Mind The Gap

The filler cap is finished, it wasn't without its tribulations. When I left it, it was working but the boot lid was sitting too high, so first job this morning, I cut the cake tin / splash bowl down so there was an even gap.

Obviously where there's a touch, I cut that back - then it touched somewhere else, so that got trimmed. Eventually there was an even 2mm gap all round with the boot lid in its' proper place. Then I fitted the filler cap back on & found the hinge pin hadn't been riveted over & was creeping out.
 It got replaced with a titanium bolt.

This it was the same process again, mark where the boot lid touched the filler, cut it back, re-try. Over a couple of hours I got the gap pretty even & the cap works nicely.

It's one of those details that needs a lot of thinking, then a lot of work & you'll know if you've got it right because no-one will notice it because it looks natural on the car.


I cleaned up the edges & applied a coat of the yellow nail varnish I keep for this sort of thing & stuck some rubber edging round the splash bowl..

So the cap fits, it works & all that's left to do is raise the boot rack to clear the cap when it's open.
 

The Cap Fits!

This afternoon I've been fitting the new fuel cap to the Fury. The old one came off easy enough & the new one seemed happy enough, so I cut the cake tin / splash bowl to suit & tentatively fitted the boot lid, the existing hole was way too small & it looked as if I'd need to cut a slot a long way forward to allow the cap to open, so I began tentatively, removing small amounts of GRP with a tungsten carbide file. Then (inevitably) I got bored & went at it with a coarse burr (like a cylindrical-file-on-a-stick) mounted in a drill gun......set on "fast".





This may sound like the prelude to a tale of woe, but I was not failed by my aircraft fitting skills & I must say I'm rather pleased with the result.











There's more work to do yet. I need to even up the gaps & the boot lid isn't sitting down properly yet, but height-wise it's pretty much exactly where I wanted it













And - astonishingly - it opens! (that's a locking cap inside the lid).
Again, there's a little more cutting & filing to do to make it work "nicely", but it is going to be extremely cool

The new splash bowl is only just big enough & is fouling the boot lid stiffeners a little, but again that's just fettling, once I've got the boot lid to sit down properly.

Once it's all done & working I need to shorted the boot rack stays a bit as the lid just fouls as it opens, so the rack needs to be lifted a little.