Westfield build, Mazda SDV

Wow. First up I should definitely apologise for neglecting this blog a bit. Sorry about that! I’ve spent too much time building the car and not enough time writing about it. Sounds stupid but I really did get annoyed with it sucking up so much of my time in a bid to get it finished. This bonnet not fitting didn’t help either. In reality, given the weather, it’s good not to have an end date! But anyway, onto the meaty stuff, and to fill the inboxes of those who have subscribed. Apologies in advance…

So, with the tub shifted forwards to meet the bonnet, it did indeed fit:

Kind of…

I looked at that side of the tub again and managed to shift it a bit further forward. This solved the trick. Looking at the drivers side it seems the scuttle sits ‘in’ a little bit. Further research showed many examples of this so I can only presume ‘they’re all like that sir’

So with the tub now shifted forward and in the right place, I could further examine the knock on effects. The boot box was up against the diff mounting brackets as per the previous post, and this meant it no longer mounted flush.

Resecuring the tub to the rear would resolve this and pull the boot box away from the diff mounting brackets slightly.

Back to the front and it looked like everything was forward enough to leave space for the hinge.

The next day the hinge arrived (it wasn’t originally included in my kit) and so the bonnet was fixed on. So far so good! You can just about see the bolts on the bonnet in this photo:

It mounted up fine on the drivers side:

The passenger side sat a little proud so I trimmed the tab down a touch. That fixed it, though it naturally wanted to spring back up again. The clamp will sort that of course.

With the bonnet on, I riveted the top edge of the sides on the tub, making sure the edges match.

So, it was all fitted, finally! Probably one of the worst weeks of the build but got there in the end. If I’d known it would have been this much trouble I think I’d have gotten the FW rear too as having a custom tank made would surely have been easier. Life may have been easier had I known to ignore the 400mm measure to start off with of course.

The good thing about the FW bonnet though is with the front end jacked up, access is great!

It’s not too bad with the car on the floor either. Obviously the bonnet doesn’t open as far, but enough to get your head in and look around comfortably.

Whilst all this was going on, I did a spot of wiring to keep myself occupied. Here’s the main bank of switches to go in the middle of the dash. All wired up, though the photo doesn’t show it.

I drilled the holes for the wiring through the scuttle (64mm was ok rather than the 70mm in the manual), trimmed it and sat it on the mountings. Then, I test fitted the bonnet.

Oh noo! It was as if the bonnet was too short. It was as far against the chassis as possible and was a quarter of an inch away from meeting the scuttle and associated mountings.

I posted a thread on the WSCC but we couldn’t make sense of it as every measurement showed the tub was in exactly the right place. It was as though the bonnet was too short – unlikely given them are made out of moulds.

A phone call to Westfield on the Monday (The above was done over the weekend) came up with the problem and solution. When fitting FW bodywork, the bonnet has to be fitted first. Unfortunately, this wasn’t in any of the build manuals I had, there was a separate supplement for the FW kit. I also didn’t have the hinge to fit the bonnet. Westfield popped that in the post and emailed me an extract of the FW build supplement, covering the bonnet fitting.

I drilled out the rivets securing the rear of the tub, removed the roll bar and pushed the tub as far forward as possible whilst still getting the boot box to fit. The gap for the boot box went from this:

To right up against the diff mounting brackets

I’m hoping when it’s all done I’m left with a bit of a gap.

Of course, moving the tub presents a bigger problem:

The roll bar holes no long line up. This means the boot box is essentially scrap, else I’d have very odd looking gaps where the roll bar is fixed. Or, there’s an alternative. The RAC bar uses square mountings bigger than the hole of the standard bar. Guess what I’ve ordered. Westfield have said they’ll give a discount seeing as they didn’t furnish me with the correct instructions to start off with.

Got a few outstanding jobs done. The first was drilling the gearbox mountings. This would have been much easier from the inside out, but instead I jacked the gearbox up and drilled from underneath. Careful measuring being the order of the day. Unsurprisingly, the tunnel top panel was still out so this will need trimming.

I picked up a new banjo bolt and fitted the clutch slave cylinder.

This was duly filled and bled. It’s tougher than I remember, but then it’s a completely different master cylinder. Once the prop is shortened and attached I’ll find the biting point then fit a bolt behind the pedal to stop it being pushed too far.

Finally, I temporarily fitted the rear arches and fixed the rear of the tub into position. I clamped on the arches, checked they were central to the wheel, re-checked the 400mm measurement at the boot, then checked it all again a few more times. Fortunately, the offset of the wheels guessed at when choosing them turned out to be spot on. 15×7, et40.

It was only then I noticed that the co pilot was less than impressed with my car building skills. I think he realised something I hadn’t.

Make sure you’re happy with the positioning of the tub before doing this, and remembering the an FW bonnet will mean the tub doesn’t use the 400mm measurement at the rear.

First, I masked up where I was going to drill through and added some tape to the sides to show where the plate the roll bar would mount to is.

I then fitted the boot box, masking taped that up and placed the rollbar on top. After making sure all was central, I carefully drew around the rollbar and removed it. With a rule, I found the centre of these circles and drilled a 4mm hole through it down through the mounting plate.

I removed the boot box and using the 4mm hole as a guide, drilled a 54mm hole for the rollbar to pass through. I also started drilling through the tub afterwards, but it was getting a bit late and didn’t think the neighbours would appreciate it. There’s no rush, I haven’t picked up a 12mm drill bit yet and don’t want to fit the rollbar properly until I’m finished in the boot area.

Checking my handiwork, I was relieve to see it all still lined up:

I don’t think the rollbar is up to much to be honest, so I’ll be upgrading to a braced one next winter. Will concentrate on getting it on the road first!

With the insulation mostly removed, wires could start to be removed. So far I’d done:

• Headlight motor wiring removed
• Headlight levelling wiring removed
• Air conditioning wiring removed
• Wires for the plugs around the inlet manifold shortened

So far, the wiring removed from the rear loom and this loom is a smidge over 1.5kg. Now, I’m obviously not going for the lightest the Westfield can possibly be here, but it’s nice to remove a bit of weight when it’s possible, and free.

The loom for the dash and switches was next (yup, I’m now using wiring to break up the wiring). Eventually, because I’ll be using an aftermarket dash, and I dont’ need the extra length plugging this loom in gives, I’ll totally remove it. However, I find it easier to strip this loom down so I can keep track of what I’m removing. Here’s the loom at the start:

And after removing things like heater wiring (keep in mind you’ll need the feed for the heated screen though), electric windows, mirrors and the such, it ended up like this:

Total wiring weight removed so far – 2.5kg