A bit of time has passed since my last post trial fitting the engine. After thinking through the lack of clearance between the bell housing bolt heads and the chassis I did slot the chassis engine mountings and moved everything 10mm forwards. I then jacked up the o/s of the engine to establish how deep the spacer needed to be to get the engine away from the pedal box area. I settled on 6mm and turned up a spacer to fit under the mount. I am now happy that the engine will not touch the chassis even under very harsh loading.

The gearbox mounting was straight forward to fit. I did grind about 5mm of the vertical strengthener to provide more clearance for the gearbox housing.

With the engine in I was able to plan exactly where I wanted all the various front to rear lines to go. I need room for two fuel, one brake and one fire extinguisher. Add to this the wiring loom it its going to get very busy in the transmission tunnel. This agreed in my head I removed the engine so that I could make a start on fuel and brake lines. This has been straight forward although a fair bit of swearing crept in in places. I managed to kink one of the fuel lines twice so I now have lots of short spare bit!

At this point as I am not sure I am happy with the fuel lines. I have left them loose until I either do them again or become happy with them with everything else in place.

Next up is the cockpit panels. 

Well it almost worked. After a busy week and a hectic weekend I did manage to get it on its wheels and out of the garage. Everything is loosely fitted with just sufficient parts to be able move it around.

This enabled me to trial fit the engine. 

My immediate concern was the engine sitting to far back with the bell housing bolts touching the chassis. 

The engine also fouled the pedal box area.  I had run out of time so I left the car on its wheels and rung Peter! He had no explanation to this issue so I am going to slot the chassis brackets and move the engine forwards 10mm. I am also going to turn a 5mm spacer to fit under the O/S engine mounting. I feel this will gain me the clearance I need. 

By my next update I should be able to say if it has worked!

Its been a a busy week. As I worked on cleaning the engine and gearbox I came to the conclusion that I was not going to be able to get the hoist and attached engine/gearbox combination down the side of the car to the front of my garage. Its was obvious but there you go!
My build plan is based on starting in the middle of the car and work outwards meaning the suspension etc would be a fairly late part of the build. A fundamental of the plan is to build the car completely from an engineering perspective so that I can be comfortable that every thing would fit, parts made or modified as required. When the car was complete, strip it down and re build it in its final form.

I think I can still achieve this but I was going to need a rolling chassis to get the car outside to get the engine in.

So, the week has been about assembling the suspension and putting some wheels on.

I used my engine hoist to push all the metalastic bushes in place and a vice for the rubber bushes. The rest of the assembly was straightforward although I will need to shim the wishbones on final assembly to get all the suspension lined up accurately. However, everything fitted very well with no problems along the way. I had been talking to Peter regarding dampers, he was proposing Protech as a supplier so I felt this was an opportunity to pass on the GAZ dampers. I was certainly pleased with them visually, time will tell how they work on the road.

By the end of this week I expect to have a rolling chassis. This means an initial engine fit at the weekend.