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Build
Diary
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It's ages since I did the work (this entry updated March 2009!) so I can't recall exactly everything I did so I'll let the photographs do the talking with comments about each photo or group of photos. There are a lot of photographs for this entry.... |
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The
first lot of photos detail the work on the battery clamp I fabricated
to hold the battery steady on the bulkhead.
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| One of the smaller jobs I did was to paint the bonnet and apply the FIAT racing stripe. | ||
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| Some of the major work I undertook this time was to design and construct a front frame and rear bull bar to finish off the front and rear of the car. They are constructed from 40mm x 40mm box section steel. I was lucky enough to have the welding expertise of a friend for free for this job and he's done a great job. He also helped out with lots of other welding jobs and I made a lot of progress with the build that I wouldn't have without his help. | ||
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| The following photographs show the progress of the fabrication of the new front frame I designed to finish the front of the car. It utilises the basic box section frame in the photo above with aluminium panels and an original Panda Mk1 front radiator grille to give the car some of the original Panda character. | ||
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| I had to modify the front of the car slightly to make mounting points for the new front frame. I cut away the old metalwork at the front of the wings and welded in some steel brackets. | ||
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| While I was making and installing the front frame I tried various light combinations to give me ideas for the final look of the front of the car... | ||
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| This is the basic rear bull bar I made. | ||
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| I clamped it to the back of the Road Rat so that I could mark out where the mounting brackets would be welded to the chassis. | ||
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| Once the positions of the brackets were finalised I made four brackets from flat steel bar which were butt welded straight to the Road Rat chassis. The corners of the brackets were rounded off with a hand file to try to get as neat and uniform a finish as possible. | ||
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| Once the brackets were fitted I could slide the bull bar in between them and mark out where the bolt holes needed to be drilled. I also made two small brackets for rear fog light and reversing light mounts which were welded to the bull bar lower bar. | ||
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| After all the mounts were finished I painted the bull bar and cut two panels from aluminium sheet to mount the lights in. I was going to have it like this... | ||
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| But I ended up having it like this instead. The aluminium plates are rivetted to the bull bar and I cut the holes for the lights using a hole cutting saw mounted in a pillar drill. | ||
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| And here's what the rear bull bar looks like with all the lights in and mounted. | ||
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| Another big job I tackled was making the mounts for the seat harnesses. I wanted them to be very strong and safe just in case the car ended up inverted. It would probably also help with passing the MOT! I welded in a new 40mm x 40mm box section into the chassis between the doors inside the cab, onto which I welded the harness top mounts. | ||
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| The harness bottom mounts were welded to a piece of 80mm x 80mm box section which will be bolted to the floor. | ||
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| As I was working on the harness mounts I also did some extra work fitting the seats. I cut some lengths of threaded bar and fixed them to the undersides of the seats so that they'd line up with the previously drilled holes in the floor. This makes the seats much easier to fit as I just need to drop them in now without having to line up four separate bolts at the same time. I've made them long enough that I can tweak the seat heights if needed too. | ||
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| I hadn't finished the sump guard the last time I worked on the car so I took this off, cleaned it up and painted it silver. I also made an extra sump protective panel to bolt to it from 3mm aluminium chequer plate. | ||
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| Further work involved stripping the prop shaft down to change the CV gaiters and put new grease in the CV joints. I thoroughly cleaned all the CV joint components before reassembling them. Finally, I painted the whole prop shaft black. | ||
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| One final job before putting away for this trip was to make two side panels for the rear load area. These are simply aluminium chequer plate bolted to the cab bodywork with brackets and to the sloping rear tubes with U clamps. I did this to try to improve the overall appearance from the side. Without them the load area looked like there was nothing to it. You can also see in the final picture the drivers side headlight mounted. It took a lot of marking and cutting of the aluminium panel to get the headlight mounted right. This will be finished on the next trip. | ||
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