We Have a Car!

The uprights arrived finally yesterday, so today was a busy day of fitting the four corners, attaching the brakes and putting the wheels on (yay!). Found that the handbrake cable was too fat for the hole on the calipers, so I used a hand file to make the hole slightly larger:

 

Everything went together really easily, however, the bolts for the upper mount for the rear uprights were too short - I have a feeling it is because the Protech dampers are a little wider. I don't have any thread showing through the nylock nut at all:

Torquing up the balljoint nuts on the front suspension was possible using a wobble bar attached to the torque wrench - it gave just enough flexibility to be able to access the nut.

So I got the car down off the build stands using my engine hoist and trolley jack - that was the easy part of the afternoon - I now have a car in my courtyard:

I knew it wouldn't get through the gate with the wheels on, but I thought it would just fit through with them off - unfortunately I was wrong - it was about 1" too wide at the rear. I had expected this, to be honest, and thought that if I was able to tip the chassis on its side I would be able to get it out - easier said than done! I finally did it using the hoist and the jack again (hoist at the rear right corner and the jack under the front right wheel). It was a bit precarious, but I was able to get enough of an angle to get the rear hubs out and back on its wheels:

The front is slightly narrower, and I just put it on a dolly after taking the wheels off and took it out at an angle - all in all the operation took about 2 hours - would have been a lot easier/quicker if I had had an assistant!

I now realize how tiny this car is - here it is next to my TR3, which is not a big car at all!

The Westfield will now be living in the garage, so I can put the engine in and get everything connected up. This will be on Thursday, as I am off to the track tomorrow. The four post lift should make working on it fairly comfortable.

I also received the side impact bars yesterday, but I can't for the life of me see how they will mount - it looks like they should mount under the roll bar and then under the floor using the seat mounting holes, but nothing lines up - also there is nothing to mount the front to - it doesn't line up with any of the threaded inserts in the chassis - another question for Westfield.