Build Day 30- Floor Mats, Seats, Breather and Expansion Bottles

Day 30- Floor Mats, Seats, Breather and Expansion Bottles 

Floor Mats

We put the mats it then aligned them with the tunnel, so the rear corner was butted up in the right rear corner of the floor pan. We then marked the three points at which the poppers would be positioned, removed the mats then used a belt hole punch to remove some material.  After attaching the popper head to the mat we drilled and riveted the popper bases to the floor pan.

underside of the popper.

Mat in place. as they do overlap we decided to have it only overlap on one side and this just happened to end up being the outside.

Floor Mats

Started by cutting the plastic off of the bottom of the bag protecting the seat, so as not to damage or cover it in grease. By sliding the rails back we could access the holes for the rear bolts. After each of the seats were in the seats were slid backwards allowing access to the forward holes. Then the bolts can be tightened, with one of us holding the Allen key in the top and the other tightening from under the car.

Rails slip forward. On the LH seat we applied some grease the rails were stiff and didn't slide very easily.

We cleaned the floor before putting the seats in.

Access to the forward bolts aren't easy to get to, even with an Allen key.

Interior starting to look great.

After the seats were in we decided to cut down the seat bolts as they do extend a little far. This was more prevalent a job because we had already experienced that when driving the car these bolts can ground out. This happened while I was driving the rental Caterham we had out in the flatter parts of central Cambridgeshire, drove over a bit of a bump, causing the seat bolts to out four, 2ft long gouges into the road. (However in the post build inspection they have quoted to have take 1/2 an hour removing and changing the bolts for the seats. When we asked they told us tha "Cutting down the bolts is an IVA failure"... can' think how it is a failure but it sounds like one of the guys at their local test centre (Gillingham) is an absolute nightmare for failing a car for any tiny detail.)

Breather and Expansion Bottle

We finished the night by attaching the cooling system expansion bottle and fitting the dry sump breather bottle. For the expansion bottle the support arm is bolted to the bracket then the bottle is bolted to the support. Then the hoses are pushed on and jubilee clips tightened over the end. 

Expansion Bottle.

For the breather bottle we only had two short off cuts for the right size gauge hose, which we had to join together with a plastic hose connector which we found in the coolant parts bag. The end into the bottle was wrapped in self amalgamating tape and pushed into the hole left when the small rubber hose and cap is removed. We then cut the small thin hose off from the rubber cap we removed from the top of the breather bottle. This was then forced into a small hole we had drilled into the corner of the breather bottle. The other end of the hose was then routed through the car so if it did over fill and oil were to escape it wouldn't cover the engine bay in oil, only escape onto the road. We have seen a lot of cars with 90 degree rubber hose connectors going in and out of the bottle, but we weren't given any and we couldn't find anything correct online. 

Breather Bottle.