To correct my omission regarding the nose cone...

I am planning a fairly aggressive front wing for hill climb use to make sure I can ensure I have good turn in. I also wanted to have the nose cone hinge so that I can have access for service and repairs. I bought again from B&Q some heavy duty stainless door hinges which could be disassembled and the parts arranged to suit my needs. They were £20 but they work a dream. As my proposed front wing will be fitted to these mountings I used M8 bolts to make sure all the downforce would go through to the chassis without being lost in any flexing.

Next step is to bond the alloy strip with resin and matting to spread the load and stop the nose cone cracking where it is mounted.

I decided to leave the last jobs on the loom to focus on the cooling system and fitting the radiator. 
My solution is an Escort (OHV) radiator (back to my roots). Mine came from Dave Simms Automotive. They were helpful with accurate measurements and a reasonable price.

To mount the radiator I used some fine B&Q stair nosings alloy angle. This gave me a good start to develop the mounting.

This was as far as I wanted to go ahead of fitting the air cleaner and cooling fan. Having proved my concept I moved onto... The nose cone fitting. Clearly I had done this already but not put it in my blog!

With the fuel tank all fitted and both pumps working there was nothing left to do but add some fuel and give it a go. A quick look round and on with the ignition and crank and... it started! I was shocked. The engine quickly settled into a decent idle so I had a quick look round to make sure the ignition light went out and the rev counter worked and everything did! With no radiator and the exhaust blowing badly as it was held on by very few nuts and no gaskets I switched it off. I have to say I felt exceptionally happy after all the hours that have gone into the car it now sounds like a real one. After all the excitement it was back to the list of jobs?

As my car has the full cage fitting the throttle pedal and cable was more complicated by the large bracket which locates the cage at the base of the "A" pillar. To get clearance of the master cylinder reservoir and steering column I needed to move the top bracket on the pedal towards the middle of the car.

With this done I could drill the scuttle to fit the cable. I didn't want to cut or modify the standard throttle cable so that replacements would be easy and the reliability better. I developed from some alloy tube and alloy angle this solution.

Fitted it looks like this:

The pedal feel is good although I may end out with a small spring on the pedal to help with the return of the pedal. We will see.

With this job out of the way its more wiring to tidy up the loom to finish the job once and for all (Probably not).

With my ambition to get the engine running I had to turn my attention back to the fuel tank.  This has bugged me for weeks as to what I should do to try and prevent any fuel surge. However, whilst the car was away I fitted a central foam baffle and two pumps. With the car back on its stands I made up two spring steel tank supporting straps and fitted the tank. I am very pleased it all fitted as planned. With the previously made fuel filter mount it looks like this:

I made up two long bolts for the rear strap mounts so that I didn't have to fiddle trying to get the bolts in and out when removing the tank. These are simply some M6 studding and nuts with a dab of weld to retain them.

One way or another it will be a while before I know if it works. However, the engine start can't be fr away now!

The cars trip to Tube Engineering has been a great success. They have done a great job making up the manifold and silencer. With this job complete I feel I can push on with the build.  I don't know why but there seems to have been some hesitation on my part completing so many part done tasks. Anyway, this is what we have back:

I am impressed with the quality of the welding and finish. I am less impressed with my decision to have the oxygen sensors on the top. However, we are where we are. Correctly wired and fitted they will look better....I hope.

Since the car has been back the real push has been to get the electrical work as complete as possible. My desire is to have no excess wiring and all circuits not required removed. This has resulted in many hours in a freezing garage cutting, splicing and then soldering and heat shrinking hundreds of joints. You can get the idea from the picture below:

I am happy with the completed job. The pile of discarded wire is amazing. So, with all that work done it starts to look like this! In my head I am happy enough but its going to take a major push to get it complete to my satisfaction and I think I have blown something in the instrument cluster as a few warning lights now do not work! However, the engine does crank! This has cheered me up. It makes proper car noises......

With the engine able to crank and all the DME and EWS wiring complete and tested you can guess what I am thinking! 

The car has been away to Tube Engineering to have the exhaust system made up. So apart from tidying up the garage and throwing away a major pile of unwanted parts from the donor car progress has been slow. 
I did finally decide on my approach to any fuel surge. My proposed solution is to do as others have done. Time will tell if it works. I am fitting two pumps. I have also fitted a central foam baffle. Once the car is back I will fit out the tank and get it installed. I have modified the wiring loom to incorporate the additional electrical supply. The pump will be switched so that its not running all the time.

Just before the car went away I did continue to modify the wiring loom to meet my requirements and fit all the additional wiring. I have struggled with the instructions from Peter. There are a number of errors with the documents and a fair number of my wires are different colours to those mentioned. I downloaded a copy of Bentleys workshop manual to get the schematics and combined, I think I have it all back under control. Again, time will tell!

Lets see what comes back from Tube Engineering, everybody so far has rated them highly so I am quite excited to see how it looks!

With the engine loom in place I wanted get the tops worked out for the transmission tunnel so that I could make up the centre console for the fire extinguisher release, master cut out switch and other additional switches I was going to need. In the end I went for:

I got the extruded alloy from The Complete Automobilist in North Walsham in Norfolk. It is a perfect shape to hopefully keep the IVA examiner happy and provide a strong fixing for both parts of the tunnel cover. At this point I am not sure how the gear lever gaiter is going to stay in place but I will work that out later!.

With my Rivnut tool working over time and a box of M5 cap head screws we start to look like this:

With this all out of the way I moved onto the centre console. In my head I wanted a large area to be able to mount the cut off switch. This was going need some thought as there would be some very robust wire involved and routing would be critical. So, armed with a Cornflake box......

I am really pleased with the outcome. The observant will see that I have laid the GKD wiring harness in place to continue the development of the overall wiring fit out. However this will have to wait whilst I fit the rear alloy panel and the car goes of to Tube Engineering for the exhaust build.

It helps if you actually publish the post rather than leave it as a draft! So, following on from my last post I have continued with the wiring. This is one area I have really been looking forward to. its probably my favourite subject.

As I said previously I wanted to make the loom once if possible so a few nights have been spent drawing out all the additional circuits, removing unwanted wiring and planning the physical fit.

I started with the engine loom. This needed physically mounting so I came up with:

I plan to move the diagnostic socket to the boot area (this will make sense in time!) so those wires will go. The starter lead will also move so the under bonnet area should look pretty tidy.

I continue to feel very enthusiastic about my build. I did wonder if I might start to lose interest over time but I have not. Its been a long time since I have wielded a spanner in anger so find myself really enjoying myself.

With the bulkhead in place I decided to complete the installation of the fire extinguisher system. This came from Sparco complete with all the fittings including two tightly coiled aluminum pipes. 

The fitting of the bottle was easy enough, 8 x M6 bolts and it was done. It fits nicely in front of the newly arrived seats. I am unsure how the IVA examiner is going to view all this but if necessary I can take it out for the examination day.

With regard to the seats, I got them from JC Composites. I dealt with Jordan who was very helpful and did what he said he would do and delivered on the day he said. Much impressed and pleased with the seats.

Anyway, I am pleased with my plumbing. I just have the rest of the engine bay to fit once I have the air intake sorted..

I have also started the wiring ahead of the new loom arriving. I have tried to think ahead of all the electrical kit I need on the car so that I can hopefully make up the loom and not have to adding the parts I had forgotten.

Its a little warmer now the snow has gone so garage time has increased! Next task was to sort out how the bulkhead and scuttle all fitted together. I wanted the scuttle to be quickly removable so that I could access where the bulk of the electrics and electronics would be located.

I battled for a long while with G clamps and tape measure until I was (almost) happy with the fit. The scuttle is not a perfect fit being too wide at the back but its acceptable. I the drilled some pilot holes for the  scuttle and then drilled them out to take M6 bolts. I made up spacers to go in the top chassis rail to prevent crushing the tube. Once this was done I assembled everything and drilled out alternate holes to take M6 screws through into the scuttle. The scuttle was then drilled out to take rivnuts. With this all bolted down I drilled all the 3.2mm holes for the rivets. And finally with a small bead of Sikaflex rivetted the bulkhead onto the chassis. I am really pleased with this now its done. It fits well and is very rigid.

Having looked at everybody else's builds I have stolen a common thread and made a additional bulkhead to support the relays etc.

I am going to complete the two covers for the transmission tunnel next.

A bit of a slow period due to the cold weather! My garage is pretty good but its just so cold even with the heater doing its best. Anyway, I have not made any significant progress it seems to be all little bits completed. The biggest of which was the handbrake cables. These came directly from the donor and were strangely new. However, I could see how the calliper end fitted but not how they were to fit into the two tubes on the chassis. My solution was to turn up two adaptors. I also used the opportunity to use the length of the adaptor to maximise the range of adjustment to the maximum.. Overall I am pleased with these.

I made up two foam buffers to stop the cables banging on the diff and diff cover (when made and fitted!!).

So, only a short update this time. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks I should be able to make progress with the exhaust system, some seats and the fuel tank.  

Happy New Year everybody. With all the festive celebrations, family visits and other jobs out of the way I have been able to crack on with getting the interior panels in place. I have enjoyed all of these tasks as everything fits and the end result is very pleasing. 

I completed all the panels for the transmission tunnel before moving on to the two main exterior ones.

Sitting in the car making brumming noise got my head round to seats. Any seat would need to be narrow and browsing the internet turned up a few ideas. A call to Peter at GKD also helped me with what was needed. Anyway, I will let this filter through the brain before ordering anything (a bit like the fuel tank, I still have not made up my mind....).
I am going to leave the tops of the transmission tunnel until later as I going to build a centre console for the fire extinguisher and electrical cut out switches.

This got me to the two main exterior panels and a colour scheme..... I am going to follow others with a vinyl wrap instead of paint so a decision was required. In the end I went for white. Ambitious I realise but there was a precedent:

This was my last tarmac Escort. Anyway, to fit the side panels the cage had to go. With little space there was only one option. I rigged up a couple of anchors in the roof and hoisted it up out of the way. I was concerned that the front legs would damage the wrap and or panel when I was moving into position so I rigged up an expansion tool from an hinge and couple of bits of wood. The really helped as I had the cage up and down for drilling holes etc

Again, I think there has been a design change and the panels have not been modified. The picture below shows the strip I had to cut off and re drill to get the front edge to fit correctly for an effective joint and sealing.

With the fit corrected I had to wrap both sides of the panel and cut away for the Sikaflex adhesive.

With all the panels on I can now get the cage lowered and bolted into place.