1. Finalise the route for the front to rear brake line and then P-clip to the chassis.
2. Route the feed and return plastic fuel pipes along the tunnel.
3. Roughly route the main chassis loom and hold in place with cable ties.
4. Clean and fit the fuel tank.
In the last post I mentioned that I'd roughly routed the front to rear copper brake pipe. Mostly straight forward, from the three way splitter above the diff, it ran along the offside tunnel rail, going over the chassis at the end of the tunnel and then under the steering column to the master cylinder. Once I'd got it roughly where I wanted it, cable ties were used to temporarily secure it to the chassis.
Where the pipe runs over the chassis, I intend to protect it by covering with some split silicon tubing but I'll do this later when all the pipes are in place.
Once I was happy with the route, I drilled and P-clipped the pipe to the top tunnel rail and then cable tied the plastic feed and return fuel lines to the copper pipe.
The GBS loom is great. Pre-wrapped, fully labelled but, MASSIVE. Lying coiled up on the garage floor it looked big, but uncoiled it ran the full length of the garage (forgot to take pics). Having routed this along with the fuel and brake lines I stumbled upon a snag. There didn't seem to be enough room for the handbrake cable to move without fouling the loom/fuel lines. Need to research alternative routes.... Graham is due to visit for a chew the fat/Friday night out session this week, so I'll see if he has any ideas.
It's amazing how the time disapears when I'm in the garage. I started when Ali left for work at 8 o'clock and it's already lunchtime. Time to get the kettle on again, before tackling the fuel tank.
Lunch done, I followed the advice issued by Steve at GBS on collection day, to give a blast through with the airline and then flush the fuel tank with petrol before fitting to make sure there was no swarf or other debris hidden inside. Once clean inside, I degreased the outside of the tank and did the same to the chassis rails ready for the deadly black sticky bonding stuff.
The chassis and tank where measured and marked up to make sure it would end up in a central position and then bond was applied to the chassis along all contact points. At this point I took some deep breaths, lined the tank up with my marks on the chassis and pressed it onto the bond. I used a couple of ratchet straps to hold it tight, then went to try and clean off the black gunk which had managed to get just about everywhere.
If you've read any other build blogs you'll already have heard the warnings about the black adhesive. It has to be the strongest, stickiest substance know to man, with gripping power second only to dried on Weetabix. I'm still picking it off of my arms three days later.
I was tempted to connect up the fuel lines but having bonded the tank, I now need to allow it to cure for 24/48 hours before doing anything that might disturb it, so I'm calling it a day.
Next session I'm going to attempt to finish off the plumbing of the fuel lines at the back of the car and finalise the routing of the loom. Almost all the build so far has been at the back of the car and there's not an awful lot more to do there before tackling the rear panel, just the rear disks, calipers and brake pads.
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