Well, things are definitely moving along and the car may be running in a few weeks. In the last 2 I got the cage painted, dash in, oil cooler and all fittings ready, lexan windows and the shifter in. The plastic body panels can all be fitted and bolted on in about 15 minutes.
Cage is RSR style with front and rear suspension pick-ups of my own design backed up by tons of research and talking with folks at Gunnar, etc. I've seen a lot of cages in a lot of cars ranging from amazing $80K race car builds with bird-poop welds to cages being bolted/welded directly to the floor to, well you name it. I wanted something so much better, safer and this is it.
I wanted a bright interior that would complement the someday Aga Blue exterior that would give me a "machine tool" look. Something very purposeful and no-nonsense, so I went with light machine gray enamel. A few pics:
the Mazda oil cooler is also coming along. orignal cooler mounted.
I then cut of the femail AN8 mounting bosses with the grinder, a 6.5 inch wheel and a steady hand. I packed the inside with plastic to avoid shavings in the cooler. the good part is that the plastic melted a little and trapped any loose Al dust.
I then took the cooler with
AN12 males and have them Tig'ed on. they also cleaned the threaded openings up and matched them to the fittings. It's ready to go.
I found some 1/8th inch Lexan and made some windows. The sides will get NACA ducts. These are in rough dimensions now and need edge -finishing to straighten out any waves. I cut these to just be glued/siliconed into place and will glue the NACA ducts on, then Dremel out the opening. The rear will be screwed into place along with silicone. Al bars should be easy to fab up.
If I made a short run of these, does anyone want them?
Although a small job, getting the shifter in somehow made it a real car again.
This weekend is big! I'll be making AN6 lines for the fuel cell, AN12 lines for the oil cooler, getting the 3.2 Motronic wiring harness in, pedal cluster, Mercedes master cylinder and brake lines too.