Last day of retirement

Sadly today is my last day of retirement; tomorrow it's back to work. I didn't quite get the car ready for IVA, which is what I was aiming for, but it's very close. Apart from the silencer, which won't be ready for a week or two, only some minor work on panels and lights remains, probably less than a weekend's worth. I'm happy with that.

Lots of minor tweaks: the front lights are now properly wired up and in place; the under-dash wiring is finished and has been tided up; various panels have been riveted on; the fuel tank is in, with support brackets to stop it shifting around; the rear lights have been fitted, and probably lots of other minor things I've forgotten.

Rear lights in progress.

Today I started out by drilling the holes for fitting the dash. I can't fit it yet because the panel it sits on top of can't be attached until the silencer is in, but it's ready to bolt on when that happens.

Emily then came back from rowing and came to help fit the rear cycle wings.

Cycle wing going on. The observant will notice that this is the drivers-side wing...

This was tricky, as access to some of the bolts was extremely tight. Probably should have done this without the fuel tank in, but we managed. Unfortunately, after getting it on, Emily realised that the wings are not symmetrical, and we'd managed to get them on the wrong way round. Not sure why she couldn't have realised that before we bolted it in... At least we'd only done one wing when we realised. We removed it, and drilled holes in the other wing that lined up with the holes we'd made in the chassis to mount the first wing. Everything lined up reasonably well, so we bolted it in. At this point Emily realised that she'd managed to bolt in the ratchet spanner in such a way that it couldn't easily be removed, so we had half an hour of fun and games fiddling about in a tiny, blind space trying to remove it.

Eventually we got the wings on, and then stuck the rear light clusters on. This was basically easy, except for the lack of reference points from which to measure to get the lights level and in the right place. It didn't help that the garage floor slopes significantly (in both dimensions). Eventually we ended up with this, which I'm pretty happy with:

Rear lights all in place.