This weekend I haven’t had much time to play in the garage. The little bit of time I did get was a little frustrating to be honest. I found a few issues that I will need to sort out.
First off I realised that it is going to be a very very snug fit to get my 85mm speedo and tacho in above the steering column. At the moment the steering column is sitting hard up against a crossmember not allowing the column to be lowered. I can do one of a couple of things, the first I will try is to remove the column and trim the mounting plate that attaches to the firewall. Hopefully this will give me enough vertical movement to allow the steering wheel end to pivot on the cross member and thus lower the wheel and give more space for the gauges. If that fails I can always heat the cross member up and put a small depression it to give extra room. Not a big fan of this idea as I am not entirely sure what that will do to strength.
Whilst it looks like there is plenty of room in the photo, there is the key release button on top of the column that will sit almost in perfect line to the dash as well.
Just gets better and better 🙂
Second and far more painful thing I came across was on the gearbox. When I went to fit the standard gearbox mount to the gearbox, I found that there is a nice bolt that has been snapped off in the gearbox mount hole. Not entirely sure how I am going to get this out. Can try an “Easy Out” but dont have one and never used one before. Another option is to weld a washer to the end of the snapped off bolt and then a nut on to the washer. If all goes well you should be able to undo the nut and the bolt will come with it. This will only be of use if the bolt is snapped off flush.
Only other thing I did was a trial fit of the nose cone. That went very easily which was nice. It does look like I will have to do some trimming of the bonnet to get it between the nose cone and scuttle. I will worry about that once I have the body all in place.
