Getting Moving

Session 2: 5th September 2020

This isn't procrastination, honestly. Probably.

One of the observations that John-the-delivery-person made was that there wasn't much space in the garage up the sides of the chassis and that this would cause challenges as the build took place. He pointed out that you can buy axle stands that are on casters, and that these would be helpful on my build as they would allow the chassis to be pushed against the wall, freeing all the space to be used on a single side of the chassis.

In my previous visit I'd already found that the engine was placed in just the wrong position to allow easy installation of the front left suspension assembly. Despite the slapdash method by which the engine ended up where it did, now it's in place it isn't moving again without an engine hoist.

That caused some research and that research resulted in ordering two sets of these.

You can never have too many tools...

They bolted together in about 20 minutes. So far so good. Now all I needed to do was jack the chassis off the old axle stands, roll these under it and drop the jack.

Of course, we'd not measured the jack when setting up the axle stands (a well-documented rookie mistake, that I'd read about and forgotten about when the chassis was delivered). Fortunately, without the engine, suspension, etc, whilst bulky the chassis isn't that heavy. The front was a simple one-person lift, kick out the old stands, kick in the new, and lower it carefully down.

The rear is wider, and access is poorer as aluminium panels cover the steel tubular frame. That meant that it had to be lowered one corner at a time. Fortunately I now had two spare axle stands, so the process was one of lowering the chassis a few inches at a time, by positioning a second stand, lifting, kicking out the first stand and lowering gently onto the second. Having got the chassis onto a pair of static stands that were low enough to permit the jack to be used, I could then wheel in the new stands and do the final transfer as it should be done, using the jack.

The improvement on moving the chassis was huge. It was absolutely the right call to change the axle stands over. With the chassis against the wall there is so much more space to work. An added bonus is that the chassis can now be moved forward and backwards, so now the position of the engine is less of an issue.

This is progress, at least as it allows work to be done that would previously probably have been blocked by something else being in the way (the engine, a wall...)

One of the immediate benefits was that it afforded a far better view of the as-yet-unexplored interior of the chassis. I'd neglected to explore this to date because it was filled with wheel arches and the nosecone, which are (a) large and (b) not needed for ages yet. However, being able to now see in properly I found the keys in the ignition. One of the things that came with the delivery was a nice presentation box. Presumably this is where the keys are kept if you buy a factory-assembled car. Shipping an empty box with the self-assembly version seems a little ridiculous.

It's a very nice presentation box, but without the contents it's a bit bizarre to me that the box and the keys shipped separately

With the light starting to go, I didn't really want to start assembling things in the dark, so I did what I could. The first task is attaching the front wishbones. I'd located these on my previous visit, and also a bag full of bushings and Parts Bag A. Both the bushing set and the parts bag contained more than just the components I needed, so I picked through the bags to identify what I needed and separate them from those I didn't.

With the light now gone, I packed up. First job for my next visit will be fitting the wishbones. Definitely.

Report abuse