Da booty 's ready

For once I'm quite satisfied with how it turned out. The goal was to have a boot with a hard cover, wide opening, but keep the rollbar and struts. With the fuel filler moved to the top, another challenge was to integrate it into the look. Talking looks, I wanted it to be close to the tonneau cover the car originally had. The result shows the upper edge of the bodywork covered with leatherette. The carriage bolts simulate the press studs you normally see there. Two chromed hinges are used to fix the cover to the rollbar basis. A cabinet latch is used to lock. A nicely chromed escutcheon covers the hole for the square drive.
Cheers.

Roll bar and struts

 

One of my goals is to build an aluminium hard cover for the boot. It composes of two fixed side panels and a center section that can be opened. The struts supporting the roll bar have therefore to go through the fixed side panels. Carefull measuring and then the hole cutter came out.
Cheers.

Hammer collection

Did a little bit of clean-up tonight and aligned my hammer collection ...
Cheers.

Running again

Film <<< (Uploading to this blog doesn't work for the moment, please click to go to youtube)
shows the ignition key, starter button, injection system, ignition coilpack, fusebox and Emerald ECU.
Cheers.

Error found - engine is running

Finally, after hours of work (mostly search), I found the error. I didn't take enough care when wiring the ECU and chose the wrong ignition driver for cylinders 2 & 3. Why the engine started with the wrong wiring, I don't know, but I will ask at Emerald to understand. To be on the safe side, I also changed the coilpack, HT-leads and sparkplugs:
- coilpack Bremi part# 11875 (less than half the price of the original from Ford)
- HT-leads Bosch 2x FD65 and 2x FD75
- sparkplugs NGK BP7ES
Cheers.

Bonnet fitting

The bonnet, as some other parts, is from Caterham. It comes with a protective foil (blue) which is a PITA to pull off, especially around the edges. During TechnoClassica in Essen yesterday, I bought adhesive rubber seal for the bonnet's locating surface. Some minor adaptations still have to be made.
Cheers.

Losing time

Spring finally arrived, 18°C outside, and still not ready. The engine doesn't start. After changing the crank sensor (left pic shows the new completed bracket), it took me hours to understand that there must be another fault. I found a connection between the ECU and the coilpack that is interrupted. Why it is, I don't know. I replaced the wire with a direct connection but still no spark on plugs two and three. Next thing is to order a new coilpack and HT leads to further investigate. Hope it is not the ECU ... again.
Cheers.

New crank sensor bracket

A design fault of my first bracket made that the sensor could touch the trigger wheel. With the new Marelli sensor, I had to design another bracket with a different bolt pattern. It is made of two parts: #1 fixed to the engine front cover, #2 angle bracket supporting the sensor (prototype pictured). This allows to set the gap between the sensor and the trigger wheel to the required 0.8 to 1mm. Not enough time left to solder the minitimer connector, the test if the sensor was the fault (engine not starting) has to wait for next time.
Cheers.

Bootlid - adapting the panels

The bootlid will be made of three parts: two fixed panels (left and right) and the center panel can be opened. When the chassis was stripped, I welded small brackets to the upper rails and cut 8mm thread into them. Now I can fix those panels to the brackets.

The Marelli sensors arrived from Emerald. As always I was quite impatient to receive the parcel. Everything is there and next time I will manufacture a bespoke bracket for that nice italian crank position sensor (Maseratis use the same !!!).
Cheers.

Bootlid - aluminium panels

Some more work done on the front cycle wing pattern.

Aluminium panels cut and bent to build the bootlid.
Cheers.