The Big Strip Down.
When I say this car was a shell, it did come with a few handy things installed like main loom, front windscreen, and side Perspex windows. It also had the steering column, some pre-installed ‘carb-u-like’ vanity features, and the relevant exhaust hangers and suspension bushes.
All of the above needed to come out of the car for the cage to be installed, and then the shell painted.
Do not underestimate how many fixings you will have, even on a ‘shell’.
Make sure you have a good system for cataloguing where each bit came from, whether that be sandwich bags with labels on, or fancy compartmented toolboxes. If you don’t think that a description on a sandwich bag will give you enough of a hint where it came from, the 10 seconds it will use to take a photo of the fixing next to where it came from, will save you half an hour worth of head scratching later.
There are also various schools of thought as to when exactly to test fit/trial your looms, mock up engine, handbrake and gear stick mounts. What scholars all agree on however is-
DO IT AS EARLY AS YOU CAN.
You may think about putting it off until after you’ve done the cage, or this and that; but there is nothing worse than having to re-make a load of brackets because you’ve found a clash at the last minute because of the way you routed a harness or throttle cable etc.
Try out as many subsystems together as early as you can.
One other point that is often overlooked on new competition builds until roughly 2 in the morning, (in the pouring rain in a rally service park, with an engine crane you’ve borrowed from the team next door who have long since had their pub dinner and gone to bed); is removing engine and box just with what you have to hand in a service park.
Your engine and box may fit an absolute treat when you lift them in on a 4 poster; but double check that it is possible to take the engine and box out just with the tools that you’ll have to hand on an event. You may find you’ve got to change the way you mount the box or engine (particularly with RWD) so you’ve got more room for lifting the engine and box out at a funny angle on an engine crane. You may be hesitant to take the engine and box out once its all nestled into place…but trust us when we say you will regret not having tried until the day of a multi-day event.
If you’re worried about scratching your engine bay when taking engine and box out, read our article on this HERE.
