Throttle Pedal

The car requires willwood clutch and brake pedals which match nicely together and look professional. The gas pedal that's suggested was by a different make and to be honest wasn't too my styling (all other areas black and this pedal was bare silver metal) but that's the advantage of a kit car you can make the car your own as well. So I've been looking into pedals a lot based on what will fit the area and also the look I want.

So below is a comparison of the pedal I've bought and the original;

The pedal will actually fail the IVA test in its current state as its a requirement to have an anti slip surface, so i've ordered some self adhesive anti slip tape for that. The photo below is with me holding the brake pedal in roughly the position it will sit next the throttle pedal.As you can see I think the styling goes well and should work well together.

The pedal can be adjusted for the amount of travel so I will be able to configure it to open the throttle over the full pedal movement range if required. I plan on sound proofing and carpeting the floor so that will move the feet's natural resting position higher up the pedal which will make it more comfortable as well.

Brake pipes and double flaring

As part of the IVA test, all brake lines / fuel lines including hoses must be securely mounted to the chassis. I will be using the below, these are clips which have a collar which when pushed into a 6mm hole, flares out on the other side of the hole, holding the pipe line secure.

To get a professional finish and better pedal feel. I will be using Kunifer pipe throughout the car's main body for the Brake lines and clutch and using braided hose to attach to the callipers and the clutch cylinder. Kunifer pipe should ideally be used instead of standard copper, Kunifer pipe is slightly different to copper and has better corrosion and fatigue properties to just copper alone.

One of the problems when buying some pipe is that it comes coiled up so unwinding by hand can leave you with no perfectly straight piece of pipe. The easiest solution for this is a bit of 4x2 and to drill a hole that is slightly wider than the pipe. In this case a 5/6mm hole for 3/16 pipe (A good mix of metric and imperial there!). Pass the pipe through it and this will make the pipe straight and give a good look finish.

Brake lines require flaring for unions and the joining to hoses. so my flaring kit and some pipe arrived so I decided to give it a go. This was my first ever flare, so it can only get better from here with some practice.

First of all cut your pipe with a cutting tool, this is the easiest tool to use and will give the best cut, it will also leave only a little de-burring to do.

Once you have cut the piece you want, you need to clamp it in the flaring tool, with a piece sticking out above. The amount sticking out will depend on diameter of the tool and it should be the length of the base of the first flaring piece as shown below.

You now need to turn the piece over and place the thin end inside the pipe and put the clamp on ready making sure everything is lined up.

You now need to tighten the tool ensuring the flaring tool is squashing in an even fashion across the tube or the flare will be poor. this should be done so that no copper pipe can be seen between the clamp and the flaring piece, then undo the flaring tool, leaving the piece in the clamp and you'll be left with the below;

Following this you now just redo the flare again with the clamp and tool itself (shown above) but this time be careful not to go to far, this should not be squashed flat but be done firm. This will leave you with a flare like the below;

This was the first ever flare I've done so they will get better with more practice but for a first go to understand the principle it was good enough.

TIPS
* Make sure you de-burr the pipe before flaring
* Use a little bit of brake fluid on the piece so that the flare tool doesn't grip and creates the flare smoothly and hopefully produced a better flare.

The Kit Delivery to Shipping Company Warehouse - Info on arranging shipping

So the journey has started....

DDR will deliver the kit anywhere local if the shipping company you have used requires, shipping companies often have a loading warehouse. The companies I have used to date have been fairly priced but for someone like myself who has never imported on this scale (or really doesnt have a clue what they are doing still!), they have been excellant on Customer Service and keeping me updated and explaining stages. I really couldn't of asked for more so far and im sure it will continue.

I used;

Miami - to Port in UK; https://www.freight-calculator.com/

Uk Port - My Door; http://www.johngood.co.uk/


So DDR have now delivered to the warehouse, below are some photos that are on their facebook page as well. The journey at sea from Miami to the UK takes roughly about 20 days, plus customs time.

The UK agent's I used have a deferment fee (optional) which means they will pay the customs charges and fees etc... and I will pay this to the UK agent with a small fee for doing so. This can speed up UK customs clearence by 2 / 3 days sometimes as UK customs will wait till your money has cleared before releasing the container.

Im expecting delivery once shipped and clearing customs to be the last week in October, just in time to spend the winter in the garage, hopefully the snow wont come this year!

The windscreen below better make it across safely!! Theres enough warnings on there!



Updates and The Car Dolly

The last month has been busy at work which is fine by me as the car is not here yet. However the car dolly
has almost been completed now with just the braces to go.

In the pictures below it shows you the structure, the actual wheel legs as I will call them will be closer together more towards the centre of the dolly, they are only where they are for balancing purposes as I have not put the bracings on yet which are required.

As you can see this gives me a slightly higher Dolly then normal and will make it more comfortable for working on the chassis and underneath the chassis. Each dolly wheel can take up to 200kg of weight which is ample, when working underneath axle stands will be placed underneath  in positions around the car in case the worse was too happen.

In the below picture you'll see the cross members can be moved so its possible to change where the weight sits across the frame so as the weight increases at the back I am able to adjust it on the frame to keep it stable. In the end my Gf's dad came up with the idea of what are like cup holders welded on, so it means they can easily be slid and stay in position just by lifting up the frame once its on the dolly.

As well as this because of the build starting in winter now which was not planned, the garage needed some help to keep any heat in at all. Its an old garage from the 60's and so has a corrugated roof which sits on the top of concrete blocks with plenty of air holes between! So firstly I repaired the sealant between the roofing parts to make sure there were no leaks and I then filled in all the holes with expanding foam. On the scale of things, working through winter in minus C temperatures this will make little difference but it will make me feel better, every degree it can keep in will help!

I've also bought two powerful halogen lights to light up the garage better and will be buying a small fan heater as well, that with the floor being matt'd will make it as comfortable as its going to get!

I'll soon have more pictures but here's a teaser pic of the car being prep'd for delivery which should be soon and I can provide more pictures.

Whats been going on...

I've had a lot of messages, about whats going on,when will the build start and from UK based people can I come and see the kit as you're considering it for yourself.

Well since my visit not a lot, as the prep work is now complete as mentioned. So I've been thinking forward in terms of the tools and areas of design I want to work on.

First of all when am I getting the car, DDR say my car is now ready, so I have been arranging the shipping. I've never done it before and it has been a steep learning curve. Once completed I will post who I used as so far the communication has been excellent so have high hopes for a smooth transaction!

So the first issue I've had is actually unloading, the crates are big and then this will be inside a shipping container on the back of a lorry which is 4foot off the ground. So I need to be able to unload without a fork lift etc..., luckily once the boxes of bits are out, the weight should not be too bad for 4 or so grown men to drag out, but tilting the box 4ft to the ground will probably cause damage, so I am building a car dolly for two purposes. One for removal and two to allow me to work on the chassis easily.

Below is the design (apologises for the poor drawing and not to scale)

The top pieces will slide, allowing me to change the distribution of the weight as the car is built, keeping it stable as well as using the L brackets (in red) to keep the rail gap stable and even. It will be made of 30 x30 box steel. I have seen a similar design used before.

It will be on lockable casters for easy movement. The shell will sit roughly 2 foot off the ground. I will release a more detailed list of measurements and materials once built so people can make their own if required. It should meet my needs as required.

This will drop the delivery to a 2 foot drop which the crate will be able to be tilted to without causing damage. the height of 2foot will also allow me to work completely on the car on the stand if required with the shell on as the height of the garage is 195cm  so I should be able to slide the car dolly in and out with the full car on it.

My Visit to DDR Motosport

I've been over in the states for two weeks and said to Diego I'd pop down and see him. We were staying in Orlando so had worked out it was about a 4hr drive down to Miami

Well after really bad weather, 6 hrs later we arrived! It was a trip and a half with crashes lining the edge of the road and a couple of missed turns. None the less it was great to meet Diego and see what DDR do. Also it was good to get a look at the car in person, the angles, construction etc...

I could see and hear when talking with Diego the extra steps I'd need to do to meet little UK IVA test requirements but nothing that seemed particularly difficult, just more time consuming!

I took a look at the new green Demo Car (I'm the one peering in)

It was good to see around the set-up and with the new clam shell back, there is plenty of room to work in there.

Also got to see the car that first caught my eye about DDR in the first place. You can see the evolution even from this model when looking at tiny details.

And finally meeting Diego himself.

DDR were busy with a few cars in progress but mine should be completed very soon and I'm currently arranging the shipping details.


Finally some people had been mentioning about sharing this blog out more, Simply put I dont have the time :) So please use the below tinyurl for the blog if you'd like to share it

http://tinyurl.com/miamigt4

and if sharing on twitter hashtag #DDRBUILD

Engine Completed....

So I transferred the engine back to my home garage now that the majority of the work had been done but I still had a couple of jobs left to do.

First I replaced all the vacuum hoses with silicone ones I had bought, some were perishing already so needed replacing. At that point I noticed a lot of blocked off pipes on this engine, some to areas that I wouldn't expect to be blocked off, so ill be posting that on an MR2 forum.

2ndly I blocked off a couple at this moment in time before I decide what to do, the ones I blocked go off to what is known as the charcoal canister and this canisters function is basically to get emissions down, I had a supra before and did away with it on that as well.

Once I replaced the vacuum hoses I wanted to replace / cover the wiring loom's black conduct with red conduct, the only reason was so that when I'm working on it I can easily spot the wiring loom as the engine becomes a bit of a big mess!

After completing that the engine was complete, so i prep'd it for the next few months as it wont get started for least 3 - 6 months. So I took out the current spark plugs and dropped a tea spoon of oil into the cylinder. I then turned it over via the crank a couple of times to line the cylinder walls to stop corrosion.

Once that was done I gave it a quick tidy up and here's the finished product. I feel like the first big milestone has been hit!

Started with;

ended with;