The car has now been collected for paint work, which is being undertaken by Option 1 near Bromsgrove. Whilst there are undoubtedly many great paint shops closer to Hereford, I have seen the results that these guys produce and they are true craftsmen and specialists if fiberglass cars.
There are a few other things that we have asked them to fix before painting, as they were outside of comfort zone and timescales.
Steering / instrument alignment
As explained on a previous post, we had a lot of problems with the steering column geometry. We are happy with the geometry and know that it is setup correctly now, however, the final positioning means that the instrument cluster and eyebrow are 50mm offset compared with the steering column.
I am not sure if this was a problem in fabrication when the mold was swapped from RHD to LHD, but we have also seen this problem reported on numerous US forums, where people have moved their steering to the right. I think the right course of action is to cut and re-glass the cluster 50mm to the left, which keeps the correct geometry.
Headlight buckets
This one definitely falls into the poor fabrication bucket (excuse the pun) and I wish I picked it up months ago. However, it is now too close to paint to send it back to the shell fabricators, so have asked Option 1 to fix them. You can clearly see the original line where the headlight buckets should have been cut and installed. However, they have been installed about 20mm too low and look shocking, as it creates a vertical surface between the wheel bulge and the headlight, which on all Porches are a nice continuous flow.
Other jobs
Whilst the car is away for paint and trim work, there are other jobs to be getting on with, including the sourcing or any outstanding items (i.e. instrument gauges).
Today, we also picked up the windscreen from Chesil (Westfield Sports Cars) ready for installation when it is back and great to see some of their cars in the flesh to see how certain elements are finished off in the factory.
When the car comes back, there is a very long list of things to do before it can go off for IVA test, and include some improvements, such as:
- Fixing parking brake – I think this initial cable stretch, but I may end up getting custom cables made, rather than using mechanical nipples. Failing that, I may need to get a new parking brake mechanism fabricated with a longer throw on the tunnel end to allow for an increase in the effective cable length being pulled
- Wheel geometry – There’s some rub on the front wheel arch, which I think is down to camber which will need to be sorted
- Stance – The front dropped spindles make the car sit extremely low and once the front wheel geometry has been sorted, this may need some further adjustment and as a last resort potentially resorting to standard spindles
- Rear wheel clearance – With the front dropped so much, I have also dropped the rear, which means that there is very little clearance on the rear wheel well. This needs to be fixed by either raising the rear or putting narrower tyres all around. It currently sits of 185x65x15, so could easily drop down to 165x65x15s.
On top of that is all of the other components to be installed (i.e. lights and bright work) as well as second fix electrics.