IVA Passed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's been 3 years of building this car, including a house move and some extended time abroad for work, but I yesterday I finally got it through the IVA test.

This pretty much signifies the end of the build although there may be a few 'tweaks' yet to be applied.

The first test was in the middle of August. I shan't go in to a lot of detail but I shall say it went fairly well. It took 2 hours to find anything wrong and then only really minor problems that wouldn't take a lot of time or effort to rectify. There was one slightly more significant issue regarding the Speedometer which required a bit more attention.

Here's what it failed on:

Radiused edges around the seat belt mounts, gear stick gaiter surround, steering wheel, and front suspension mounts. Trim applied to satisfy the requirements.

The ECU could also be reached from the passenger side seat position so needed a cover.

Collapsible steering assembly. The boss the steering wheel is mounted on needs to be collapsible. The one fitted was not so I had to get a new one. Also for the steering column itself, it wasn't obvious how it would collapse in the event of a front impact. This required a little research and advice from Richard at GBS.

The problem with the Speedo was interesting. At 70 mph and above the needle would flick around all over the place, clearly something wrong there. It turned out to the the sensor not mounted squarely to the prop shaft. I remade the bracket so it was.

Other than that the inspector was quite complementary about the build of the car in general.

Three weeks later I took the car on it's first road journey to the test center for a retest. This took less than 20 minutes, and I was issued with an IVA pass certificate.

So, that's pretty much the end of the project... Only the registration to do and fit the number plates. I hope we get at least a couple of days of good weather in the next couple of months!

I'll continue to update this blog as and when I take the car out or do anything to it.

Update

Well, I could real off a list of excuses as to why I haven't updated the blog recently but they are, as I say, excuses. Here's a quick update anyway:

The car is basically finished and I am waiting to take it in for it's IVA test in a few days time. Here's a few pictures of the (almost) completed car both outside my old flat and in front of the Instant Garage on my patio.

I had attached the wheels and enough running gear to be able to move the car from the garage under my old flat to my new house. Here it was waiting for the transporter to arrive.

After a few very hot days in the instant garage, the glue on the carpets on melted. I had to take the seats out to put it all back again.

I'm really pleased with the dashboard. The modern gauges hint at the newer engine and electronics than the classic sports car styling suggests.

I will endeavour to post a few more photos after the IVA test if I haven't been battered too much.

Onwards...

And again, I neglect the Blog. My apologies. And I must also report that a significant amount has happened in the time since the previous post in March, the most significant of which is that I have moved house and spent most of the summer renovating it. This has left the car a little neglected, but before I moved, I had to get the car in to a state where but I could move it as well.

Previously I had succeeded in getting the engine started. It runs well, albeit a bit rich, which is a great relief. Due to limited space in the garage I had built all the parts of the car such as suspension, brakes, nose etc. separately, fitted them, then removed everything ready for a final assembly at the point I could move the car.

I realise this this is going to miss out a fair amount of actual work which I have not had time to commit to words, but at end of May I finally got to the point of needing to move the car from the garage under the flat to my new place. As per the plan, the parts were duly fetched from all corners of the flat and one by one bolted to the chassis.

Fitting the Suspension

I wanted to fit the seats so I could drive it out of the garage which meant fitting the carpets as I didn’t want to remove the seats again. I had already cut the carpet for the rear panel and side of the tunnel, as well as covering the panels for the top of the tunnel so these when in fairly easily.

Carpets Fitted

I then needed to get it down on to its wheels. Less said about this the better really, but I used to engine hoist attached to the centre of the chassis to lift it off the trestles and on to the ground. It worked, but I hope I don’t have to do it again…

Obviously I can’t drive the car on the road yet so I booked a tow truck to put it on. The time had come to drive it for the first time. Just a short journey out of the garage, on to the waiting truck, and off again at the house.

So, there’s no proper garage at the new place yet so I’ve invested in an “Instant Garage” to house the car for the time being.

First impressions: Brilliant! This is going to be a lot of fun to drive. I’ve got a load of trim to finish and various things to complete for the IVA but realistically this is not going to happen this year. I shall look forward to getting it on the road in the Spring.

Engine Starting

And again I leave this Blog neglected for too long.

A lot has happened which I will commit to words in the next few weeks, but right now I can report that a major milestone has been reached - I have successfully started the engine!

It doesn't sound like much, and really it should be a formality, but considering this engine hasn't run for almost 2 years, it has a whole new wiring loom, new ECU, new fuel system and throttles, it's not a bad achievement.

More updates to follow as I have got a bit further with the build.

Panel Beating

I suspect, when I finish this project, people will ask what the worst or most difficult part of the build was. Well, at this stage I would like to submit "fitting the rear panel" as the biggest pain in the proverbial back side to bestow my time in the garage with this car.

It should be simple. The panel comes pre-cut and with two right angle bends for attachment to the underside of the chassis and to the supports from the roll bar. What is required is two curved bends of about a 3 inch radius to form the corners around the small boot space. This presents the first problem as, due to the existing bends, it is not possible to bend the sides past the 90 degrees needed to form the curves. Well I can't do it anyway.

After a couple of days trying to get it to look right, and some more help from my brother, I think we've make a reasonable job if it. At the moment the chassis is sitting on a couple of trestles to raise it to a workable height so the imperfections in the bends are visible, but when it it on the ground and the trim is in place it shouldn't be so obvious.

Next job, fitting it. Again, should be straight forward, there are defined points to attach the panel to the car, and its clear where it should fit. Along the sides it should line up neatly over the wheel arches, and at the back it attaches to the supports from the roll bar and to the underneath of the chassis. No matter how I offered it up to the chassis, the panel was either too far forward of the wheel arches when the roll bar supports lined up, or too far back from the supports when it lined up with the wheel arches.

The answer as it turned out was painfully simple. It seems that somewhere in the manufacturing process there is a tendency for the supports to dip down slightly. GBS say they haven't workout out how and why this happens but it is safe to bend the supports up slightly to make the panel fit. I'd already worked this out by the time I spoke to them but it was good to have it confirmed.

In case you are concerned about bending said supports, I used the logic that if the welds broke I probably wouldn't want to drive the car anyway.

At last it fits. I've now attached it with rivets and adhesive so it's really not going anywhere. There is a thin bead of piping trim that runs between the rear panel and the top shroud. This was a little tricky to get right, but after spending some time getting the bends neat, it actually looks pretty good (as long as you don't look too closely at the bends in the panel underneath it).

Electrics

I decided to try to save a bit of money by doing the wiring for the car myself. This sounded like a simple enough idea as this is after all a fairly small and simple car. I am re-using the steering column from the MX-5 so the switches for the headlights, indicators, and windscreen wipers will be incorporated in to the new loom.

Starting at the back I have a loom that incorporates the brake, indicator, reverse, fog, and tail lights, along with the fuel level sender. This is wired back the the fuses and relays mounted on the engine side of the firewall.

The loom that runs to the front of the car connects the headlights, indicators, fan, and horn. These are all terminated on connector blocks ready to be linked to the lights when installed. The engine obviously requires a lot of wiring, but this will be kept separate.

The stalk switches from the MX-5 Steering column are wired to a junction box under the passenger foot well. These will control the headlights, indicators, and wipers.

There's a lot more to this wiring business than you might think. For example, the indicators also have to act as hazard lights. The hazards need to be able to flash with the ignition switched off, and the indicators should only work with the ignition on. There also needs to be an indication on the dashboard when the hazard lights are active, so there needs to be two separate flasher units, one each for the indicators, and the hazards.

It's been a little difficult to check the wiring with no lights connected but I have managed to test some of them and I am pleased to say that so far all have work as planned. The indicators can only be seen so far on the lights on the dashboard and I don't think there is quite enough load for the flasher units to work properly so the lights just fade on and off. Hopefully that will be resolved when I connect the exterior lights.

The dashboard is now more or less finished. I've wired it on an extra length of cable so to enable the whole panel to be removed and allow access to the wiring and ECU attached to the firewall.

That's where it is at the moment. Rear panel to do, and get some lights on.

Back in the Garage

I can't believe it's been 5 months since my last post on this blog. It's not that nothing is happening, just for some reason I haven't managed to convey work to writing. I am still contributing to the Complete Kit Car magazine Running Reports feature which I would recommend for anyone interested in understanding what it is really like to build a kit or one-off car.

For the people who tell me, or at least I hear about, who are looking at this blog to see how the car is getting on, sorry for leaving you in the dark! Let get you up to date...

There are two main sections that have had concentrated effort since I last wrote - Brakes and Wiring. Lets start with Brakes now and I'll do wiring in a few days.

For some time I have resisted putting the brakes on the car. The limited space in the garage means that with the brakes fitted there will very little room to move around the car to do other work. Unfortunately I got to a point where I could not carry on until I had the brakes fitted and knew the pipework was good and didn't need anymore work. I already had the rear suspension and drive shafts fitted so it makes sense to fit the rear brakes on the uprights, the front ones however can be attached to the pipework and bled, and left tied up to the front shock absorber mounts.

The brakes are the original Mazda MX-5 brakes. I have stripped the front ones down, sandblasted them, and panted them (roughly) the same colour as the GRP nosecone and wheel arches will be. The rear ones were not so easy as they contain an over-complicated self-adjusting mechanism for the handbrake - more on that later.

With the help of my brother (OK to be fair, he did most of it) we fitted new rubbers, seals, and pistons to the calipers. I later sprayed the rear ones orange to match the fronts. See the previous post from February for more details.

I bought a full set of brake pads and disks for the car so before putting the calipers on and filling the system with horrible brake fluid, I trial fitted the newly refurbished calipers with the pads and disks. Front - no problem. A little tight, but the hub rotated and nothing that wont free up with a little running. Rears however, not so good.

Basically, the pads and disk will not fit inside the caliper. They are about a millimeter too wide, which is miles by brake tolerances. A bit of research reveals that handbrake is to blame...

It seems the complicated self-adjusting mechanism embedded in the calipers has a tendency to self-adjust itself to a point where it cannot be adjusted back. I won't pretend to understand how this can happen and rather than spending hours, or probably months, working out what can be done about it, I have purchased some shiny new ones, and pained them orange.

Fitting them and bleeding the system was relatively easy when you have someone to help who knows what they are doing. More thanks to my brother for giving up his weekend, rewarded only with all the curry and beer he could consume (and he can consume a lot).

One problem we have was a fracture in one of the copper brake lines. Copper with work-harden, meaning it becomes more brittle as it is bent. The line that failed was the first one I fitted to the car, and it is certainly possible I worked it a lot more than it should have suffered as I tried to route it round the chassis. It was the first brake line I have ever fitted after all!

New role of copper pipe purchased and fitted.

The brakes are now in place and the system is bled and working nicely. There is a pressure sensor in the rear T-piece that will trigger the brake lights when the rest of the electrics are fitted.


Electrics next. Give me a few days...!