It doesn't look like a car any more....

For a little while, anyway. We took the main tub off to paint the inside in black once all the suspension holes had been finished off. While it's off, there have been a few jobs to do to the interior.

First off was to mount the rear panel. This isn't too difficult, but it needed a lot of trimming to make it fit - it took all afternoon to get it right! once it was done, we secured it with rivnuts, to make sure we can remove it easily-ish if we need to. Claire trimmed some foam to put along the chassis bars to stop it rattling too much, it just needs some silkaflex along the top rail, we don't want any foam visible there.

We also trimmed up the Ali panel which is visible under the scuttle. The finish wasn't great on the bare panel (I'm much better at metalwork now!) so we wanted it covered. Some more foam with some leatherette and spray glue gives it a softer finish.

On Sunday we decided to mount the oil cooler- we had to make up a bracket to make it fit, and make sure that the pipes we had made up at Merlin fit (they do! We're getting better at this...). Some Ali strip, a couple of rivnuts and some nuts and bolts had the cooler in place. We've also mounted all of the radiator hoses now, as they run close to each other in some places, and we need to make sure it all fits together.


Finally for this update, last night we started on the other water pipes. We cut and fitted the pipe between the water pump and the manifold, this is black braid rather than steel (to do it all in steel would have been hideously pricey!), and figured out that we had the right bits to do the rest, and roughly where they're all going to go. Another job for the weekend! We need to glass an ali plate into the scuttle to mount the header tank against, fit the interior panels, refit the bodywork properly, and carry on plumbing the engine
... Not all this weekend, we're off to the Renault World Series on Saturday, which should be fun...

As usual, more piccies in the picasa album here.