Three Bolts: Mk 4 Roadster Build

[carbon-12]

I've been extra busy with work lately, and that has gotten in the way of writing. Even so, I've kept up the work on the kit. Here's what I've been doing since my last update.

Front Suspension
I got two more adjustment sleeves for the upper control arms for the front suspension. Now both front wheels have negative camber. With that done, I set aside work on the front suspension for now.

front-suspension-sleeves.jpg
Shorter adjustment sleeves fitted on driver side.

Steering Rack
Now that finally got my front suspension into an approximately-correct geometry, I cut the inner tie rods to length and fitted the outer tie rods. I left plenty of extra length on the inner tie rods. I have a little more than two inches of engagement now, which should leave me enough even if I need to back off on the outer tie rods.

Gas Tank
I attached the gas tank… well… at least partially.

First off, I managed to damage the fuel tank vent as I was turning on the plastic bushing. Since I only have one 1" wrench, I mounted the plastic bushing in my vise, and turned on the vent with the wrench. I got the wrench in between the vent outlet and the vise, and since the vent metal is very soft, I sheered off the outlet as I turned to tighten. _Sigh_. I felt like a complete idiot. I ordered a replacement.

busted-fuel-vent.jpg
Busted part. It took genuine anti-talent to do this.

Next, I fitted my Walbro fuel pump into its bracket. I got these parts from Breeze Automotive. I'm hoping that this in-tank pump will work well with my MSD Atomic fuel injection system. I guess I'll see in a few more weeks once I've dropped in the engine, run some fuel lines, and hooked up some electrical connections.

After that, I struggled a bit with the gas tank itself. The fit of tank, straps, and chassis could have been better out of the box. I needed to bend the flanges on the tank to get it to mate up with the chassis better, but even after that, the straps still seem too short, especially on the passenger side. I ordered some longer socket cap bolts (3" long as opposed to the 2" longs bolts which come with the kit). They're due to arrive tomorrow, so I hope to make some more progress on the gas tank once they do.

gas-tank-strap.jpg
The passenger-side gas tank strap is too short. There's no way the 2" bolt in the kit will engage. In this picture, you see a 3" bolt I tested out. Unfortunately, this bolt won't work, since the upper mount is too narrow to get a wrench or socket on it to tighten. Ugh. I ordered 3" socket cap bolts.

Aluminum
The next step in the manual is passenger-side footbox aluminum, and I made some good progress this weekend. Since I plan to mark and drill all my panels before doing any riveting (on the expert advice of MPTech), I'm using clecos during the fitting, and #6 self-tapping screws once I have all the holes drilled where I want them. I hope to move on to the driver-side footbox soon.

passenger-footbox.jpg
Passenger footbox coming together.

[MPTech]

Your PS FB looks great, but if you are going 302 or 351, I'd HIGHLY recommend the PS FB mod. Your passengers would thank you if they knew how tight the original was. (I couldn't remember if you were going mod motor or otherwise.)

[Jeff Kleiner]

Good progress Ken. Strictly an aesthetic thing but you might want reconfigure your mockup so that the horizontal tabs for the engine side panel of the footbox are under the top panel rather than over. It will appear something like this (this is a Mk3 so the panels are shaped a bit different but they orient the same):



Keep it up

Jeff

[stroked 6t5]

I would also go with the PS footbox mod. I'm running a coyote and I did it and it was well worth the effort as you can stretch your legs right out.
Andy

[carbon-12]

Good progress Ken. Strictly an aesthetic thing but you might want reconfigure your mockup so that the horizontal tabs for the engine side panel of the footbox are under the top panel rather than over. It will appear something like this (this is a Mk3 so the panels are shaped a bit different but they orient the same):



Keep it up

Jeff

Thanks. I'll change the horizontal tabs.

[carbon-12]

I'm going with a 302, so I'll look into the PS footbox mod. Thanks for the suggestions, folks.

[carbon-12]

Over the past two weeks, I've been working on creating new sheet metal pieces for my passenger footbox. The parts which come with the kit can be used with a larger engine than I'm putting in my car, so in order to use the leftover space, I need to make them myself.

I didn't make the decision lightly. I've been looking to hit a smoother stride on the project after the difficulties of the front suspension and gas tank. But even so, I decided to give this passenger footbox customization a try. I figured that I could always fallback to parts provided in the kit if I fail to get the customization work done to my standards.

This is a concern, since I've never done any kind of work like this. It took a few days of experimenting with various techniques to put together a series of steps which might work.

Here's what I did.

Plans
I started with drawings I downloaded from the other forum (search for “passenger footbox”). These were scaled to a standard sheet of paper—way too small to be used as a real pattern. There are five sheets in all.

Scale
I opened the plans in Adobe Illustrator and enlarged them to 1:1 scale.

Print
I printed them out in tiles with 1" overlap between the pages. This means it took between nine and fifteen pages to represent the reproduce the entire drawing.

Tape
With these pages in hand, I spread them out our kitchen table and taped them together, being careful to get the alignment and spacing between the pages just right, to ensure that the measurements came out correctly.

Poster Board
Once this was done, I taped this collection of pages to a piece of large poster board.

cutting-out.jpg

Cut
I cut through the pattern and the posterboard to create a full-size template of the piece.

Identify
I printed out an 8.5" x 11" version of the plan for the piece and taped it down onto the full-size template.

Repeat
I repeated with the other four pieces.

Bend and Install Paper Template
With all the pieces cut out, I took them out to the garage and “installed” them on the car, bending the pieces as indicated on the plans.

----

That's where I am now. The templates fit pretty well. There are some issues in the corners, in the places where three pieces come together, and starting tomorrow night, I'm going to see what I can do make a better fit, altering the templates as needed.

passenger-footbox-outside.jpg passenger-footbox-engine-side.jpg passenger-footbox-inside.jpg

From here, I plan to trace the templates onto 6061 0.040" aluminum (which I ordered from Online Metals and already have on hand), and then cut them out at the TechShop in San Jose. They have several sheet metal tools on hand which should allow me to make all the cuts I need.

Lastly, I'll need to put the bends in the cut out metal. I'm a bit worried about that, but I'll try to make some angled templates. I'll do the best I can.

I hope to have my modifications and tracings ready for an early Saturday morning trip to the TechShop.

[MPTech]

Looks great Ken! I think you'll really like it, the size increase is significant. (the sad part is, your passenger will not know what you did, but YOU WILL! ride in an older model to see why this is such a GREAT MOD)

A couple points I'd improve if I did it again.
1. The outside panel at the rear had a funny cut-out for previous models that is not necessary for the mk4. (that's good! One less thing to cut out!)
2. The side panel on the engine side has 2 round cutouts, at the back of the panel that goes over the 4" main tube and the cut-out at the front that goes over the smaller front tube. Take your time cutting and fitting these for a tight fit. I did pretty well in the rear, but for the front cutout I ended up making an extra small plate to fit tightly around the hole and siliconed it in. Part of the issue is you have cut a "U" shape to go over the top, so there are small gaps on the bottom of the "U". I slid my new plate in from back to front.

Something else I did, was cut an additional 1/8" floor panel and siliconed / riveted it to the bottom when I installed the .040 floor panel. I did this to reduce the oil-can effect in the floor and also applied truck-bed liner to the bottom / outside surface. I made the extra panel so I didn't have to bend such a thick piece. It's just flat and attached to the bottom panel. Not necessary, but I like it!
Another thing I did, but totally un-necessary, was added Stainless Steel heat shields to the outside, next to the headers. I really didn't have a heat problem when I drove in gel-coat, but I really like the look in the engine bay.







Here's the difference I realized when I outlined the old panel on the new floor. You can also see some of the gap I had on the front round tube.


Hope this helps!

[carbon-12]

Yes! Great help! I looked over your work just now, but I'll need to study it more closely this evening when I have my car in front of me. Thanks!

[David Hodgkins]

I'm doing this mod right now. Good timing and thanks for posting pics! On question: on the outsid panel toward the front it looks like there is no tab to attach it to the floor panel. did either of you add one?

[carbon-12]

I'm doing this mod right now. Good timing and thanks for posting pics! On question: on the outsid panel toward the front it looks like there is no tab to attach it to the floor panel. did either of you add one?

You're right. There is no tab in the custom plans. I don't know if I should add one. I don't think the kit-provided panels have a tab either.

[carbon-12]

A couple points I'd improve if I did it again.
1. The outside panel at the rear had a funny cut-out for previous models that is not necessary for the mk4. (that's good! One less thing to cut out!)

Yep. I saw this. I squared this off on my template after I took my pictures.

2. The side panel on the engine side has 2 round cutouts, at the back of the panel that goes over the 4" main tube and the cut-out at the front that goes over the smaller front tube. Take your time cutting and fitting these for a tight fit. I did pretty well in the rear, but for the front cutout I ended up making an extra small plate to fit tightly around the hole and siliconed it in. Part of the issue is you have cut a "U" shape to go over the top, so there are small gaps on the bottom of the "U". I slid my new plate in from back to front.

Great advice. I'll take extra care as I do my fittings for this panel.

Thanks!

[carbon-12]

I just finished up a very busy month of work in my job, and I finally have a bit of brain power left over to write an update.

Since my last post, I spent all my time on the kit working on the aluminum. Unfortunately, a lot of this effort won't wind up on the finished car. This is another way of saying that I decided to give up on making custom panels for my passenger footbox. In the end, my skills just weren't up to it, and although I invested something close to thirty hours trying to make everything fit right and look good, I was forced to admit that they didn't.

The anti-epiphany came two weekends ago when I put the kit-supplied panels back on the car after a long and frustrating session of trimming and fitting my custom panels. There was no denying that the panels in the kit fit so much better. So, I'm going back to them. This is disappointing, but I'm glad I made the effort. I had never even attempted to cut and bend sheet metal before, and making a paseenger footbox was a pretty difficult first project. I learned a lot along the way, and I'll be better off the next time I try my hand at custom sheet metal fabrication.

Since this change back to the kit panels, I've been doing more marking, drilling, and fitting. I now have the passenger footbox and floor done, and most of the driver side is together as well.

stock-passenger-footbox.jpg
The stock passenger footbox fitted once again.

driver-cockpit-aluminum.jpg
Driver side cockpit aluminum coming along.

I also fell behind on keeping my Lotus looking spiffy, so I need to wash the daily driver. I might be done with aluminum for this afternoon, but even so, I think I can finish up the driver panels in the next couple of evenings, and complete the rest of the cockpit aluminum in a few days more.

[carbon-12]

This past weekend was the first in a couple months where I focused more on the car than on my day job—that means I made some progress.

I finally finished up the cockpit aluminum by attaching the large piece which goes behind the driver and passenger seats.

cockpit-aluminum-1.jpg
No rivets yet, just clecos, then self-tapping screws.

cockpit-aluminum-2.jpg
The two panels on the sides were part of my powder coating practice. Eventually, all the panels will get the same treatment.

Once done, I tried to start making sense of fuel delivery. Since I ordered my crate engine with an MSD Atomic fuel injection system, I won't be running hard lines for fuel. The directions from MSD are very clear on that point. Instead, the fuel injection kit comes with some sturdy 5/8" OD rubber-ish tubing. That will certainly be simpler to run from the tank up to the engine, and since I won't be using a return line, and I already put together my in-tank fuel pump, I hope this step will go pretty easily. I also drilled a hole in the 4" tube under the passenger seat to secure the fuel filter. I ordered some 5/8" Cushioned Stainless Steel Cable Clamps to secure the fuel line to the chassis. Once that arrives, I'll attach the fuel line and connect it to the fuel filter.

fuel-filter.jpg
Fuel filter.

After that, I attached the flexible brake lines to the front brakes. Then, I started thinking about running the hard brake lines. Since I've never bent brake lines before, I wanted to experiment with the shape I'd need to connect the front brakes, so I went out to Home Depot and bought some 1/8" steel rod. This worked well. Within a few minutes, I had a shape I can use to transfer to the hard line.

brake-hard-line-template.jpg
This is half the bends I'll need to connect the front brakes with hard lines. The other half of the shape is a mirror image of this one.

I'll be out of town for a few days to celebrate a long Fourth of July weekend with my family, so this marks my pre-holiday stopping point. I'm looking forward to getting back, and pushing through this work, and the few additional steps left to go before installing the drive train.

[edwardb]

Just a hint. Before you mount the cockpit wall permanently, it's easier to first mount the trunk pieces right behind it. Some of the rivets on the trunk pieces are very difficult to reach otherwise.

[carbon-12]

Just a hint. Before you mount the cockpit wall permanently, it's easier to first mount the trunk pieces right behind it. Some of the rivets on the trunk pieces are very difficult to reach otherwise.

Thanks for the tip!

[DaleG]

Most of us find that out the hard way.