Bracket arrives!

Hoorah! The brackets have arrived...


They look exactly like what I wanted and even better, they fit!

So I cleaned them up (not so well it turns out) sprayed them in VHT engine enamel red and baked them in the oven (not so popular at home now!).


With some nice new stainless hardware they are bolted in and the gearbox is supported!



Clutch bracket ready tomorrow apparently, so watch this space....

Brackets drawing closer....

Confirmed last week that the gearbox brackets should be ready on Friday, once thats done the clutch bracket goes for manufacture (if the mount brackets are good) and I can sort out the gearshift extension.

Had a good chat with Andy at GD on Friday to sort out a few options and I think I have decided now to fit the anti roll bar now instead of waiting unti lthe car is finished! Just need to work out if it will fit over the water pump pully.

Progress...?

Well the engineering firm has found my drawings and promised to start next week..... Watch this space!

Hmmm, one month on and no sign of my metal work yet. May need to find another engineering firm....

Gear box mount spacer

One thing I neglected to do was level the gearbox! So with jack under the box (not in the box....ah well Ill get my coat!)

I realised I need a 22 mm spacer between the mount and the gear box. This will also solve the issue of clearnace between the mount and the gearbox itself.

Again some AutoCAD work and the drawing was ready, its with PJO as well!

Gear box mount.

A few bits of wood are all very nice but I cant see them being a permanent solution!

One of the issues I have is that the mount location on the Getrag is around 50mm forward in car line to the foremost mounting hole welded to the chassis.

So a bespoke plate is going to be needed to make up the gap and fix to the bottom of the Energy Suspension mount.

Luckily the mount exactly matches the getrag bolt spacing so thats a bit of luck!


With the mount in place I fixed a card template to the chassis and started the mock up process. In the end I took various measurements from the chassis holes and used the chassis cross member behind the mounting wings as a datum.


Knowing the mount holes centres I then entered the whole thing into AutoCAD, played around a bit, printed it out 1:1 and made V1 MDF template.


With this fitted I noted that I could not get a socket on to the mount bolts, this is required as there is a bit of jiggling about require to get all the bolt holes lined up before all the bolts can be located and tightened due to the slots in the mount.

So I modified the template to give access.


With the mount all fitted and OK I returned to the computer and made the final changes, spent ages working out how to apply dimensions, made a drawing block template and voila finished drawing.

I also added the 8mm threaded hole for the exhaust mount and a strengthening rib under the plate as the gearbox mounts outside of the chassis bolt locations.

I should at this point offer major thanks to Simon for his help with drawing standards and advice. - Cheers mate!

The bracket is now out with PJO Engineering in Swindon for Manufacture.