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Tuesday 21st March 2006

Yes, I'm still here. Bugger all progress on the car though. I did make a start on the bodywork back in January but a whole heap of things have conspired to slow me down. Excuses, excuses, I know ... but I've been away a few weekends mainly with work, and the Aprilia has had quite a lot of attention since I got it. I guess the Aprilia had better have her own page ...

I also have to admit that my first couple of sessions trying to work out the bodywork didn't go too well. It's tricky to handle on your own as it's pretty floppy and you have to be careful with it - mine's the lightweight race bodywork too, compounding the problem. Then trying to work out what goes where and get the panels to sit in anything like the position you think they need to be in is a nightmare. So after spending a few hours out there I go in feeling I haven't really achieved anything, and all of a sudden the motivation deflates and every excuse in the world pops up to stop me going back out to the garage.

Anyway, I've had a couple of concerned queries from readers checking I hadn't wrapped myself/the bike round a tree. Thanks for your concern, I can confirm that both I and the bike are intact, and in fact I've more or less run the bike in now. I did get out to the garage this evening and actuially feel like I made some progress.

The first thing I did was to work out that I've been trying to line the sidepods up the wrong way round, i.e. on the wrong sides of the car. Doh! I then decided it would make life easier if I could temporarily mount the front section on its hinged brackets, and to get at them better I cut out the grill aperture. I could then reach in from the front and stick a G-cramp on each side to temporarily secure it. This did make life much easier. NExt job was to trim the upper surface of the sifepods so it will fit around the side impact structures either side. Once that was done I could hold them in place with some gaffer tape, they then supported the bonnet section in something like it's correct position and gave me a chance to line up the rear section. The whole thing looks like it's a bit too short for the wheelbase, but after some jiggling about it looks like it'll just about be OK. After an hour and a half out there Jen arrives back home and I'm ordered back in the house. As it happens it's reasonable timing as I've done what I'd hoped to do this evening. The main thing is I think I've got my head round the thing again. Hopefully I'll be back later in the week wih some piccies.

Wednesday 22nd March

Heh heh, two days in a row! Did a bit more jiggling about this evening to try to get the bodywork as well placed as I can with respect to the wheels. It's all a bit tight and it looks to me like quite a bit of GRP is going to have to come off at the back of the rear wheelarches +/- the front of the front ones. Raising the ride height to the upper limit of that Martin suggested helped quite a bit. I taped the two main sections together and stuck some blocks of wood under the back of the main rear section to get it about the right height, then fiddled about with each sidepod to see how they fit. They're pretty good for length, and I stuck a bit of masking tape on each to mark the position of the join between the two upper sections.

Once I'd done that I decided to bite the bullet and drill the reinforced GRP bits in the front of the bonnet and actually mount the bracket with bolts instead of my G-cramps. A few 8mm stainless bolts and penny washers later and it was mounted and will actually hinge once I untape the parts.

Just before going back in I tidied up the aperture in the front of the bonnet with my mini drill and a sanding drum. I'll ring Martin tomorrow for a quick chat about mounting the rear tub and side pods.

Thursday 23rd March

Back again! Rang Fishers/Kitcar Workshop lunchtime and had quite a long and extremely helpful chat with Dan who talked me through loads of the bodywork stuff. Most important bit was that the Muffett chassis is actually slightly longer than standard and indeed the wheelbase is longer than the bodywork! They supply an additional wheelarch kit that allows you to remove quite a lot at the back of the rear wheel arch. Dan also pointed me towards a useful web page with a few pics of a race Fury he'd worked on. This helped me visualise what I need to do to support the rear bodywork, also how much of the sidepods I can safely hack away!

Back at home in the evening I had a close look at where I'd got to already and realised that in trying to compromise front against rear the front wheels were going to foul the bodywork. So I decided to change the mounting points on the bonnet to move the whole lot forwards about a centimetre. This didn't actually take long, what did take the time was trying to get my bloody compressor running again! Turned out in the end to be a little cutout switch hidden behind the plastic cover over the cylinder, presumably at some time it's got hot and bothered and decided to cut out. Anyway, once that was done I could blow all the dust out of the rad and oil cooler etc.

With the bonnet refitted I started to attack the passenger sidepod. The marks I made yesterday helped quite a bit to reposition everything, but I had quite a lot of measuring, marking and cutting to do before it was looking OK. After about an hour or so I was happy with the fit at least at the front end of the sidepod, I'm keen to make sure the shut lines are nice and neat. Once that was done I repeated the process on the driver's side, then taped the whole lot up again to trial fit the rear section. It looks like I need to slightly lower the front driver's side of the bonnet at the hinge, but I'm not too worried about that. I definitely feel like I'm making some progress and there's light at the end of the tunnel. I've got the day off tomorrow and hope to get some more done in the morning.