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CanberraBJ8
Jedi Trainee
Offline
A couple of days have passed since my last update. Apart from the usual time spent staring at various components of the car wondering how I'm going to proceed, I've done the following.
Seats; rather than my original plan of making new seats from scratch, I've worked on the existing ones. I extended the tabs the pivot bolts are held in. I lifted them about an inch - as per suggestions from forum members. Theyve tilted the seat backs about 2- 2.5 " further back. Its touch and go as to whether this will cause issues with the new seat belt mounts. Then I cut out about 2" of the foam from the seat base. Previously the seats felt like you were sitting on a box. Looking through the windscreen my line of sight was about a few inches from the top of the screen - and I'm only 5'9". Now I'm looking through he middle of the screen. And also I've added a couple of layers of foam to the lumber area of the seat backs. The overall effect seems to be quite comfortable - which they were definitely not before! Time will tell whether I need to revisit these (I took a little more of the seat base side - or bolsters? - out in the passenger seat. I might need to add a little back).
Seat belts; I welded up a couple of brackets to mount the retractors of the new seat belts. They are secured by the bolts from the radius arm, the bolt that holds the other end of the belt to the floor (I don't think the hole is in the original position in my car - its at the base of the wheel arch or just in front of it) and the tab that the spring that assists the lifting of the soft top. I didn't find that the spring greatly assisted lifting the top, so at the moment I'm not planning on refitting the spring. However, if i do want to refit it, I can just add a hole on the mounting bracket next to where the bolt goes through. I found that a friend of mine does some powder coating, so they have been powder coated black (the colour he was working in today on another job) for free - cant argue with that!
Also (cant remember if I've already mentioned this in a previous entry) I had the soft top frame powdercoated in gloss navy blue. Gloss because thats the only navy they had, and I'd not realised at that tie that my friend could have done the job for me... oh well. Now I just need to run a tap through the thread of the pivot pin as its full of powder coat... :grumpy:
Also today the the carpet snaps arrived, so I started fitting the rear carpet to the rear of the cabin. I have been holding off on working any further with the carpet until these arrived, as I suspected some of the carpet sections would need some fine tuning to have them fit once held down with the snaps. This has been proved correct! I spent a couple of hours just getting that section of carpet to sit without ripples.
Tomorrow I'll pick up the seat belt brackets, and take some photos of the above to post... and continue with the carpet.
Seats; rather than my original plan of making new seats from scratch, I've worked on the existing ones. I extended the tabs the pivot bolts are held in. I lifted them about an inch - as per suggestions from forum members. Theyve tilted the seat backs about 2- 2.5 " further back. Its touch and go as to whether this will cause issues with the new seat belt mounts. Then I cut out about 2" of the foam from the seat base. Previously the seats felt like you were sitting on a box. Looking through the windscreen my line of sight was about a few inches from the top of the screen - and I'm only 5'9". Now I'm looking through he middle of the screen. And also I've added a couple of layers of foam to the lumber area of the seat backs. The overall effect seems to be quite comfortable - which they were definitely not before! Time will tell whether I need to revisit these (I took a little more of the seat base side - or bolsters? - out in the passenger seat. I might need to add a little back).
Seat belts; I welded up a couple of brackets to mount the retractors of the new seat belts. They are secured by the bolts from the radius arm, the bolt that holds the other end of the belt to the floor (I don't think the hole is in the original position in my car - its at the base of the wheel arch or just in front of it) and the tab that the spring that assists the lifting of the soft top. I didn't find that the spring greatly assisted lifting the top, so at the moment I'm not planning on refitting the spring. However, if i do want to refit it, I can just add a hole on the mounting bracket next to where the bolt goes through. I found that a friend of mine does some powder coating, so they have been powder coated black (the colour he was working in today on another job) for free - cant argue with that!
Also (cant remember if I've already mentioned this in a previous entry) I had the soft top frame powdercoated in gloss navy blue. Gloss because thats the only navy they had, and I'd not realised at that tie that my friend could have done the job for me... oh well. Now I just need to run a tap through the thread of the pivot pin as its full of powder coat... :grumpy:
Also today the the carpet snaps arrived, so I started fitting the rear carpet to the rear of the cabin. I have been holding off on working any further with the carpet until these arrived, as I suspected some of the carpet sections would need some fine tuning to have them fit once held down with the snaps. This has been proved correct! I spent a couple of hours just getting that section of carpet to sit without ripples.
Tomorrow I'll pick up the seat belt brackets, and take some photos of the above to post... and continue with the carpet.