Boot Lid Finished (ish)

I had to work down the A3 again today, so took the Fury, with tools, document folder & safety shoes IN THE BOOT!

Getting the boot lit on was  bit of a struggle, so when I got home I dremeled some GRP off the mating face & adjusted the latch pin & it now fits like this:-

 

It's maybe not as good a fit as I'd hoped, but it's a better fit than I'd feared & I've not spent much time faffing with it yet, so it could conceivably get better, though I'm likely to get bored & move on to something else.

 

Boot Lid Progress

With a lot of hours to lose at work & parts than needed dropping from one site to another, I found myself with an afternoon at home.

 

I mixed up some GRP resin & put some mat under & over the aluminium beams. I also put some mat round the two big foot fasteners that will (hopefully) pull the forward corners down.

 

 

 

 

 

There are gaps under the rear beam, with the GRP forming a thin "skin at back & front. This is deliberate, when I’ve confirmed the fit, I’ll fill the void with expanding foam.

 

With a very low temperature in the garage, it took ages for the resin to go off & needed a helping hand from the hot air paint stripper. But go off it did & it's currently resting across the screen & roll bar to harden up properly.

 

Latching Good

This weekend I made up the latch-beam for the boot lid, measured all the edge distances & sikaflexed it in place, just at the ends in case I needed to take it apart again. Then, this evening I took the clamps off, flipped it over & adjusted the latch pin AND IT WORKS!

At the moment the front corners stick up & the centre of the back does too, but both the beams are only attached with PU sealant, so it needs them bonding on rigidly with GRP & a proper adjusting, but engaging the pins & leaning on the centre of the panel gets a satisfying "click" & on releasing the latch the rear edge of the boot jumps open 1/2", which is very pleasing (it's a bloke thing).

So the Fury now has a proper opening boot lid with no visible fasteners 😊

A Little Leverage ........

That's pronounced Leeeeeverage - because I'm English.

As promised the Shimano gear lever arrived.













So I built it up into an assembly with a couple of PTFE washers so it turns smoothly & can be attached to the car.












Then today I attached it behind the driver's seat














With the cable inner fitted it releases the latch perfectly, so after re-latching & un-latching that a few times (OK, quite a lot of times) I turned my attention to the other side of the latch - the boot lid.









A large aluminium extruded angle had arrived in the post, so it got cut to length to fit between the boot landings, & clamped at each end, I marked a hole to line up with the latch & drilled it for an M8 bolt, so with the hole drilled & a bolt fitted I could latch what will become the rear stiffener of the boot lid. Now I need to shape (lighten) it& find a way of fixing it in place so I can attach the lid skin without any fasteners passing through to the outside. Hmmmm

More Latching

Yesterday I had a shocking day, felt absolutely lousy, but I did do some inspired engineering.

I was looking at how to trigger the boot latch & found an old bowden cable outer, presumably left over from the Sierra & a gear change cable from one of the bikes. I made up a small bracket to hold a cable adjuster from a mountain bike brake lever & riveted it onto the rear aluminium edge member where the latch is, then cut a slot in said edge member for the cable to pass through. The cable will run round the back of the boot under the carpet that's not there yet & round to the boot front bulkhead. But I still needed a pull handle, but as ever eBay was my friend & offered up a 1970's Shimano road bike gear shift lever for a few £, so that's on it's way.

Today I looked at the route & how to get the cable through the boot front bulkhead. I looked at the adjuster I'd used at the latch end & wondered if I had another one in my bike spares box. Of course I did (there are advantages to never throwing old tut away). I took the adjusting nut off, reversed it & after drilling a suitable hole, bolted it in as a fairlead through the alloy panel. I also took the Fury to Bordon for work & found when I got home that the front wheel nuts weren’t tight. Eeek!

There will be photos of all this when the lever arrives & gets fitted.

Boot Latch

Yes, boot latch, not for the Fury a pattern of Dzus fasteners, or bonnet pins pressed into service, it will (I hope) have a proper cable operated boot latch.

I bought one from a Ford Puma a while ago & have been modifying it, first to remove the fore / aft cable & levers, then to fit a new release method. At the moment the rear boot landing is a shaped aluminium angle extrusion, bonded on with sikaflex, it works, but it needs a mechanical fastening, so I drew up a bracket that would both hold the latch in place & properly fix the rear landing to the car. This afternoon I've drilled the car to take the bracket (just jig-pinned on at the moment) & bolted the latch on to it. It's all looking pretty tidy at the moment.

Yes, it needs some trim or possibly carpet to hide the wiring & GRP.
 

M.o.T(wice)

Took the Fury into work yesterday & today it went for it's MoT. It's never passed an MoT first time, but today the man could find nothing wrong with it. So it passed right? well - no. Turns out I'd taken it in one day early, so I asked them to fail it on a side light & tomorrow I'll take it back with the side light "mended" so I can get the full 13 months.

DOH!

On the upside, I was allowed under the car to take proper pictures of the belly pan.


From the front (sideways)

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