Fisher Fury Build Progress - June 2006

4^th June

Had a look at the location of the propshaft to see what sort of a bracket I need to fabricate for the bearing mount. This picture shows the bearing 40mm vertically above the chassis mounting plates, which seems spot on to me.

Having got the height right, the next job is to get the horizontal alignment set. The position of the bearing is quite far over to the right of the car, due to the position of the engine output shaft. Far enough in fact to have a bolt go straight through the chassis mounting plate, a spacer, the bearing mount plate and into the 8mm captive nut on the bearing mount.
The captive nuts on the bearing mount are 76mm apart so I'm using a 8mm x 20mm x 180mm bar on which to bolt the bearing. This has a 32mm aluminium spacer at each end, which are bolted through onto the chassis plates. This approach avoids and machining and welding and keeps the bearing mount light in weight.

5^th June

Handbrake Cable Routing

In the picture above you can see here how the handbrake cable fouls the fuel pipes and chassis rails. I was going to bolt a nylon wheel onto the chassis rail to act as a runner for the top cable but, a simpler and easier approach is to simply space the handbrake cable puller further out on a longer bolt. [Correction: See for actual implementation]

7^th June

Speed Sensor

The speed sensor has two very small, powerful magnets that need to be glued to the proposhaft using Araldite. The magnets pass by a Hall effect sensor sensing pulses to the Digidash2. The air gap needs to be about 1mm so the sensor must be mounted rigidly, to ensure it will not foul the magnets.

The simplest way to achieve this appears to be to run some aluminium angle across the tunnel, fixed to the chassis verticals, half way down the tunnel. The downside of this approach is that the handbrake cable is in the way and would have to run over and under this bar.

In the end I made a bracket (to be powder coated and riveted to the chassis), which sits out of the way at the diff end of the propshaft. The sensor is 12mm in diameter and has two nylon nuts on its threaded body to provide adjustment.

8^th June

Tacho Feed

The tacho signal conditioner module arrived from ETB Instruments today. This unit should help clean up the signal coming from the coil, going to the Digidash2.

12^th June

Tacho Feed

Installed the above unit today and testing shows that it fixes the problem well. I've got a consistent rpm reading on the Digidash2 and I could see no transients or spikes. With the engine well warmed up, I now had the confidence to rev it harder and I could see consistent behaviour from the shift lights all the way up to beyond 11,000rpm.

20^th June

Very little progress due to all the football going on right now.

26^th June

Finished off the propshaft centre bearing mount. The parts need powder coating. I machined some 34mm spacers from 25mm aluminium round. A 6mm x 30mm steel bar sits across these and supports the bearing. I wanted to use 8mm x 30mm aluminium bar but it was too difficult to get hold off.

27^th June

Fabricated the cover for the drivers footwell. This will also be powder coated.

29^th June

Ordered my bodywork. Normally the lead time is about 10 working days but, my non-standard coloured gel coat is going to take longer. I've ordered a 'Spyder' body (no screen and no doors) with a 'Classic' bonnet type (big bonnet bulge). There are three weight options. Since my car is for mainly road use, I've gone for the standard weight bodywork.

After giving it much thought, I've finally gone for the original colour scheme I had in mind, which is a Rover 'Old English White' (paint code NNX) over which I will run some dark blue stripes. Recently, I had planned to do the reverse of this scheme, both of which are inspired by the Ford GT/GT40. If I went for the dark blue with white stripes though, it would have to be a metallic paint finish and this would cost much more. White is also currently an 'in' colour for cars apparently.