Build Day 28

Radiator

I fitted the radiator with the front brake line brackets; a bit fiddly with all the spacers, washers etc.

Mixer unit and accelerator cable

I have modified the accelerator cable bracket at the rear of the intake butterfly valve to the air mixer unit and fitted the carbon fibre chamber to checked for clearances beneath; all OK.

I have also had a bit of an experiment with making my own collar to fit the cable to the butterfly valve assembly. I know, it's a bit of an abortion but I at least know my idea will work and I'm on the right track; just need to increase the length slightly and take more care bending for the next iteration.

I have also drilled the pedal box cover for the cable.

Oh by the way for all the cynics and sceptics out there; I sat in the drivers seat to try out the accelerator pedal and I can't even touch the front of the foot well but I think I will have to try and find moccasins or some such as there ain't a lot of boot room in the pedals.

Distributor

I went to fit the distributor assembly only to find that mud wasps had made a nest in one of the bolt holes hence the WD-40 and muddy cotton buds.

 

Build Day 27

Mixer Valve

On the Birkin there is a chassis member that runs between the engine block and the air mixer unit and it fouls against the motorised mixer valve mounted to the inside of the unit. As one of the mixer unit bolts is up against the drivers foot-well, the mixer unit has to go into the engine bay with the engine. 

I filed out the bolt holes in the mounting flange of the valve to mount it slightly offline and cut a gasket as directed by the Birkin documents. 

Let us just say that I had a fine old time re-mounting the valve on the mixer unit. So after many dropped bolts and  a very uncooperative gasket I was just about to tighten the mixer unit in place when I remembered that I hadn't tighten the top bolt of the valve. Bugger.

So started taking the mixer unit off again...I had one of the underneath bolts almost off when I realised the back of the socket wrench had come hard up against the aforementioned chassis member. Couldn't flip the wrench to re-tighten (and get the wrench off) and because of the location couldn't get at anything to screw the bolt back in. At this point I became most eloquent in my use of language and let us say voluble.

In the end I spent quite a few hours and two hacksaw blades cutting the head of the bolt off and recovering the wrench...

...and so my plans off documenting the process with photographs also went south with the exception of the following.

Front and rear uprights

Torqued the remainder of the upright nuts up including the big rear ones that require 180Nm. I left these nuts as castellated and applied a split pin.

Wishbones

So finally I was able to get the car on the ground and torque the wishbones. The front mounting for the lower front wishbone is recessed and doesn't fit a socket so I had to wedge a large screwdriver in for this one.

ON THE GROUND!