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Post by stevew on May 22, 2019 18:15:58 GMT
Stu, you certainly don't believe in making things easy for yourself do you! A DD bar and a DD/36 spline UJ is much easier. Good solution in the end though. BTW the captive nut comes off easy if you put the bolt in and give the head a tap with a hammer, it's only pressed in place.
Cheers Steve
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Post by buildityourself on May 22, 2019 20:14:29 GMT
Cheers Steve, thats a good tip. Wish I'd realised it was just pressed in.
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Post by buildityourself on Jun 6, 2019 20:21:04 GMT
Although we will only be mostly using it on the road and for the occasional track day, I've wanted to have the option of fitting a full roll cage to the Sonic7. Even on a twisty country B road an under estimated bend could end up with a diversion through a wire fence into a field, which could have nasty consequences. Having a bit of extra protection for the occupants seems a good idea in addition to the normal roll over bar. When speaking to a company that could make a roll cage, they recommended that the cage is extended and connected to the lower chassis rails. This has been a long challenge working out how to approach this but I have come up with a solution that seems feasible hence this slightly off piste update from the normal build steps. I got some 6mm plates cut and bent to fit around the chassis bars. I was informed by the fabricator that this "much" thicker than normal roll cage mounts that they make, hence the extra 4kg of weight this will add to the car for the little 1.6 engine to haul around. I didn't these to just bend/buckle etc so hopefully this was the right approach. The flat plates go at the rear of the cage. Mounting holes will be drilled to suit and allow tolerances of the roll cage when fitting. The bent plates go at the front of the cage and will have captive nuts as bolting in when the body is fitting is not easily possible. We had to strip back the paint on the chassis and got them welded in and primered. Removing layers of previously applied paint was somewhat sole destroying but necessary. I was worried that the previously bonded and vinyl wrapped alloy floor might suffer, but it survived the heat with no problems. Then top coat applied and its starting to look promising again. Unfortunately as the plates intrude into the cockpit area some of the paneling is now going to be more complex. However as this is done, it has unblocked lots of other jobs that can now progress :-). Another update shortly.
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Post by kiwicanfly on Jun 6, 2019 23:05:22 GMT
Hopefully you will never find out whether the extra weight from the extra "strength" was worth it!
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Post by buildityourself on Jun 11, 2019 19:51:25 GMT
Moving on to the alloy interior panels next. These come as pre cut sheets with the kit, but for the side panels you need to work out where to mark and fold them. Both end need roughly a right angle bend, and the front section an acute angle. We marked out the bend positions. This needed some rusty maths to take into account the radius of the bends! Then not having a folding machine (brake?) we had to work out how to fold the metal. This turned out best to be a block of wood and a lump hammer and a workmate with some angle iron to create an edge. Quite nerve racking as if this went wrong then new panels would be needed. I think having these accurately prebent would be a worthwhile option for the kit for some builders. Miraculously this turned out ok and the panels fitted within the chassis. So the measurements, maths and EKC's precut panellengths were perfect. So now with all panels temporarily fitted its starting to look more like a car or something. We had to cut out triangles for the roll cage mounts to fit perfectly as the mounts protrude into the cockpit area by the thickness of the metal. This will also allow the cage to be fitted later without damaging the panels or body. Another update soon...
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Post by buildityourself on Aug 20, 2019 20:58:16 GMT
The Coolant pipes Initially we had the idea of mounting the coolant pipes low down on the chassis to keep the centre of gravity lower and also to avoid air locks as the pipes are usually higher than the engine and radiator entry points. Having seen that snowbird1 also had this approach and made it work gave confidence. The pipes were mounted with the front of the pipe ending between the wishbones to avoid the suspension travel. This was completed a while back but not reported on as we wanted to test fit the body first. The time to do this came and after finally managing to get the passenger side panel on we found that due to the previously unknown scallop in the body meant that there was not quite enough room and the pipe clamp stopped the panel fully reaching its correct position. We looked at moving the pipe up or down slightly but due to the bend in the pipe and extensions it didn't quite work and the connecting hose would have been too close to the wishbone. I think with a bit more thought this could be made to work but the plan was changed and we decided to mount the pipes as low as we could without causing other issues. The new idea was to mount underneath the outrigger bars. This required some extra brackets to mount/support the pipe so we made these from angle alloy. These were then powdercoated. The brackets secured to the chassis. The final position of the mounted pipes.
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Post by buildityourself on Sept 1, 2019 20:31:12 GMT
We wrapped the alloy panels with vinyl carbon effect wrap and riveted the panels to the chassis. For the rear bulkhead we needed to drill holes for the various cables first. These were mocked up in hardboard to check the routing was ok and create a template. This was then transferred to the alloy sheet and drilled. My lesson here about measure twice cut once did not go to plan, as the holes were in the perfect position but the panel has a fold along the top edge and had been flipped over so the end result was a mirror image of what we wanted! I cut out some blanks and had these welded into the holes and then recreated it correctly. spot the difference.
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Post by buildityourself on Sept 2, 2019 20:28:44 GMT
After test fitting the rear bulkhead, we realised that the height was important for lining up with the body panels and we had just marked and cut out the holes based on the supplied piece of alloy. We had to bring the body panels out of storage to measure and test fit to see if it was ok. First this required modifications to the chassis trestles as they were too wide which would prevent the body tucking under the chassis. This was a challenge to remove whilst supporting a chassis/engine 18" off the floor. (There is a tip here for when making them). The height between the two sides on the body seemed to vary by about 1cm for some reason but even though there is some flex in the panel I didn't think one side would stretch enough to fit the 500mm bulkhead. We tried fitting the side pods which was very difficult on one side and impossible on the other as we had fitted the engine prior to the body panels therefore the engine mount was in the way of mounting the body. (there is a tip here about assembly order!). It did n't seem possible to get the body to line up with the bulkhead on the side that we managed to fit over the chassis. After checking with Equlibrium and other builders it seems 490mm is about the agreed height for the rear bulkhead. So the options were to get the holes welded up again as they would be moved down by 10mm interfering with the brake pipes, or create a new bulkhead. Whilst test fitting the bulkhead we noticed that there was a gap between the bulkhead and the side panel. These are quite minor and we had not noticed before on the demo car or other builds. However once you have seen them you can't unsee them and I knew I would regret leaving them so this made the decision to create a new bulkhead easier even though it needs a couple of folds in the panel. New panel verse old. Wrapped. Fitted We haven't attempted to refit the body, so fingers crossed it will later fit and line up as there is no plan B.
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Post by buildityourself on Sept 4, 2019 21:01:30 GMT
Fuel pipes Being unsure about issues about future bio fuel eating rubber hoses I didn't want to use braided or rubber hoses so we went for kunifer hardlines. (if I did this again I found that you can get aluminum tube cheaper) This came rolled up like the brake pipes so the first task was to straighten it out with the home made straightener. To make the build even more challenging! I didn't want to route the fuel pipes down the outside of the chassis, which left only through the centre of the cockpit as an option. First an alloy support bracket was cut and bent to go around the gear lever. In position in the car. The pipes were then bent by hand to follow the profile of the bracket. In hindsight the bend round the gearstick was probably not needed as the bracket could have run the full length as a straight piece, but I was trying not to encroach on footspace at the time. The intention was to p clip the pipes to the bracket but due to the third pipe there was not enough room for the p clip bolts. Taking inspiration from youtube Project Binky (if you want to learn fabrication its great to watch) Project binky fuel linesAs per the video, we bought some Polyethlyene plastic (fuel tanks are made from this) and cut out the clamp pairs Unfortunately I don't seem to have photo'd the finished items, so my technical drawing will have to do. The holes in the bulkheads were fitted with grommets to protect/seal the pipes. First the floor was fitted and the gearshifter/handbrake. The pipes passed through but not yet secured. The ends of the pipe were bent and fanned out. We had half flared the pipe ends to help secure the rubber hoses to the pipes. The front end was easy as these were bent before pushing fully into position. The rear was a pig trying to get the bends as close to the bulkhead as the bending tool would allow. If we did this again we would probably go for a bulkhead union.
The finished result once secured with the clamps.
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Post by kiwicanfly on Sept 4, 2019 22:16:13 GMT
What size is the pipe?
Curious that if you went for cunifer due to future fuel issues what are you doing for the required flexible section where you join to the engine/fuel tank?
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Post by buildityourself on Sept 5, 2019 6:12:02 GMT
I will use rubber here, but this is then easier to replace later if any problems. Its 8mm pipe same as in the Focus donor.
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Post by buildityourself on Sept 11, 2019 20:29:46 GMT
Next task was the hand brake and gear selector cables. The new handbrake cable had some plastic sleeves that had a metal clip around to fit to the Focus. After removing the metal clip i decided to use the sleeve as a grommet through the bulkhead as there would be no easy way to fit one over the ends of the cables. The original sleeves Modified to remove the lip from the caliper ends. The handbrake was bolted onto the chassis and the cables connected and passed through the bulkhead. To help with the radius of the cables they cross over inside the car The sleeves being loose help the cable curve, and we will fill the gap with sikaflex once routed. With the gearshifter already bolted to the chassis, the gear cables were passed through the bulkhead and using the original rubber seal bolted and connected to the shifter.
After a bit of adjustment at the shifter end and at the gearbox end we had all gears selecting which was very satisfying. One of the cables is quite tight against the engine intake so we might need a sleeve or bracket to avoid it rubbing through.
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Post by buildityourself on Sept 25, 2019 20:03:49 GMT
Throttle Cable The first thing was to work out how to replace the focus fitting at the throttle body end. A quick post in the technical section had numerous options available thanks to other Sonic7 owners. mevowners.proboards.com/thread/10048/focus-throttle-cable-fittingThe Focus cable was scavenged for its useful parts, discarding the remaining inner/outer cable. The lump of plastic containing the cable end was cut off and filed to leave the plastic ring. The plastic ring then had a groove filed around the centre which would hold the inner cable. The inner cable was wrapped around the ring and clamped with not just 1 but 2 clamps. This all went to plan, and then it went a bit wrong. I had bought 5m of inner and outer cable. The outer cable was routed amd fitted to the chassis and there was about 30cm excess that needed to be cut off to fit the pedal. We then went to feed the inner cable through but the bare end of the cable was slightly frayed so I cut approx 6cm off to get a clean end to feed through. We feed it through with the throttle end on and found that the end was just long enough we pulled through to make sure the slack was out of the cable and crimped the end on. Only then did we realise that pulling the slack had pulled the throttle body end off so the cable was not long enough. I couldn't work out what had gone wrong. so we measured the cable run. It turned out that the outer cable had been supplied with excess length, and the inner cable exactly 5m. So when we cut of the 6cm thinking we still had 24cm of excess we had actually lost our excess cable. Frustratingly a new nipple and inner cable had to be ordered. So if anyone needs <5m cable I have some. We repeated the exercise the following weekend this time ensuring that we didn't cut anything off and the end was secured full on the throttle body. The cable routing around the chassis. The return spring on the pedal had to be removed and just with the throttle body spring the action is very heavy. I'm assuming this is just because of the drag of the long cable run or the ratio of the pedal? Now we have gears and a throttle at least working.
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Post by kiwicanfly on Sept 25, 2019 22:11:21 GMT
Probably too late to tell you how to get the excess outer cable off without having to remove the inner!
However should it need to be done in the future use a very fine cutting disk on a Dremel tool, you can slice through each layer of outer cable with the disk until you reach the inner Teflon lining which you then cut off with a craft knife thus not damaging the inner cable.
If you don't have a Dremel tool - buy one they are so useful.
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Post by buildityourself on Sept 26, 2019 19:12:57 GMT
Probably too late to tell you how to get the excess outer cable off without having to remove the inner! However should it need to be done in the future use a very fine cutting disk on a Dremel tool, you can slice through each layer of outer cable with the disk until you reach the inner Teflon lining which you then cut off with a craft knife thus not damaging the inner cable. If you don't have a Dremel tool - buy one they are so useful. It wasn't the outer that was too long, but the inner too short! I did consider as you suggested by shortening the outer but that would have have made the radius of the bends tighter.
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