Two bits of good news.
Over the weekend we managed to get the scuttle painted, and not only that, but it's dry and it looks
good, at least by our definition of good. And dry. The other bit of good news is that we cut out our
hood and bent it up so it fits on the car, which means we can now install the engine, which is
really the only thing stopping us from starting the car. That and a bunch of wiring. And a bunch of
other things.
Shiny, and smoother than we ever expected
This past week we've managed to either complete or postpone over a dozen tasks on our
engine-start countdown list. Completing tasks is fun, but so is postponing them. We realized after
we made our original list that starting the car is not the same as driving it, and so things like
seats and seat belts and a cooling fan aren't really necessary, which means our list is down to 36
tasks and 62 hours. We'll put in our usual 20 hours this week, but next week we're on vacation and
can work on the Locost almost full time.
So getting the car running by the 20th of this month is practically inevitable, assuming that
about 40 or 50 other things go right. One of those things is the fuel pump, which we hadn't run in
over a year. S.U. fuel pumps don't ordinarily like that kind of treatment, so it was with great
anticipation that we installed the pump, hooked up the fuel lines, grounded the battery, and touched
the harness lead for the fuel pump to the positive battery terminal. The sound of the pump clicking
away was music to our ears.
Two other major things that have to go right are the starter and the ignition system. A working
alternator would be a plus, but it wouldn't be a showstopper so we're not going to push it. We've
been studying the MGB wiring diagram for several weeks now, to the point where we're starting to
think we understand it, but we're a little nervous because some of the wires in the diagram don't
exactly match what we saw when we took the car apart. Hopefully we'll figure it out when the time
comes. Hey, we got the fuel pump working, the rest should be easy.
Cardboard tube has radius similar to scuttle
And the hood is done, though building it was not much fun. As usual, the Locost book was
sufficiently vague and/or contradictory about the construction process so we had to figure out a lot
of stuff ourselves, which is never a good idea under the best of circumstances, and potentially
disastrous when it comes to beating aluminum body panels with a large hammer. Cutting out the hood and
rounding the sides to the proper radius went okay, but bending the 2" lip on the ends required a lot
of muscle, a big hammer, and a certain amount of indifference to the outcome.
Hood edge bent by hammer
A couple of things we feel obligated to point out: 1) The book suggests using lengths of wood to
construct your makeshift brake. Maybe wood is a lot tougher in England. In this country, wood bends,
chips, cracks, and splinters under repeated hammer blows. Metal works better. We clamped one-inch square steel
tubes along either side of the aluminum sheet and got nice crisp corners. Also, 2) the book suggests
you start the bending process by hand. If you can bench press 500 pounds, go for it. The rest of us
will start with the hammer.
Hood in place with hammered ends well hidden
In the end we weren't totally disappointed with the results. The hood looks reasonably smooth on the car. Of course the edges still look like they were beaten
with a hammer. Mind you we never beat directly on the aluminum, we always used a piece of wood in
between, but hammer blows left marks nonetheless. Fortunately the edges aren't ordinarily
visible, except of course when the hood is removed, and hopefully whenever that happens all eyes will be
drawn to the spectacular engine bay and no one will pay any attention to the hood.
We've still got a few more details to take care of before we stuff the engine in the car, but
if all goes according to plan we'll be ready by this weekend. We want to get the clutch working, and maybe the brakes,
so we've got to install the pedal box and pedals, fill the master cylinders with Castrol LMA, and
bleed the lines. Nothing we can't handle.
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