Today I ordered the steel for the trailer build. It will be delievered on Tuesday, so next week i will get on with the trailer build.

Also, i have decided, so as not to dilute the content of this blog, I'll cover the build on a separate blog. I'll post a link to it on the right of the page as soon as it's up and running. Anybody who wants to read about it taking shape and see the pics can do so there.

Another micro update!

I did indeed get a couple of hours in the garage this morning. i spent the time strpping down the front section of the wiring loom and removing reduntant wiring. All that is left now is the front lights side/dip/main/indicators/fogs, the wiring for the radiator cooling fan and it's thermostatic switch.

It's all looking a little untidy at the moment but it's coming on and I'm pleased to say that it was far less work than the rear section of the loom.

The remaining big obstacles to the wiring are the fusebox and the ABS controller. One thing at a time though...

Micro-update!

Today I have cut up the caravan floor (with a chainsaw - awesome fun!) into smaller pices that will fit in my other trailer to be taken to the dump.

My Citroen is booked in to have the towbar electrics fitted on Thursday, at which time I will also go and order the steel for the car trailer.

Hope to get an hour or two working on the race car tomorrow.

Moving on from my Huuuuuge success of starting the engine to be honest i havn'e had a lot of time in the garage since. what time i have spent in there has been further removing obsolete wiring from the donor loom. I have split the fusebox open, and hope to remove most circuits from it, well, all of them in fact and build a new, small fusebox for just the few that i do need.

One of the main reasons i haven't been in the garage is that for the second time I have gone and started a side project. regular readers will remember the old BMW 540i I resurrected which took a lot of car building time away from me. well this project is slightly different in that it is very much related to the race car build. I have bought a caravan chassis from ebay for the princely sum of £61. I collected it from wiltshire on Saturday, and it towed the 85 miles home just fine. The last couple of days have seen me stripping down the remains of caravan (the base, wheelarches and wiring) from the chassis and taking measurements so i can design a car transporter structure to build on it.

The plan is to make the whole thing a bolt together assembly, so it can be dismantled and sent to be galvanised. the caravan chassis itself is galvanised steel and shows no signs of rust at all. The resulting car transporter trailer will be used to carry the race car to the track days I plan to take it on, as it will not be road legal. It will also allow me to move the entire project to a new location if we ever sell our house. I'll post up pics of the trailer build as it progresses. I'm hoping it won't take long.

Today is another one of those big days in a kit car builders world. I got the engine started for the first time since it came out of the donor. Many thanks to the guys on the Haynes Roadster Forum for their advice and encouragement, I was tearing my hair out with this thing last night.

Here's the vid:

I had to retreat from the garage as soon as I stopped it as the smoke was getting thick, as you can see, it's pouring out of the doors.

On cloud 9 right now - WOO HOO!

Some more pics from Stoneleigh:

Here's a nice MEV Rocket. Ford RS200 replica

Royale Sabre - I really like the shape of these. Rumour has it that these will be going back into production soon.

A couple of reaaly gorgeous Marcos cars.

And an Ultima.

Here's some more pics.

This is a one off special called "Enigma". A bit wierd looking, it's running a Ford 2.9L V6 engine.


AGM WLR on the AGM stand. I really like this car, I have even considered building one next. It has a very similar chassis to mine underneath but can accept a huge range of engines. Speaking to the AGM staff, they tell me they have just been commisioned to build one with a Merceded V12!!

Tiger Aviator on the Tiger Stand. I like the wedge shaped bodywork.

An original Lotus Seven

And here is about half of my wiring loom. Now you can see what I'm really up against. The wife wasn't exactly thrilled about me spreading it all out on the living room floor!

Yesterday I finally cracked it - I finally got the starter turning properly. Having charged the big battery and trying it again with no success, I traced the problem to the jump start point. Here, the battery wire bolts to one side and the main power lead to the engine bolts on to the other. When I was trying to start it, I saw sparking across it, So i removed both leads and connected them directly to eachother and eureka, it works, consistently. One problem less to deal with.

I also continued to work on the rear loom, separating out the obsolete wires, and making up a multiplug connector for the rest, this will allow me to separate the rear section of the loom with ease whenever required. I picked up this tip from the John Dickes seminar at Stoneleight last week. The connector is a PC ATX power connector kit from Maplin's - £1.79 including connector block and pins. I must confess that the crimp on pins re really fiddly but so far it's going well.

Yesterday was amix of some failure, with a big success.

First the failure.

Continuing from my last posting, I hooked up the fully charged booster pack and tried turning the engine over - nothing. The starter continued to click as before but no rotation. I managed to get it to turn a few times, slowly, and gave up when i found that the boosters wires were getting hot.

I have now concluded that the booster pack isn't powerful enough to provide the amps I need to crank that big engine. So what i have done is put a bit of a monster battery on charge overnight. It's thebattery of my old BMW 540i (same car as my donor but with a 4L V8 instead of the 3L I'm using here) so it should have more than enough kahunas to crank the engine. I'll find that out this afternoon.

Secondly the success.

I have been struggling with a mass of wiring in the centre of the car. At the front I have the front lighting loom, engine management loom and dasboard loom, all of which I need. At the rear I have the rear lighting loom and fuel pump/fuel level/speedo sensor wiring loom, again, I need these. In the centre was a secondary fuse box containg some fuses, relays and 2 big control modules. These were for the elecctric windows, heated rear screen etc. - don't need them. Also a large bulb failure module - don't need that either, however, if I removed it, would the lighting still work?

My theory was that this bulb failure system was an optional extra, not fitted to all BMW's, so removing it, and bypassing the wiring may get the rear lights working. I set about tracing all the wiring colours from the rear lights, forward into the loom, then finding the same colours at the front and tracing them backwards, the same for the fuel/speedo wiring. I grouped them together with insulation tape so not to lose them. I carefully cut out all the other wiring, as evetually was able to completely remove a whole armful of wiring that wasn'r required, along with the secondary fuse box. This has made the loom much more manageable, and the task suddenly seems a lot less daunting.

To test my theory, I reconnected 2 cut off ends between the front and rear sections (bearing in mind that there was formerly a bulb failure moduel in between them), only choosing just 2 wires of the same colour, and tried some lights. Hey presto! One of the rear indicators works! So the theory is sound, the rear lights can work without that pesky module. The next task here is to reconnect some more, and hopefully get all the rear lights and the fuel/speedo section working too.

Finally some good news - that starter motor works!!!

After bench tgesting it and seeing it spin normally, I refitted it, then removed, cleaned and refitted the main earth leads, connected my booster battery directly to the engine jump start points and turned the key - and bingo, the engine spun over. Well, it spun over for a few seconds, slowly. The battery booster had died.

It's now on charge overnight, I'll try again tomorrow.

With the engine turning over, I'll be able to test if the spark plugs and fuel injectors are firing, if they are, I only need to get the fuel pump running and I may be able to give the engine a test run.

I'll keep posting!

I spent this past weekend at the national kit car motorshow (aka Stoneleigh) and bought quite a few nice new bits for the car.

Lovely little wing mirrors - £15
Conical Air filter - £10
Fuel hose and clips - £8.50
Fuel Filler cap £17.50
Harnesses - £70
2 second hand Slick Tyres - £20
electrical guide book - £20
Rear light mounts - £15

I think that's about it. also got to meet loads of other car builders and share information, etc. Hope to meet plenty more at a trackday at Llandow in 2 weeks time.

So now it's back on with the build. At the show, i attended a seminar on kit car electrics, how to construct your own loom etc, and now feel a little more confident about completing my own wiring. I have a few ideas left before tearing my hair out completely.

I'm going to remove the starter and bench test it. Hopefully it can be saved as a replacement it about £180. Once that is done I'll have a look at the rear lights as they simply aren't working at all.

The I'll try and get the dash disply working. That i simply havent a clue about, but I really hope I can get it working.