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Start the new year with a bit of sketchiness

Fired up the plasterboard drill, set on 160mm or around 6.3 inches for you old folk.

Nothing beats 2 blades spinning and a steel bar chewing through metal.

Got there in the end, had to let it skim the metal as any pressure caused it to snatch, which isnt fun at all




Chucked the first coat of colour on as well, getting there now

Bought some 13mm id heater hose today.

I can now confirm that this little matrix does chuck out a reasonable amount of heat. I expect it will be better once out on the road and the engine is running at speed and it's bled through properly. Either way, it should provide enough warmth to stop me crying gently inside my goggles.


I never did like the headlight bezels on the Scamp, they looked a proper afterthought even painted body colour.

Just look at them! (Best not mention that vile grille either, I'll attend to that)




Luckily for me the led headlights have a kind of built in bezel as they can be used on motorbikes.

Unluckily for me this meant new panel work as the current holes are huge and are also surrounded by mounting holes.

So I took her face off



Then I battered the panel flanges flat






I marked them up on fresh aluminium, cut them out then bent them up in the folder.




Made both sides and fitted the centre panel to check it's all good




I've marked them ready to drill the new hole, I've got an adjustable hole saw for timber, but as it's really thin alu I'm hoping that will be fine?

Anyway, it's new years eve so I'm inside now with a dry cider 👌

Some things happened over the Xmas period inbetween cheese.


I started her up with everything connected and ran her for a good 20 mins.

Happy to report the temperature stayed around the 75-80 degree mark and the oil pressure at a steady rpm was nice and strong




You'll note I haven't included a pic of the Tacho there. Turns out its a bit modern and wants a signal of 2v/4v from an ecu. My coil is throwing out around 7v/9v so I now need to build a voltage reduction circuit.


Remember a long while back, the exhaust snapped on the way home from RRG. I found the culprit and Santa brought me the fix






Top engine steady bushes were toast. Oh and it's bent!


Lastly, my matrix arrived. I was going to go all cardboard-aided-design and build an elaborate steel enclosure, but then I was in Wickes and figured a few quids worth of duct reducers would work just as well.

These have now been siliconed to the radiator to fill in the gaps and fit the 4inch fan perfectly. They're also really light.

I wonder how long before that reg is on a stolen one?


#CynicalThursdays

I'm having a single outlet Rian, under the steering wheel, straight at me.


I don't think i'll ever be in a sauna, but having something that just takes the chill off is worth the kilo or so in weight.






Also, they're small enough and cheap enough, that I can stack 2 or 3 up to up heat output if necessary!

Looking around on the interwebs at compact heaters for kit cars etc and came across this little gem.


It's a tiny little thing made by T7 Designs.

Claims to put out 3.5kw




It's £130 though


So I looked at it a bit closer, I don't need the fan as I have one, and I don't need multiple vent posistions either, so basically the compact radiator.

I've looked for ages at heater matrix's and couldnt find one small enough, but then a random eBay browse came up trumps




This is the exact radiator used on the T7 heater


Turns out it's for water cooling computers. It also turns out they're £8


So i've ordered one of those.



I was also sceptical about the claimed heat output of such a small radiator, but YouTube showed one fitted to a Lotus putting out over 55 degrees of crotch warming air

The seat is very much a plastic affair.

Anything rested on it would no doubt go walkies when parked up

Even with half the amount of ancillaries there's still a fair amount of wiring going on.




She's getting there now though.

All the gauges work now, inc. the GPS speedo.

The lights are wired bar the main switch as I still have no idea where would be best to place it. I can't actually reach the dash when i'm harnessed in and the steering column doesnt have a lot of room to install a switch.

I'm thinking possibly fitting it into the side panel next to the seat?


I also looked at heat. Now an open topped car is never going to be warm; but the trip back from the Gathering told me some sort of heat wouldn't go amiss.

Again, I want everything to be hidden, so behind the dash it has to be.

First problem, finding a fan compact enough, but also powerful enough to blow warm air from under the steering wheel at my crotch.

Ended up with the 4 inch bilge fan, she chucks out 270CFM at full pelt.




Being 4 inches means I can use normal extractor fan fittings. I've gone for a 90 degree bend into rectangle section for the inlet, which draws air in from below the dash, so it should be clean and water free.




Finally a pic of the behind the dash showing locations.




I'm now struggling with finding a heater matrix small enough to actually fit in the small space (about 150mm square and 25cm long)

I'm tempted to make my own out of microbore copper pipe by coiling it up inside a piece of 4 inch tube.

Anyone reckon this will give me enough heat output?

Quite a fair bit done this weekend, but as it's wiring, it's slow going so I wont bore you with a hundred pics of yellow thin wall.

You can see I don't follow the mindset of purchasing 1m of yellow with a blue stripe and .75m of it with a green stripe etc.

What I do is use a single colour per circuit, then I print a label for each end of the wire and clear shrink tube is on.

I figure unless you somehow manage to cut through the whole loom randomly in the middle of it, this is fine (saves looking up the wiring diagram when you can see at a glance)


The fuse box is in and the relay to power it all.





What I do (and i'm in no way saying this is the correct way) is to only have the ignition key on a direct to battery circuit.

When the key is turned it energises the big 100Amp relay you can see on the left, which then powers up the fuse board.

This means there is only a single wire with any sort of power running though it when the car is off.


Also, I got the gauges working