10: Are We Nearly There Yet?

...Continued from previous page

A this point in the build you can throw a few large lumps together and kid yourself that it's nearly finished…

See, looks plausible doesn't it?

In reality there's still about 80% of the work still to do!

This is approaching the state you see a lot of “unfinished project” kit-cars and the like on eBay - because with a set of panels zip-tied on it can fool people into thinking there's “just a couple of weekends work” to do the plumbing, electrics, brakes, interior, etc…

Crack on - get it done!

The front “breakfast panel” was worse for wear, some new fabrication and a bit of Petal's old front panel made their way into it:

Tub sat on chassis:

But no rivets yet - and all the chassis supports were wrong, meaning I ended up cutting & welding all the supports to correct heights and allow for a little block of rubber under each tub support.

Many hours of work just under there!

The seat box and gearstick both wanted to be in the same place - yes we knew about this when positioning the engine & gearbox, at least I won't have to lean forward to change gears like some Land Rovers!

PAS box is very close to the radiator panel and we need that space for a radiator!

In the end I ran around the whole back of the panel with a cutting disc, trimming the lip down to ~5mm.

I bet the bracket that holds the wing on was on the old bulkhead…

I bet the special bolt that holds the roof on was on the old capping…

Defender steering column meets total lack of support from Series bulkhead!

Fuel filler cowling on wing skin not joined to original tub - cue hours of faffing about making a replacement joiner piece!

Remember I said the rest of the team had an actual race car to be getting on with?

In 2007, building a truck with portals was a Big Deal. Having two in build side-by-side was a unicorn being struck by lightning, and we were doing it on zero budget working 36 hour days!

Onward to Tanks For All The Fish