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...

Most of my sheetmetal work gets hidden away behind or underneath things, but now I was going to put it "front and center" for all to see.  It didn't help that I watched some of the Barrett-Jackson auction live from Las Vegas yesterday.  In addition to the normal parade of muscle cars was the occasional custom sprinkled in.

Pretty humbling to see what the pros can do, whether on the creativity side or the amazing craftsmanship.

No matter, today I drug out the plasma cutter and welder, and decided I was going to put something together!

After sanding off the paint from the hood, I marked the outline of the bulge and then drew an offset line about 3/4" inside.  I cut on this line with the plasma, then cleaned it up.  I then sprayed it with blue mark-up fluid and scratched the shape of the bulge piece into it again, and then scribed a radial line every 3/4" around so that I could cut tabs to bend up and be a backer to the edge of the bulge.

In order to get a good weld, I punched them with the handy little punch and bent them up towards the bulge.  I tacked on the bulge on the top side, then proceeded to weld all the spots on the tabs on the underneath.  Next I stitch welded on the top side to seal it up.

After cleaning up the welds with the grinder, it was time for some filler.  Not only did I have to cover up the joint, but I had to do a little work on the bulge itself, since the shrinking hammer left some pretty good sized impressions in it, and also since it was not perfectly symmetric.

By 5 PM, I had enough, and called it quits.  I've still got another hour or two of sanding and touch-up, but I think it's going to be OK.

Looks like I'm on schedule to make it to the Euro Auto Fest in a few weeks.  It'll be far from finished, but I'm coming down the home stretch now!

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.

And as I mentioned in my last post, I bought this stuff from a friend, and had just about the right amount - only a small pile of leftovers.  The "bad news" is I added about 30 pounds of weight, but I'm thinking I'm still well under 1700.

Shopping for carpet now, but prior to that the only thing left on the inside is taping the seams.  It's really nice to have it taking shape!

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!

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.

Even though the Ford Duratec 2.0 is still in stock tune, it's amazing how this little car gets up and goes.  It doesn't hurt that it weighs in about 1600 lbs, and I can't even imagine what it would (will!) be like if (when!) we turboed it.

Here's what's been done in the last month:

• Shimmed the rear spring perches to raise the back end about 1" to prevent tire rub on 'launch'.
• Built a signal conditioner for the tach to convert the low voltage pulse to something that approximates a coil - tach works great now.
• Cut a hole in the hood to accomodate the much taller DOHC engine.
• Aligned the front end.
• Removed all the old numbers and stripes from its racing days.
• Got the passenger seat belt installed.
• Got all but the front left lights terminated and working, as well as the horn.
• Put the bumpers back on, as well as the grill.
• Put the old 'street' roll bar in.

And, there are still a whole lot of things left to do:

• Close in the transmission tunnel.
• Install the acoustic dampening material
• Install carpet
• Recover the Fiat X1/9 seats.
• Fabricate the hood bulge and install it
• Clean up the engine compartment
• Install the front sway bar
• Install the panhard rod
• Replace the T5 tailshaft seal (leaking)
• Hook up the speedometer and calibrate
• Plumb the oil pressure gauge
• Install door windows and regulators
• Replace top
• I'll stop here.   I'm getting depressed.

Well, hope you enjoyed the pix.  It's only going to get better from here.

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.

OK, I actually have made progress in the last year, but just not a full year's worth of progress.  The drivetrain is in, including the Dana 30 rear end from my friends' Volvo 242.  I got most of the wiring done, along with fuel, brake and coolant plumbing.  Radiator and fan are in, and even the passenger seat and one seatbelt.

Oh, and the big news is I got it registered and insured!

Now I just need to figure out what's wrong with tne #4 cylinder.  But more on that later.

Here she is sitting on the suspension.  The 205/40 16's look just right to me.

The old column and shaft from the Midget ran right through where the Duratec intake manifold is now. So, we had to reroute. The idea was to maximize space in the engine compartment, so it meant buying several U-joints. Borgeson makes some pretty good ones, and provides some really good design info on their website. They also sell directly, or you can source it elsewhere.

The original plan was to use the first segment of the Midget steering column, but since it was kind of sloppy, we decided to spring for a new brushed stainless column. The economy version was around $150, and worth every penny. It's finished very nicely, has zero slop, and looks great with the little Mountey steering wheel that was in the race version of the Midget.

The new column was 2" OD, with no provision for mounting. So I got onto McMaster-Carr, and found some really nice pipe clamps and associated steel channel designed for hanging industrial piping. For about $20, I got two clamps and a 3' piece of mounting rail.

We cut one small piece, and welded it on to the original front column mounting bracket, and then cut another one and ran all the way across the top of the footwell. The idea there was to stiffen things up a bit, since a short piece welded to the sheetmetal might have been a bit flimsy.

In the first photo, you can see the rail mounted, awaiting the clamps and column.

And here is one of the clamps. It has a tough plastic body with a plated steel cap and a couple of eccentric nuts that slip into the "C" shaped channel, and then rotate to lock in when tightened. This makes assembly and disassembly real easy.

Here's a shot with it loosely in place, prior to sliding the rear of the shaft into the first U-joint. The blue painter's tape was put on to protect the finish when I was doing the initial fitting.

I learned from the Borgeson website that if you have multiple shafts connected with U-joints, only one shaft can be unsupported. The first shaft (in the column) obviously is fixed, so I need a support for the second. Because of the proximity of the shaft to the corner of the sheetmetal that I previously installed, I ended up using a Heim joint as the support. It's not very pretty, but won't be seen and is easily adjusted to keep the shaft from rubbing on the hole through the footwell.

To the right, you can see the inside of the piece we fabbed in a previous post.

Here's a shot with everything connected and tightened down.

And finally, the shot of the engine compartment showing the new route, complete with a couple more U-joints. We opted for the stainless shafts and U-joints, and they're not cheap. They're all 3/4" 36 spline, and the shafts are available from 4" through 20 some inches in 1/4" increments. We mocked it up using 3/4" wooden dowel rod once everything was fitted to get final shaft lengths, then ordered them.

Everything fit perfectly, and the steering is rock-solid and very precise feeling. Can't wait to try it out!

Oh, one more thing I learned - the phasing of the U-joints is very important. Like on a driveshaft, they must be oriented so that the yokes on either end of any shaft are parallel.

Only thing left to do is clean the sticky labels off the shafts, grind flats into the shafts for the set-screws, and loctite everything down.

Here you can see that I've got a good bit of the skin on. I didn't take pix as I went, but here's the narrative if you're interested:

I formed the front-most piece first. I cut a thin poster-board template that wrapped over the 1" strap frame, then transferred it to a piece of 24 gauge sheet and cut it out. I wrapped it around, and it was very easy to form against the rigid frame. Once it was all trimmed and fitting nicely, I clecoed it in. I then roughed in a small flange to turn in to the recess that is needed for seat clearance to allow something to overlap with the next piece. Then I cut that next piece that goes from that flange toward the tranny (parallel with the firewall) and put a little flange in it for welding. We'll call that piece number 2.

Before I cut and formed the next piece, which is the "S" shaped piece that is back parallel with the tranny, I decided to put the T-5 back in just to make sure I didn't have any interference. Good thing I did! I realized that that piece #2 was contacting some of the transmission bolts. Not acceptable. So, I put in on the english wheel and put some shape to it so that the outer edge stayed flat (where it meets the big front tunnel piece) but the other two edges moved back about 1/2" - enough to clear the bolts. Even though it looks flat in the photo, it's got some contour to it.

Next I formed the "S" shaped piece, laid it in, and transferred the profile of the 2nd piece to the front edge of the "S", then trimmed it for a flush fit. Then I scribed the front edge of the "S" piece onto the 2nd piece, and trimmed it, leaving an extra 1/4" which I bent to 90 degrees to provide an overlap with the "S" shaped piece. I put in 3 tacks from the front with everything lined up, and then spot welded the back side out of the car.

Below you'll see it with the seat slid forward. I test fit my 5' 2" daughter, and sized it to allow her to be able to release the clutch. Unfortunately that means she'll be able to put the gas pedal to the floor too!

I ran out of time, so I'll pick up the rest later.

One last shot from the passenger side: