Another 2 1/2 Chapters Finished

It was not all gravy, but I managed to find quite a bit of time to work on the car this week and was very productive. I finished the chapters about mounting the cockpit and upper frame.


I did manage to get a rivit in each footbox outside corner, and I got the excess fiberglass trimmed back (about an inch on the driver side, less on the passenger side) to add some more room for feet on both sides. Notice all the dust in the picture. Man, is that stuff itchy and hard to wash off.
And it was particularly hard for me to get my big arm down in the engine compartment to rivit this piece of aluminum (actually, one on each side) that seals the cockpit near the footbox area from the transmission tunnel.


I did have quite a few weird issues, mainly with tools, that required fixing or at least patience. I used my air die grinder to sand off the excess fiberglass, but the compressor could barely keep up. The light on my hanging work light died. My garage door had one of its rollers pop out of its track. I ran down both of my cordless drill batteries and got very frustrated with not being able to work while they SLOWLY recharged. That actually went on for a couple of days before I broke down and bought a new corded drill from Harbor Freight. And OMG, what a huge difference that made. My cordless much not have much of a motor, while the new one really cuts great. I had to drill 4 holes in some thick steel frame members and what was taking about a half an hour and all of my strength with the Craftsman 15.6 Volt drill, the new one took about a minute. I could not believe how much better it cut. Thirty bucks very well spent.

Right now, I am in the middle of working on the brake pedal assembly,

its frame (which will eventually hold the brake master cylinders on the engine side of the firewall),


and the brake light switch. One step that the manual said would be very tough, replacing 6 studs that come from the manufacturer heavily thread-locked, was actually very easy. Here is a picture with one old stud still in place before I removed it.


The next step was drilling the frame for the holes that hold the pedals in place was a huge effort, until I got the new drill. I should finish the brake pedal stuff pretty soon this week. BTW, I have decided to leave the clutch pedal in place but will fasten the pedal to the top of the footbox to keep it out of the way. I am not going to cut the hole in the firewall for that master cylinder though. I figure I can do that easily enough later on if I decide to ditch the automatic transmission for a manual. Then the next step will be to work on the steering system.