2^nd September 2003
A phone call to MK confirmed that fabrication of our chassis would be complete next week and it would be ready for collection on Monday 15^th September 2003. Martin also told me they were building an Indy blade over the next week and a half, which they hoped would be ready for the Donnington show on 13^th/14^th September.
This would be an ideal opportunity for me to call in every evening, on my way home from work, and take lots of pictures to hopefully aid us in our build.
After tea it was into the garage and time to repair a small broken window and paint the garage floor red. Half the floor was painted; the other half will have to wait until tomorrow (Floor that is….not errr indoors!)

3^rd September 2003
After work it was a quick visit to MK with the digital camera to take pictures on their progress so far. The bright red powder coated chassis was sitting there with bits already attached including; floor, front and rear suspension units c/w disks, calipers and rear drums, diff, drive-shafts, steering rack, main front-rear brake pipes and part of the wiring loom. (So…. today’s photos will be a guide for our first months work!!)
Into the garage again after tea, we finished painting the other half of the garage floor.

4^th September 2003
Forgot the camera today, so further pictures of MK’s build (and our second months work!) will have to wait until tomorrow. I must remember to get a photo of a bloke doing some work…. (This will hopefully give dad some idea how to do it!) No…….. To be fair, he loves work……… he could watch it all day!
So, back to the garage and as if one coat of paint wasn’t enough, we gave the floor a second coat, just so we could use the entire contents of the tin and then throw it away (One less paint tin to find a home!)

5^th September 2003
Called in at MK on way home from work to hopefully get some photos but unfortunately they had locked up and gone home for the day. After tea, painting of the garage floor continued until finally completed.

6^th & 7^th September 2003
We took a trip to MK on Saturday morning, to get some more pictures and see how they were progressing with the build and obtain further info. The rest of the weekend was spent generally tidying and clearing the garage, carrying out various small jobs (such as venting the tumble drier) and putting everything away. All that was needed now was somewhere to store the lawnmower and the garden tools. A small tool store 3’6” x 2’ x 6’2” was sourced and ordered from Focus DIY.

9th September 2003 Front & rear wishbones collected from MK today and work began cleaning them up, removing weld spatter and de-burring the pivots ready to receive chrome / plastic coating.

10^th September 2003
Collected modified steering rack and front hubs/uprights from MK. The ‘Red Rocket’ they have been building for the past week, is nearing completion and should hopefully be running by tomorrow evening.

14th September 2003
Paid a visit to Donnington Kit Car Show in the pursuit of sourcing certain bargains/bits for our Car. Shame on the suppliers as the bits we were looking for, there was none of. If we wanted LED Indicators or special fancy flashing wheel-nut caps we would have been in luck! Sadly, the Max Power brigade suppliers were disappointed as everyone walked past their stalls. A shufty around the "Ultima" stand was very impressive - though not in essence what Kit Cars are about - like £40,000 worth of Kit Car, nice but very extravagant.

15^th September 2003
Today was the day for collecting the chassis. Hooray. Meticulous planning and arranging had taken place to ensure that hopefully everything went according to plan. The timetable was as follows;

14:30    Finish work and travel home

15:15    I would arrive at home, change into work-gear, pick brother up and get to father-in-laws (who is providing LWB Transit van

15:30    Set off to MK to collect chassis and various parts

16:20    I had to contact brother-in-law on his mobile phone. (who, was arranging powder coating)

16:30    Arrival back at home with chassis and clean down with thinners.

17:00    I knew it would be sometime after five that we needed to take the chassis and parts to be powder coated.

Sometimes however, despite precision military planning, things can go wrong. And today they did!!!
After finishing work for the day, I began my journey home. I had traveled eight miles down the road when suddenly… shock, horror. There was a queue of traffic like you wouldn’t believe. I waited ten minutes to see if it would begin moving………. It didn’t, so I spun round in the road and took a detour. Despite this however, by driving like a loon, I managed to claw back some time. I decided to pick my brother up ‘en-route’ to save a bit more time. I eventually arrived home at 15:30. Not bad, I was only ten minutes later than expected.

I got changed and we set off to my father-in-laws, arriving at 15:40 only to find he was out somewhere in his van. He eventually arrived at 16:00hrs and we set off to MK. On arrival at 16:15, MK was just about to close up for the day but they re-opened and assisted us in loading the chassis and other parts into the van. Unfortunately however - due to the Donnington show at the weekend – they had not had time to do the roll-bar, rear uprights and various other bits.

Now, I had been given instructions to phone my brother-in-law at 16:20… Not 16:10 or 16:30 but 16:20. So at 16:20 I rang him, only to find his mobile phone switched off and his home phone on answer service.

We set off back at 16:40 and I continually tried to contact my brother-in-law with no luck. We arrived back home shortly before 17:00 to be greeted by my beloved, holding the phone out to me with my brother-in-law on the other end. “Take it down now – he wants it now” he said, so we jumped back into the van and shot down to the plastic coaters. We unloaded the chassis and the guy ran his finger across it. “It’s not been wiped down, has it?” BOLLOCKS….. In all the haste we had forgotten to clean it down with thinners.

 “I’d let you do it here” he said “only we’re out of thinners”.

 By this time I had realized that Lady Luck had well and truly deserted me at about lunchtime today and despite my best efforts, I had spent the afternoon mostly pissing in the wind. Accepting defeat, I told him we would fetch the chassis back tomorrow. We arrived back home, unloaded the chassis and began to clean it down with thinners. We re-arranged for my father-in-law to collect the chassis at 16:30 tomorrow and take it down to the plastic coaters.

16^th September 2003
With half a day’s holiday taken from work, I drove to MK to collect the parts we were missing. On arrival, it appeared that they were expecting me. They had received an e-mail from us regarding the chassis modifications which were missing, to connect the two rear stays from the roll-bar. This wasn’t essential but they told me if I could get the chassis back to them, they could weld the parts whilst we waited.
We had discussed this, last night at length and decided that we would prefer the additional structural support for the rear two stays. The additional support would also provide some protection for the petrol tank in the unfortunate event of a rear end collision.
Therefore, I immediately left to go to my father-in-laws, to see if he was available. Fortunately for us he was, so we collected the chassis, dropped it off at MK and waited while Phil K welded the necessary bracket and roll-bar.
With MK paid up and most of the other parts collected, we returned home to await our appointment with the powder coaters. At 16:30, we dropped the chassis and other bits off and then re-collected them at 20:00, all complete with a fresh coat of silver plastic.

20^th September 2003
After reading various reports on locostbuilders website about the inadequacy of the Escort Brake Master Cylinder, (which we had picked up FOC), we decided against using it and instead sourced and bought a Sierra Master Cylinder.

22nd September 2003 The majority of the preparation complete, it was now time for building to begin! At this point we were still without a build manual for the car. The new manuals, we were advised, were being proof read before printing and were due out shortly. However, we were itching to start something and, as the roll-bar was going to be chromed imminently, we set about marking up and drilling the holes on each foot of the roll-bar. M8 high tensile bolts were going to be used, so we drilled the 8mm holes and used these to pilot drill the plate on the chassis. The holes in the chassis were then opened up to 11mm and rivnuts inserted. The footplates of the roll-bar were then bolted down to the chassis to remove any spring in the metal which could potentially damage the chrome plating. Roll-bar removed, it was then delivered to the Brother-in-law, together with front wishbones and headlight bar for chroming. Steering column was sprayed ready for assembly. Drive shaft ends were sprayed and Master Cylinder was wire brushed ready for painting.

23rd September 2003 A post we had placed on locostbuilders about the fixing of the roll-bar had been replied to, and had we seen it earlier, we may well have decided against using rivnuts in this application. However, the holes had been drilled and the rivnuts inserted. Our conclusion therefore, was to drill the bottom section of the tube and pass the bolts completely through, to enable a spreader and nyloc nut to be used to secure it. This way we could utilize the rivnuts and also achieve a greater degree of strength. As we also have the diagonal rear stays from the roll-bar to the rear of the chassis, we felt this would give us the necessary strength and rigidity. I suppose that regardless of how it’s fixed, you’ll never know if it’s going to save your life until you roll it. Personally, I do not wish to find out!! With the brake pipe kit collected from MK, the next job was the brakes. The master cylinder was offered up to the foot-well then marked, drilled and temporarily bolted into position. The main front and front to rear brake pipes were then routed along the chassis rails. Following long and detailed discussions, we decided no to use the pre-welded MK brackets as they exceed the SVA 300mm maximum support distance. We mounted the front/rear pipe down the offside prop-tunnel, which also meant we wouldn't need to cross over the prop-shaft at the front... we had not yet taken delivery of the P-clips, so the permanent fixing will have to wait.

25th September 2003 Routing of the brake pipes continued until we came to the near and off-side rear pipes. The route we wanted to take meant that the pipes included in the kit for these branches were not quite long enough, so these would have to wait. We removed the master cylinder and sprayed it silver, along with the steering rack. The metal sleeves were then inserted into the rear wishbone bushes, again using the bench vice and some copper slip, and the units temporarily bolted into position and the rear uprights attached.

28th September 2003 Aligning and securing the aluminium panel into place using Engineer's Vice's - we did have some quick clamps but these didn't tighten tight enough! Upon securing we began to...
...have fun marking out the aluminium floor panel for location of the 4.8mm large head rivets to secure said floor to the chassis. The lines were checked and rechecked for accuracy as we decided to stagger the holes so that the chassis doesn't have a "perforation line" which in our opinion could slightly compromise the integrity of the structure. The marking being correct we began...
... to drill holing for the rivets using a 5mm drill bit. This will allow for slight expansion/contraction of the panel when in use. Once all of the holes were drilled, we found it left quite a lot of burrs on the entry and exit of the holes. We then proceeded to...
... deburr the entry holes using a 90 degree chamfering bit. Taking care not to chamfer too deep which could compromise the floor panel. Constant clearing of aluminium drillings was done so we didn't compromise our finger ends during the process. Following successful deburring we removed the aluminium panel and began...
...to deburr the chassis using the same tool used for deburring the aluminium panel. We did this to remove swarf/drillings from between the chassis and floor.
The chassis locations were just about perfect - holes staggered and in symmetry. Even around the corners...

29th September 2003 Busy nights sleep, you know the kind... thinking about the day in hand! So, with our previously purchased "Texflex" (Polyurethane Glue/Sealer) we began to "glue up" the chassis. Using squiggly (Technical Term) lines in the middle and straight edges on the erm edges... we began to secure the aluminium panel soon to be known as "The Floor"... following careful location of the previously drilled holes using large headed rivets, we worked from tunnel centre outwards, to try to prevent buckling of the panel. Securing every-other rivet to pull-in the floor we worked our way around the panel - taking special care to glue our overall stomachs in the process...
...as we worked our way around the panel we proceeded to insert successive rivets so that we could get a good run at them... using a DIY Rivet Gun is definitely the best way to increase your forearm girth. With hindsight and more money, a pneumatic or scissor type would be the way to go. As the Texflex started to set we began to quicken the pace, until...
...we finished... a quick buff up and the floor panel came up a treat!