IV'A Been Busy With More Prep Work

As well as covering up all the ‘ahem’ sharp corners to keep the IVA man happy, I also needed to attend to the rear wheels for the trip to the test station. On my first little jaunt around the block, I had the temporary build wheels on. On the test it will have the wheels I intend to use (the BBS refurbs). 

These wheels and tyres have a different offset and are wider than the old ones, and the inside edge was way too close to the tub and its fixings for comfort - under load and suspension travel, I could end up tearing lumps out of the tyre on the bolts. Not good. 

So, I measured up how much space I had from the outer face of the tyre to the edge of the rear wing, subtracted a couple of mm to ensure the tyre was still inside the wing, and ordered some spacers:

They’re 20mm thick, and hub-centric - that is they engage on the centre bore of the hub exactly, so the weight of the car isn’t just held by the bolts. The spacer has a matching centre bore on it’s outer surface that mates with the wheel, so it’s all very secure.

What with the track on each side being increased by 20mm, the standard wheel bolts wouldn’t reach the hub - so I ended up having to get some longer ones:

Here’s the spacer on the hub, engaged with the centre bore. You can see that it has more than 4 holes -- this is because it’s dual use, and could be used on a BMW 5X100 PCD hub as well

With the wheel back on, you can see that it fills the arch nicely now, without protruding from it:

It wasn’t all plain sailing though. Those longer bolts caused some issues - After both wheels where on, I decided to move her on to the drive to get a bit more room to work. That’s when I found out the bolts where a little too long, and where fouling on something on the rear trailing arm - meaning she was going nowhere!

Measuring the old bolts and adding 20mm to them should have given the correct length, which is what I did - but the seats of the new bolts are that much narrower (see above) than the existing bolts that it has the effect of letting the bolt sit lower in the wheel, meaning more thread protrudes out the back of the hub. It took my mate and I about an hour of head scratching to work out what was going on.

I ended up having to grind 3-4mm of each of the bolts to get them to clear whatever it was that it was binding up on. Ce la vie.

Once that was done, and she was out in the open, I could get on and do other boring bits and bobs to ensure the IVA man was happy. Like adding yet more rubber edging to the most unlikely places (the undersides of the front lower wishbones for one), and turning the exhaust tips inboard so the non radiused edges where out of the way.

Covering up all these little bit and bobs started to make me paranoid about the electrics under the dash. If an out of the way bit of metal on the underside of the car could be construed to be sharp, what about the fuse panel and the ECU?

Rather than tempt fate, I ended up making this cover:

It’s aluminium sheet I had left over from the boot, folded to add strength and riveted together as I didn’t have anything wide enough. I covered it the side facing into the cockpit with the same carpet as on the tunnel and sides, and with some foam on the inner side. It swings down on some velcro ‘hinges’ at the bottom edge, and is kept up with a couple of velcro tapes passed through holes in the top edge which stick to heavy duty velcro coins under the dash.

With it up, there’s nothing that could be deemed sharp under there now. And it’s very secure - I’m pretty siure if I tried to remove the upper velcro coins or lower tape holding the hinges, I’d take chunks of the chassis with them...

I’ve also printed out my fuse panel map and had it laminated, and stuck that to the inner side of the panel:

So at least I’ll know in the future which fuse does what once I’ve forgotten how it’s all hooked up under there. ;-) 

There was one last thing I did in prep for the big day - that was take her for an MOT. The guys at the local garage where quite intrigued with her, and unlike some places they knew that they could issue a ticket on the chassis number. She passed the MOT with no problems - although I did manage to get the full set of Pass, Advisory and Fail sheets from them - Fail on the headlight beam alignment, which they sorted there and then for me, an Advisory stating that the car had been presented without windscreen, washers or wipers and the MOT certificate itself. :-) 

I tell you what - it was a grand ride there, and a grand ride back! And it was nice to see all the puzzled faces at the Tesco filling station when I pulled up with out any plates! :-D