Midgetec

I have to admit I was not really ready to tackle the hood bulge.  I started shaping the sheetmetal about 6 weeks ago, and it came out pretty decent, but I was not looking forward to splicing it into the hood...

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So I got part two of the sound attenuation done yesterday.  Pretty straight forward.  Measure, cut, spray glue on both sides, and press in place.  On the more complicated pieces I used some posterboard for making templates.  It looks good and should be a lot more civilized to drive now.

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Back at it this past couple of weekends after a pretty long break.   The European Auto Festival is in mid-October at the BMW museum in Greer, SC near Greenville.   Turns out they're celebrating 50 years of the MG Midget.   That's about all the motivation I needed to get busy.   The car will be there, regardless of what I manage to get done between now and then, but I'm hoping to have it looking at least half-finished.   It has been a long time since I bent the sheetmetal for the tunnel, but I didn't want to weld it in until logging 20-30 miles to make sure that everything worked. Well, since I got over that milestone, it was time to finish it up.

The tunnel is going to be buried under sound deadener and carpet, so it didn't have to be real pretty.  I bought a nice little Roper-Whitney punch to perforate the edges of the four pieces I shaped, and then created the equivalent of a spot weld by using the mig.   This worked really well.  I then put a bunch of tacks at the joints.  Everything was ground fairly smooth.  Where the sheetmetal met the floorpan, I used a sheetmetal angle, and punched it as well, to give a strong connection.   I played with welding directly, but since the floorpan was thicker sheet, I really had trouble getting a bead without burning through the tunnel sheet.

I then used some 3M caulk strips on the inside of the tunnel to seal up all the joints, to keep any tranny lube from seeping into the cockpit.   OK, I know the drivetrain is no longer British, but...

Finally, it was time to put the first coat of sound deadener on. I had a friend who had a bunch left over and gave me a good deal just so he could get rid of it. It was definitely a win-win.  It's from a company named "Second Skin", and I got two parts.   The first is a thick paint-like coating called Spectrum.  It reduces noise and resonance of the panels.   It came with a sprayer that works really well - very little overspray.  I got the first coat on the photo, but will put a couple of more on.   The desired thickness is about 2mm.

Also went to the fabric store yesterday with my wife, and brought home some samples for seat upholstery. Going to use Sunbrella fabric, which is very fade resistant and easy to clean.

More to come prior to the show. Cheers!

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Wow, it's amazing how good it feels when you finally get to drive something that you've been working on for three years!  The Midgetec is on the road.  And it is SWEET!  We had a breakthrough on the Megasquirt, which some cold rainy day I'll write up, but once we got the ignition problem sorted out, I was shocked at how close the tune was.  In no time at all we went from easy, low-load neighborhood cruises a couple of weeks ago to an agressive romp today where we tested the rev-limiter.

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I've still got some housekeeping to do, but here is the Duratec nestled into the Midget.  As you might have seen in some of the old posts, there was a little sheetmetal work to do, but not too bad.

I still have to clean up some wiring mods that I made after I 'finished' the wiring a few months ago, but it's in pretty decent shape.  You can see the fuel rail I fabricated to a) give it a lower profile for hood clearance and b) give me an 'in' and an 'out' for a back-pressure regulator setup.  The original Focus installation used a PWM signal to the fuel pump to regulate pressure at the rail, and therefore only had a single fuel connection.

You can also see the Megasquirt relay board mounted to the upper left of the engine.  The Megasquirt module is in the passenger footwell.

This was taken about 5 or 6 weeks ago.