More progress today on the dash, but once again nothing that's worth showing even though plenty of hours have gone into it. Zac has essentially been building some tie in's into the dash so that now it sits down perfectly, we now have a way to physically bolt the dash to the car to stop vibration and rattling etc etc so there's little to show, but plenty of effort going in as I said.
The plan now for the next few days is to get the main section of the dash tidied up around the edges where the dash meets the cage so it's tidy and then we are making a second part which will cover the tunnel, gear selector, handbrake etc etc and then they'll basically be tied together with some sort of basic fittings.
That leads onto the next part of this post which was the gear selector and handbrake setup. There were 2 issues here which were that I had the driving position totally different from how the stock setup was as I'd dropped the seating position and also moved the seat back quite a bit so it was going to be a real stretch to get to 1st gear for instance. So since the car was originally an auto I had to purchase the manual gear selector from Ross at STMPO, but unfortunately it got lost in my first big shipment from the USA and wasn't covered on insurance as the shipping companies all pointed fingers at each other !!!
So I had to find another second hand gear selector from another kind Prime user and NSX owner in Australia (thanks
) but unfortunately we didn't have the frame that the selector bolts to, and based on what I've said above I'd have had to cut it up anyhow so I just used the one from the automatic selector as a starting point.
I had purchased some of those aluminium braising rods mentioned a few pages back to look at fixing the block, but we didnt' use them (chickened out due to lack of knowledge on product) but was convinced it was good stuff for the right job, so took a band saw to the frame and pretty much split it down the middle, then cut out a 20mm piece and then used the braising rods to put it back together ! Then I cut a 40mm chunk off the back to bring the frame back towards the back of the car and did the same process on sticking that back in place........ worked brilliantly !
Then I had to braise a plate on the front to extend the frame back to the original holes at the front so I had 4 perfectly aligned holes to mount the frame solidly.
Once the frame itself was now bolted tightly in place and was well back relative to it's starting position so all good there, but the gear selector cables needed to be held in place, so I just braised in a flat plat with 2 holes drilled large enough for the cables to go though and drilled and tapped a hole either side to put a locking bolt into so that once the outer cable was through I can do up the screw and they can't move.
Please bear in mind, all the pics were taken without any real finishing, just took the pics when it was cooling down.
Just needed to drill and tap another couple of holes in the top for the gear selector to bolt into and voila..............
well not quite finished...... I thought I was......but....once I got it all in place I realised since I'd made new mountings for the selector cables that now they were about 15mm too long so I needed to undo it all again and then thread down the original rods another 15-20mm (luckily there was enough) and then I cut off the original thread to shorten the rod inners down and then adjusted, reassembled and it really was voila......... I can get 1-2-3-4-5 and reverse OK....... awesome
Hand brake isn't connected at the caliper end yet, but the handbrake works well as far as being in the right position and pulling the cables evenly so once I connect them to the calipers then they'll work well too........ another awesome !
Amazing how much time it's taken to get all of that stuff right (nearly 2 days solid work if I put all the time together).....
Also had some awesome support from Shad at Driving Ambition (as always) who was one of the primary inspirations for the build in the first place, as I wanted to base my radiator build on some designs Shad had used on Kips car and so Shad is organising a radiator for me as we speak.......... I don't know what to say other than What a true professional.......... thanks so much Shad for helping with our timeframes etc etc.
Will post more progress with the rest of the interior as it happens.
