Filler Finished

Still with the sheet metal work this PM I've finished off the filler support / splash bowl (except for trimming the splash bowl to fit the boot lid). It's gained a small bracket holding a stainless pipe in a grommet, the pipe aligns with a belled down hole in the splash bowl, so any rain or splashed fuel will pass down the hose & get dumped overboard. In the first pic you can see the bowl drain at the 6 o'clock position, in the second you can see the drain hose.

 

Still Got It!

This morning I finished off the cam belt cover. It gained a couple of flanged lightening holes, a finger guard for the alternator belt & a rub over with Scotchbright.

I need to make another small guard on the inlet side of the engine, but that can wait until the weather improves & I can get round that side of the car.

The quality would make a tinsmith cry, but it was designed & made in my garage with nothing more than a vice & hand tools, so while it could be better, I'm actually very pleased with it as it is.

Sheet Metal Work

The fuel filler support is just about done, so I thought I write down how I done it.

First I drew it on the computer to see what looked right, then I printed out two paper copies of the flat pattern, one to fold up & put in the car as a last check & one to make to.

The paper pattern fitted OK, it just needed a little more on the ends of the flanges, so having adjusted the "make to" copy with a crayon I selotaped it to the aluminium sheet & drew round the edge with a magic marker (disappointingly they're not actually magic - it's just a fat felt tip!).

To cut it out I used a jig saw with a very fine toothed blade, this can be a bit worrying - I still have no feeling in my left index fingertip after the jigsaw jumped & stabbed it a couple of times. Cleaning the cut edges with coarse & fine files stopped any further bloodshed & at this stage it looked like this:-


Even my brackets look vaguely aeroplane like.



Next job was to put in the lightening holes - GOT to have lightening holes! In this case I wanted to try to make flanged lightening holes because being aluminium sheet (not alloy) it's pretty soft & a flanged lightening hole gives a lot of stiffness.



So out with the hole saw & my bracket looked like this:-

 At this point I made a bit of a mistake because I got all enthusiastic & flanged the holes, which made bending the side walls down a bit of a git - but I digress.

At work I'd noticed that the really big sockets had a curved "neck" - just the right shape for pushing a lightening hole, I used the hole saw to put a hole the same size as my lightening holes in a lump of soft wood, then chiselled the edge away to make a sort of "bell-mouth", it wasn't pretty, but it was very soft pine from some cheap furniture, so it would deform nicely.


So I placed the sheet over it & clamped it down, placed the socket in the hole & whacked it several times with a mallet.

Here's the "female tool" if we're still allowed to say such things






Here's the male tool in place, about to get whacked with a mallet (note:- NOT a hammer - a mallet).













 


Here's a flanged lightening hole.

Good isn't it?

Flushed with child-like excitement I bashed all the others into the sheet & marvelled at how much lighter & stiffer it was (I didn't really)











Next job was chain drilling the hole for the filler - really not one of my favourite jobs, but not too bad in aluminium as it's soft enough to cut pretty easily.









 

Then I bent up the sides & tried it in the car. I think it'll be OK when it's riveted down. It needs a loose angle to attach it to the boot side wall, & a drain made up to stop it filling with water & I'll trim the bowl to height when the boot lid's fitted, but so far, quite pleased with it - 2 1/2 hours well spent 😊.
























The only things left to do were clean up the filler hole, drill the holes it bolts to (which will also attach the bowl to the bracket) & see how it looked. Quite '50s techie I think - which is good 'cos that's how I wanted it to look.

 

More On That Cake tin

I've been doing some drawing, & here's what the cake tin mentioned yesterday will become.

Having cut the boot lid out, there's nothing to support the fuel filler, so I designed a bracket to hold the filler just below the boot lid surface, but that would let the rain in yes? well the cake tin will become a "splash bowl" around the filler & will have a drain to the outside under the car somewhere. Like this:-

I Like Cake

A new part arrived through the post for the Fury today. It's a cake tin, 5" dia x 4" deep, anodised
aluminium. Obviously it's going to get modified & adapted to the purpose I bought it for, but I'm not going to say what that is just yet.

See it you can work it out.  😊

Cam Wheel Cover

Long story. The car's supposed to look kind of like a barn found late '50s club racer, so the large plastic parts detract from that (yes - so do the blue hoses, I know), some time ago the plastic cam cover got the heave-ho to be replaced by an alloy one which had the "Zetec" & "16v" ground off & was then kind of polished, or polished enough to look like it was polished 30 years ago.

But, there was still a large plastic cam wheel cover. Many people run without them, which was an option, but the thought of a stone getting flicked up & finding its way betwixt cam wheel & belt didn't bear thinking about. But when the bonnet wouldn't close over the plastic one after the winter upgrades (a new engine mount had pitched the engine up / left enough for it to rub) it was clearly time to get out the tools. There's no cleverness about the cover I've made - it'd make a tin-smith cry!

It's basically a plate the size if the cam wheels & a couple of angle brackets holding a flange covering the belt.

It'll need prettying up a bit & it's a few grams heavier than the plastic one, but it does - or at least will - look better, to me at least.

Up at the top there's a nice simple bracket where before there was none, a couple of titanium bolts & aircraft clip-nuts hold the cover away from the belt.


At the front it gets more complex where an angle bracket has to get into an awkward shape, but it's reasonably neat & kind of hidden. I need to work out what to do on the off side where I think I'll need to put in a removable section to make the cover easier to get off than the plastic one was.
 

Belly Panels

Yes, yes I know it's been a long time since I wrote - a lot of "stuff" has happened, almost none of it to do with the car - which is all you're interested in right?

OK, it's been cold here, properly seriously cold. It hasn't got above 4deg C at all in the last three weeks, most days don't get significantly above zero. S have I been spending long periods in the un-heated garage? No, but with Mrs Blatter away for the weekend, I have sallied forth. Yesterday I fitted a new high level brake light, when I built the car the choice of LED lights wasn't as broad as it is now & I selected a very neat, thin unit which only came in "clear" (it lights up red obv.), but they now make the same item in red which blends better with the roll bar, so as my in-laws had contributed to the car fund with my birthday present, I bought the new version. Fitting it was  bit of a struggle as the wired pass through the roll bar, but not too bad.
Next up was the bonnet prop, the feet of which got pop-riveted this time - last time they were bonded on, but the effort I didn't need to take it off suggested a more mechanical means of fitting it was appropriate.

Today I started by bleeding the front brakes as I'd had to remove the wishbones & hubs to do the de-rusting. That done I made a load of small brackets for the belly pan, then did some shaping on the panels for that, made brackets to join the pieces together & generally got it closer to being fitted.

Here it is, still with the mark-up writing on it, just a few more things to do & it'll be getting cleaned & sprayed silver ready to go on the car

 One of the things that took the most time was sorting through my old box of aircraft parts to find fasteners & anchor nuts. I found almost enough, but I'll need to use a different size round the outside edges, which is probably no bad thing.