Tuesday, May 27, 2008

An Update

There has been a bit of a lull in work on my GT6, partly due to a lack of enthusiasm and partly due to being busy around the farm.
In the meantime, after a bit of deliberation with other people on the DS Forum, I decided to invest in a rivnut tool. This tool allows you to fit a threaded tube into any panel where there is sufficient clearance behind it. The main reason for this purchase was to allow me to neatly route the battery cables from the battery box behind the driver, past the drivers seat and on through the bulkhead to the starter.
One alternative to rivnut was to use self-tapping screws through the panels, but I thought that a bit scruffy to have screws pointing out underneath the car, with a propensity to rust. So instead, aluminium rivnuts with stainless cap head bolts are being used, much better in my opinion.
The battery box needed to be modified to fit in the boot area and still allow the panels to be fitted over it. In order to do this, the box needed to be shortened by six inches, this was simply done by accurately cutting the box in half, sliding one half in the other, decide the correct height, then fix the two pieces back together again using pop rivets and Adhesal.














The more I have been working with the GT6 and it's fuel system, the less happy I have been with the original fuel hose and fittings, these being a mix of mild steel and plastic, especially as it has to carry in excess of 100psi petrol. To improve matters, I have decided to use modern braided fuel hoses to run to and from the metering unit in the engine bay.
The system uses 9/16" (-6 JIC) hose for the feed to the metering unit, requiring an adaptor at the metering unit end to convert from BSP to 9/16" (-6 JIC) and a 30° swept joint to clear the bulkhead.
For the spill back, 7/16" (-4 JIC) is being used, again with a BSP to JIC converter at the metering unit end. I am waiting on this smaller BSP to JIC converter at the moment, seems it is a bit of an unusual size, but once I get it, work can start on laying out the fittings, to decide where best to route the fuel hoses and the lengths required.