Its been a while since it was practical for me to do much work on the car mid-week. The time it took to heat the garage and the time I got home from work meant it just generally didn’t make sense to do much for most of the winter in the evenings.
Yesterday, however, it was sunny and warm enough to work with the garage door open. I decided to take advantage of it and try to knock off a couple of small tasks.
I figured I’d try to wrap up the prep for assembling the trunk. Last weekend I riveted the side walls of the trunk in, but didn’t touch the floors beyond setting up the power feed for a future amplifier in the upper trunk.
As a way to burn an hour or two, I decided to finish drilling all the rivet holes into the steel frame (a slow, time consuming task) and to get the mount for the 3rd leg of the passenger rollbar mounted. Factory Five welds in the three mounting points for the driver’s rollbar in the Mk III Roadster, but only the front two for the passenger rollbar. For people running two rollbars, there is a bolt in mount.
There’s not much to show in-process. I drilled about a hundred rivet holes in the upper and lower trunk, and drilled the three large holes for the passenger rollbar mount… after I spent a half hour looking for the hardware.
I’ve decided to not rivet at least the upper trunk in until after I have aligned the car, as its going to be easier to reach the upper adjustment point for the IRS from above. I may rivet in the lower trunk this week.
Photos:
The passenger rollbar fits onto the two mounts at the front of the trunk. I left the packaging on to keep from dinging up the chrome.
After positioning the 3rd leg and the mount, I marked the holes I needed to drill. The bolts are half-inch grade-8 with nylon locknuts and washers.
The trunk is finished, as far as prepping for riveting is concerned.
The rear passenger mount, in place with the bolts. Beacuse the upper trunk isn’t riveted, these aren’t actually bolted down. It seems typically people cut the trunk floor and fit it around the mount, but it fits fine on top of the trunk and, frankly, looks better and won’t leak. I’m not sure why people cut the floor but its definitely not necessary.
So thats it… not a lot of work, but it was something useful done mid-week.
My plan to start the engine this weekend is on the back-burner. I’ve decided to replace the DuraSpark components I’ve got for my ignition (distributor, coil) with MSD parts compatible with the Ford TFI system. This will enable me to have programmable advance curves and timing control and isn’t going to cost me any more than buying the MSD ignition controller I would’ve needed for the parts I had.
My hope is the wiring will be finished this weekend.