4th March

After buying loads of stuff off eBay this week it all arrived in about 3 days. Hole saw, tiger seal, grommets, convolute tubing, nuts and bolts, whoa neddy! too much spending on eBay! the postage on this lot has nearly doubled the price of the parts

Friday saw me wrapping up the wiring and clipping it to the chassis so I was ready to fit the body Sat. The lack of any helping hands saw me struggle with the one piece body. However I managed to get it on without any damage then set about it making it fit round the roll bar. Well, all I can say is I took too much off and on the offside there is a biggish gap and the body has cracked.... DoH! I think a bit of rubber strip will fill the gap. I wrapped the roll bar with masking tape but there are still some scratches that will need a bit black nail varnish to repair. You really need some body to give you hand but I couldn't wait.

The front of the body was sticking way out the front and the manual says fit the nose cone now, but, where to trim the sides back? I attached the scuttle first then fitted the bonnet give me a datum at the front. It took ages to line the nose cone up and I have a bit of a back down the front on the nearside but I can tidy that up later. I drilled through the nose cone and the side panels into the bracket on the chassis but the sides wouldn't behave, keep popping off at the back and the holes I'd cut from the scribes that are on the sides when you get the body where way to low.

In the end I had to put a couple of packing pieces on top of the brackets to get it to line up and, more importantly I think to unstress the sides.

With some M8 bolts through the scuttle and the nose cone the top of the chassis is secure. I drilled 4mm holes at key points on the underside, tapped them M5 and secure them with 5mm bolts and big load spreading washers. the body was a lot tighter on the offside compared to the nearside which just pushed up to the chassis with no effort.

The fit of the parts are not exactly too my liking but I will fine tune all that when it comes to the final fit.

Next step is to get the suspension on and get the car down onto its wheels for the first time. I should get well into that tommorrow all being well.