Rear Wings & Dash (part 3)

I decided to take a couple of days off work following my birthday as I was eager to fit the new parts I had so gratefully acquired! Before I could crack on I needed to turn the car around, the junk I have in the garage meant it was easier to work at the front of the car - not really that useful when I have rear wings to fit. So the car had it's first outing on the open road, admittedly pushed by my brother & I. Stupidly I didn't take any photos of this, they would have made really good pictures given the sun was out and the road was clear.

Rear Wings
I had a relaxed start on Monday morning and decided to tackle the rear wings first, from reading other blogs I was aware that I needed to remember to add in the rubber tubing (same stuff as on the rear panel) between the wing and the side of the car. With this in mind I pulled out the tubing and hung it off the back of the car so I wouldn’t forget. I've also seen that most people use rivnuts to secure the wings, I can't stand these so had decided to use M8x20 Allen head bolts, large flat washers and some nylocs. I had the nut heads on the inside of the car, will probably be covered with carpet but will give flat(ish) look.

The overall prep and fitting was pretty easy, the wings are what they are and shouldn't be that difficult to fit. When the car is fully built I will add a small amount of Sikeflex just to give that added strength.

I then focused on the rear lights; I had chosen a nice set of LED lights that sit in elevated round pods. The difficulty I had here was ensuring that the lights were the same height, straight and level on both sides!  The lights are universal and as such I had to make up a bracket to get them attached to the car, the advantage of this meant that I could also design it in such a way to minimise the drilling required in the actual wing. For security and piece of mind the rivets are mounted through a 1.5mm piece of steel, then through the wing and onto a thick steel bracket attached the light. I have 2 long reach 3mm rivets and 1 standard 4mm rivet per light. The fog and reverse lights are held on with 2 M6x15 bolts, secured in the bespoke brackets and secured between the rear panel and the fuel tank. Note to all other builds, think about lights before you fit the rear panel as its a tight squeeze!

The lights took longer than I had planned, well into Tuesday however I'm mega chuffed with how the lights are looking, just need a battery now so I can start to test things.

Dash - wiring up
Having received the final switches I needed to complete the dash I set about completing the wiring, everything was precut all I needed to do was add a bit of solder to a couple of connections. Once done I placed the dash in the car, having built my own loom I need to attach this to the standard GBS plug. So in true Formula 1 style I was sat in the car with my laptop place on the scuttle with my wiring diagram on show. I needed this to show my which GBS colour matched with each plug I had created. About 5 wires from the end the laptop died and I called it a day as it was getting late (Tuesday evening). Will revisit this next weekend and plan to test in a few weeks once I have the battery installed (and bought!)

Most of the wiring in the car is now complete except for the small engine loom, I still need to purchase this from GBS as they didn't have any at Stoneleigh.

Might have to focus my attention back to the engine soon, alternator still to fit and I now have a fan temp switch to fit.