Wishbones done - again and more

It's been a good couple of days and a few things have been crossed off the to-do list. I wanted to check how good the lock to lock was on the steering after the new wishbones were installed. It's made a really big difference in fact I'll have to stop it going too far as the cycle wings will hit the body.

It was easier taking the headlights and radiator off to get to the upper spring mounts 

Upper and lower wishbones in place

To get the new upper spring mounts to fit flush with the old the edge had to be filed away and finished with a dab of "Hammerite" rust protection paint.

Spring mounts in place ready for the spring to fit in between.

With all the bits temporarily in place the turning circle is excellent. I won't have to do a 4 point turn to get out of the garage now!

Problem is, it's too good and the cycle wings will hit the side panels. I think I can cut the spacer/centralling springs in half to stop the wheels within about 5cm of the side panels.

The theory is I can cut these springs to 25mm (compressed) and put them back on again.

I'll set up the tracking as best I can and then get it professionally done. I'm happy that it's been quite a straightforward job and the improvement in steering will be very much worth it.

I also fixed a couple of small jobs that should have been picked up in the registration test. One was correctly fixing the ends of the hand brake cables and the other was a missing lock nut on the rear track rod.

Much safer with the bolt through it and squeezed in place.

Another job was to replace the small car trailer mud flaps. I found a large strip of 5mm hard rubber, that I cut to shape. It may be a little too big but it'll stop a lot of stones (probably even boulders!)

I'm looking forward to the coming week as the windscreen glass should be ready to pick up and hopefully the panels are also ready to pick up (they have been gone a long time!!)

A bit of ground work done

Wednesday I gave all the panels to Stefan at IBL a specialist in aluminium welding. He's going to fill all the unwanted holes and bumps ready for me to drill new bonnet catch holes and rear light recesses and then take them over to Danbolack for powder coating.  In the mean time I did some small jobs on the scuttle including drilling holes for the wipers, washer and also window defrost vents.

Holes for the wipers blade hubs drilled at 45 degrees

One wiper hub in place, I hope it's going to be easy to connect the wiper motor cable to these once all the electrics, heater, dashboard etc. are in place. It'll be a bit of a tight fit!

A washer head that I bought separately from the kit but on a small car it looks a bit too big!

Wiper blade arm shortened by 65mm so the blade doesn't hit the top of the windscreen.

All the holes drilled and the switches and BMW dash taken out ready to sand and fill so it's ready for painting in a few weeks time.

I bolted the washer water bottle in place but will run the cables and water hose later on. I had to move the OBD diagnostics connector a bit to the left to make space.

Bought a heater from E-bay for about £150 which includes a lever to adjust temperature. It'll fit nicely here and connect to the defrost vents as well as a possible four more for vents to passenger and driver. The outlet pipe from the engine goes via the temperature adjuster into the heater and then back to the engine. I'm considering lifting the battery up 2cm so the heater pipes can go straight from the engine under the battery and into the heater. 

Console will cover up all this.