Finally, the time had arrived to get the main portion of the car from Dax. I
had acquired the van yesterday, and even managed to fill it up with diesel after a rather long wait in a queue.
Tom and I got up rather early for a Saturday, sorted out a few ropes and blankets for packing stuff and set off to pick up Duncan. We got to his house at about 9:00am and drove down the M11 to get to Dax. There was a huge queue around the factory when we got there of people going to the petrol station at the end of their road. Luckily we managed to indicate by sign language that we weren't really jumping the queue and so managed to reverse into the loading yard. The person who let us through the queue though looked really hacked off about it...
Simon Johns was just about the only person there, as the rest of the staff were either
not there or at the kit car show at Donington. We set about loading up the van with all the bits and pieces that
Simon produced, before long the van was full and after paying Simon we left on our way back to Cambridge.
We got back to Cambridge and after a cup of tea decanted the contents of the van into the garage. Unfortunately there are a lot of bits of bodywork and they ended up all over the place, we clearly need to sort them out properly soon.
We did, though, carry on in the vein to which we have become accustomed by trying
out the chassis for size. At least Duncan and I did, Tom was too serious for that and just took the photo.
However, in the short term it was clear that we needed to tidy up some more so, having a large van at our disposal, we chucked a load of rubbish in it (very Alice's Restaurant* this) and headed off for the Cambridge dump.
Having cleared out some of the grot I set about putting up some more shelves
and carefully checking through the contents of the order, as I was convinced that something would be missing.
Sure enough, after sorting through everything it appears that the fluid reservoir for the brake and clutch hydraulic systems is missing. I suspect there's also some pipework not here. I'll phone Dax on Monday and check it with them.
The only problem is, there's still a load of bodywork around and it needs to go somewhere neat as otherwise it's going to get bashed up.
We finally sorted out what to do with the bodywork. After much hunting around
for space we cached some of it in the shed...
...and some went on top of the shelves with the side panels in pole position
hanging from the roof of the garage in what has become the favoured position.
The final bit of preparation is to make sure that there's something to support the chassis during the build. I have some trestles that were left over from the Westfield build. These should be fine (although I'm worrying that they're not wide enough) but I was always a bit concerned that they wobbled slightly. I think they're perfectly strong enough, they just need a bit of triangulation.
So, I bought some 25mm square steel tubing (the stands are made of essentially chassis material) and welded some diagonal braces into the stands. It remains to be seen if they have the desired effect. I haven't done any welding for a while, so the quality of the welds went from rubbish to merely poor. However, it will hold OK.
*A 70s film, probably only of relevance to faded hippies like me. It's based around an Arlo Guthrie song that has something to do with throwing away rubbish and something to do with the conscription for the Vietnam war.
in case you've got to this frame directly and can't get out, go here.