these chairs came with E marked 4 point harnesses which I was after as well.

Long term once through IVA and I can do what I want to the interior I expect to do some minor colour coding as I change the interior to how I want it, this will probably include new bucket seats with the relevant colour and stitching.

Few more parts refurbished

Cleaned up and then sprayed more parts below with high temp paint. Still using gunk, a toothbrush and some tooth picks to remove the large parts of dirt and oil.

I'm going to replace all vacuum hoses and water pipe hoses as they are very tough and feel brittle to me, so once I have had the engine put back together ill replace them one by one and the clips as well.

**  The rocket cover has not been wet sanded flat yet (hence the patchy light reflection), I will wait till we have the head on for this as I expect it will get a bit dirty putting the engine back together.