A new tunnel and parts back from the welders

Work has been a bit slow on this car in the recent months due to other commitments, but I have been able to chip away at a few jobs. One thing I was not looking forward to was making another gearbox tunnel as it takes a lot of fitting and re-fitting to make sure the fit is right, which involves a fair bit of time on my knees.

Just to complicate things, I wanted to make the new tunnel look more like the factory version, which means I should be able to fit the radio/dash support.

I started off by fabricating the rear-most section first, which needed relatively small diameters and a quick step up between them to give space for your hand to use the handbrake.

Than I moved forward to cut the piece which will hold the tunnel onto the bulkhead and welded a section onto this, along the inner profile and then carried on fabricating back along the passenger side.

And here it is in place for yet another trial fit.

With all the welding on the gearbox tunnel I set to painting it, here you can see the back piece is separate to allow removal of the tunnel without having to disconnect the hand brake.

This was finished over the course of a number of weekends, finally being painted and the inside covered with my perfered sound deadening and heat reflective material.

Eleswhere on the car, the surge pot has returned from the welders with the bosses I turned-up to allow me to use banjo bolts in the end of the pot, instead of the JB welded in 90degree fittings. The banjo bolts should be a lot easier to work with and seal better also.

Also coming back from the welders was the airbox, which I had cut the previous 50mm inlets off from and had them tack on one of the new 75mm inlets. It's only tacked on for now to let me work out where the second inlet, which goes further back, should be positioned.