Wednesday, 13 August 2014

Engine bay protection

One of the (what I think) major issues with the rear of the J15 is the total lack of any protection of the engine bay from the rear wheels. This part of the build is left to the builder. I thought long and hard about this and came up with more seemingly unfeasible ideas that I care to remember. A chance glance over a rear engined 1960's lola at the recent Goodwood Festival of Speed gave me the inspiration I needed. That used a nicely crafted aluminium wheel arch that sat within the rear clam shell.

Clearly I couldn't dream of panel beating some Aluminium like they did in the 60's, so I opted to use the remainder of some plastic sheets I purchased in bulk some time ago.

A large piece was bolted to the inner arch, and the inner part bonded using sikaflex and some additional aluminium brackets for strength. End result should see the engine bay kept a little cleaner. You can also see some of the aluminium strips I've put over the exhaust cuts in the hope that it avoids the fiberglass catching fire!.





In other news.........One item that has been bugging me was the front indicators. I purchased them ages ago, and they were not E marked. For IVA, this is not a must, but no E marking means the IVA man must measure the brightness etc, so I simply opted to change the indicators for some that were E marked...Job done.
Also, because I've used 13inch wheels, the front ride height was not quite high enough for the lights to achieve their 50mm min height, this has now been taken care of via some brackets on the front shocks.
Finally...IVA....It's the 13th Aug 2014 now, and I applied two weeks ago. The money came out well over a week ago, but still no date. I was hoping for an aug date, but it's going to be sept I suspect...Oh well!.