A combined report of the results of a couple of days off work. Well, weeks actually but that translated into a couple of days of garage time! First up was the handbrake. An Audi cable was sourced from fleabay which, after a little modification, fitted the VAG calipers a treat. In order to make the most of the space between the seats, I decided to mount the handbrake lever to the right of the driver. It was only after deciding this that I noticed exactly the same set up on the Ariel Atom! An MGF handbrake lever is being used. The final part is a short cable of indeterminate origin for the caliper on the drivers side. The balance bar caused a few headaches but in the end one was put together using 2 Rover balance bars. A picture paints a thousand words and will follow soon!. I then made some short tubes to guide the cables through the rear bulkhead using some unused poly bushes from the front suspension!
Next was the thorny issue of the brake/clutch fluid reservoir. This had already been mounted once but the pipes fouled on the steering column so it had to come off! After a lot of head scratching, I found another reservoir in my box of bits, probably from the original Rover. This has been combined with hoses from a Fiat Punto which clip neatly into the Mini master cylinder and can be adapted to fit the clutch cylinder.
Then came the radiator fan mount. This got partially finished with only the bottom mount being made, and this is not yet welded on. I then got diverted by the wiring loom as the position of items like the fuse box will have a bearing on other items in the engine compartment. BIG thanks here have to go to the www.madinventions.co.uk website. This charts the build of a Sylva Mojo powered by the same engine as I am using. On this site was a photo of the engine wiring loom with all of the items labelled. An absolute life saver as many of the masking tape labels that I applied when stripping the fiesta have gone crispy and fallen off! The result was that after an hour or so, all items on the engine loom were plugged in. That just left the car loom. This had very few labels left and so it was a case of laying it out and imagining where in the car each wire was. I then had to think what components were in those locations before referring to the appropriate diagram in the haynes manual. After a morning of solid octupuss wrestling, I now have 75% of the loom labelled.
The final step was a visit to a local scrappy. I knew that I was missing the inlet manifold when I got the car and also needed a new radiator fan (the terminal tree impact had cracked the old one!) and a few extra hoses. Much to my delight, after an hour of rummaging, East Road Salvage in Sleaford provided everything I needed!
Photos of all of this progress will follow shortly.....
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