Front Bumper, Wheels and etching

First of all, If any followers are planning on heading to the Silverstone classic, then a kind Mclaren F1 owner is raffling off the chance to ride in his car at the event. Proceeds go to Charity so its for a good cause as well.
Check out the story on the below link

Mclaren F1 ride at Silverstone Classic


This week i put the throttle pedal back in and test fitted wit hthe multiplyer and it works perfectly in terms of opening the throttle fully and has a good feel. the pedal wobbles a bit too much for my liking...so just need to fix that last bit now!

A few weeks back I had requested a VIN number from the DVLA as I was told we are no longer allowed to assign what we want.(meeting the number requirements) true or not I don't know so I requested it so there was less potential for complications. The IVA manual states the requirements of the number (height, location, methods of attaching etc...) I went for the right hand drivers pillar and etched it in, once etched I put some clear gloss nail varnish over the top of it. The Pic below has all the numbers blocked out as after all it is the cars VIN and those letters are around 7 - 8mm tall, with the IVA stating minimum is 3mm.

Following that I got my wheels back as i had had them hydro dipped by a company called wicked coatings.

link ---> http://www.wickedcoatings.co.uk/

And they came back looking great, I can tell they are really going to suit the car and cant wait to fit the wheels properly to get a good look! I've gone for a good size tyre wall and not rubber band thin, the car will be rigid enough so a little give in the tyre will be good.

the new wheels although still 19" have raised the car a bit because of the higher sidewall especially with the wider rear tyre and hence side wall.So when setting up the car I will need to that into account but it should mean ground clearance is not too bad after all without looking its on stilts!

After checking the wheels I first fitted the mesh to the roof scoop, this is required for the IVA and I don't plan on having mesh on this scoop when the car is completed as it restricts air flow for no reason as this scoop is just functional for getting cooler air into the engine bay and not directly into a feed.

I then fitted the front bumper as I was happy I wont need to access anything else via the hole at the front as I hadn't for some time.

I also tidied up the car, cleaning it and removing the dust. I have loads of little jobs currently on going which I will continue with this week, this includes;
* fitting the door catches to the handles so they operate
* Door cards to cover the holes
* Missing Dash Panels
* Gaitors for handbrake and gear selector
* Speedo calibration

Its a case of working through the little jobs now and keeping it moving. There is not a lot to get ready for the test to be honest its just getting them done now so it passes the test and then doing it again afterwards on some to how I want it.

Rear lights, Problems and wheels

The update is a bit late this week as the weekend was nice so I did some work on the car and then Sunday went for a picnic...by time i was back it was F1 time and then I'd run out of time.

So following on from last week I also test fitted the doors and front bumper to get an idea of the amount of work.

So the good news;
Front bumper little work to get looking good.

bad news;

The doors I'm not sure how much work yet but mounting point need to be opened up a bit and go from there really! I think I can get them to sit well enough but will be fair bit of work, in all honesty the doors I don't think should of been shipped how they are especially the passenger side which has been sanded just to allow it to close on one click of the latch, sad but it is a fact none the less and I said id write the good and the bad and this is the worst thing so far....lets see how bad it actually turns out to be!

You can see in the pic the wider gap where the door wants to sit up slightly, hopefully by modifying the hinge brackets a bit I can get this to be a better fit, I'm sure I can do something.

The trim id put around the door had to come off, there isn't the space for that size trim in some areas of the door fit so I will have to go for slimmer trim, again the gaps around the door differ a bit so might need some work (if only you could bend fibreglass).

I moved on from the door as that work is for another day and I just wanted to understand the scale of the work. So I moved back to the bumper, now for the IVA test all gaps / grills are radius tested by filling it with a mesh with gaps less then 10mm the edges just have to be blunted. So i used some diamond shape 9mm - 6mm. Worked really well and easy to work.

Its only bent in place at this time, id ideally like to know a secure way to attach but be able to remove...silicone?!?!

At this point I wanted to work on the last mechanical pieces...throttle pedal linkage but something didn't feel right, so I removed the pedal...I had had to modify the pedal to get a god pedal fit in the footwell removing some bracing and I ended up with this...

You can see the arm has twisted on the pivot....its now being made out of much stronger steal, it wont fail on me again!

so with the pedal shipped off it was time to do the rear lights, now the IVA test does specify that a fog light cannot be within 100mm of a stop lamp...so the standard 3 big circle design was out, so I've kept the 2 circles and gone for a matching pair of fog and reverse light. After the test this will allow me to do some nice cut outs and more mesh which I think will look good. I also fitted the rear number plate light.

And finally I choose my wheels, they are 19" and I got them from Rarerims.co.uk. I've really pushed the size limits with 8.5J at the front and 10.5J at the rare, but i love the look of the wheel. I've just got to decide on the colour of the wheel to go with the final car colour.

So the next weeks work will be extending the rear wiring for the lights, fitting front indicators, getting some tyres on to the new wheels and having the windscreen fitted.