Apologies to all you mistrale watchers out there for the lack of recent updates. For me it has been a very busy time at work, which coupled with an Easter break in Cornwall has meant precious little time for car building. However, I finally managed a few hours today. The first task was to mount the passenger seat. The ‘Triton’ seats that I am using have threaded inserts built into the base. At first I thought that it would be a simple matter to bolt them onto fore/aft chassis rails, however, the profile of the seat base precludes this. Instead I have had to use lateral bars and bolt these onto the fore/aft chassis rails. This is not an easy task but it does mean that the harness cut outs are perfectly positioned with the rear cross member. The other task started today was to re-make one of the engine mounts to replace the one that bent the last time I removed the Zetec lump. The new one has ribs and a section of box that will prevent the same happening again.
Although I haven’t done mush actual work on the car, I have been expending a lot of mental energy trying to anticipate future problems. One of these is the fairly tight centre ‘tunnel’. The current plan is to mount the radiator at the front, which would of course mean that cooling pipes have to run the length of the car. An alternative is to have a side mounted radiator at the rear of the car. This would hopefully get enough airflow and would greatly simplify the plumbing. It would of course put more weight rearwards..... I’ll let you know how it goes!
