Minor updates

Since the last post, not much has changed - not much time in the garage this weekend. However, I do have a new steering wheel, which I've trial fitted (it will need to come off for IVA). It's 320mm (the same as the Elise), which seems about right, possibly a little big. I'll see how it goes.

New steering wheel. Shiny.

The main progress has been with wiring. Emily has been busy attaching blade connectors to all the BMW plugs and wires, so the engine loom is now plugged into the main car loom. The ignition and steering column controls are not yet attached, but everything else (excluding lights, which aren't done yet) is.

Wiring in place.

The fuel filler cap has made progress this week. Last week, it was failing to line up (the filler cap protruded about 50mm from where the rear panel would go). After discussion with Peter, it sounds like my fuel tank has a longer nozzle than most, so I chopped that down, and trimmed the connecting hose to match. With that done, the filler appears to line up perfectly with the rear panel. While I was faffing around taking the fuel tank in and out, I also made some hefty brackets to stop the tank moving forwards, as it was just relying on being squeezed by some bits of chassis to stop it sliding around. I'll probably need to do the same to prevent any side-to-side movement as well.

Tonight I started trying to make a hole in the rear panel for the filler cap. This is turning out to be a massive hassle. Firstly, the adjustable hole saw that I bought specifically for this purpose turned out to be junk and fell apart after inscribing a rather imprecise circle on the panel. I went low-tech and drilled a ring of holes, then used the jigsaw to connect them. I then spent ages expanding the hole with a combination of:

• Tin-snips: couldn't get enough access to enlarge the hole cleanly.
• File: very, very slow going. And very noisy - the rear panel is basically acting like a big drum.
• Dremel: slow going.
• Angle grinder: the disc was too big to fit in the hole.
• Cursing a lot: this felt more helpful than it actually was.

It's currently still about 10mm too small. To be continued...