Seat fixing - fitting to the car

Fixing the seats

This turned out to be a real pain and very time consuming - working out where to drill the holes to fix the runners. In the end I may end up changing the head restraints (which are currently mounted on the seat) to ones mounted on the roll over bars. Otherwise the head restraints touch the rear bodywork, the seat belts touch the head restraint and the head restraint restricts rearward seat movement - apart from that lot it is fine!

GD had supplied four fixing bolts, washers and spacers for each seat.  The long bolts and spacers go at the front of each seat. All the spacers were sprayed satin black to blend in (not that you can see them) and to reduce the risk of corrosion.

The carpets under the seats were turned back. Here I had to remove the seatbelt anchorages from the floor. A measurement from the rear bulkhead of 560 mm was used to locate the front fixing points on my seats, but check your own as Keith Akerman used 640 mm. The front hole nearest the transmission tunnel was about 75 mm from the tunnel side and about 90 mm away at the rear mounting point. A template of the bolt holes was used to determine the other location points.

Template taken from bottom of seat, marking the bolt holes

8 mm holes were drilled through the floor to take the fixing bolts. The holes I drilled in error (I had the runners in the wrong position), will act as drain holes!

The bolts were put loosely in the runners, before the seats were positioned in the car.

Bolts loosely fitted to runners

The seats were then trial fitted, before holes were cut in the carpet. Getting all four bolts through is not easy, so the rear holes were slightly larger.

The carpets were re-fitted with the seatbelt eye bolts. The holes in the floor were then marked with chalk and the carpet placed over them. The chalk was transferred on to the back of the carpet by pressing it with my fingers, before holes were cut in the carpet. Finally the seats were put in to the car and with the spacers at the front. The length of each bolt was noted, the seat removed and each bolt shortened to the appropriate length. The seats were fixed in place using the bolts, nylocs and penny washers from underneath the car.

Driver's seat fitted

Now just the passenger side to do.

Handbrake

Once the seat was in place, I could hardly get my fingers around the handbrake. I solved this by fitting a 3 mm spacer at the front handbrake mounting. Because the rear had no spacer, this caused the front of the handbrake to be move away from the car side and this created enough room to use it. Useful!!

Spacer between the handbrake and front mounting can be seen

The leather that covers the handbrake and the escutcheon were re-fitted.

Attaching the seat belts

I am fitting four point harnesses. I have had these in my Caterham and five point in my other two race cars. The five point were great in the race cars and stopped me submarining under heavy braking, but they could hurt the gentleman parts at times! So four point it was. You feel so secure with them on and they stop you moving about in the seat.

The harnesses are the clip in type in black to match the leather trim. It was simply a case of attaching them to the eye bolts on the fixings on the roll hoops and to the anchorages that I had located on the floor. The belts were then adjusted to suit me. At this point I took the opportunity to shorten one of the eye bolts so that it did not protrude from the fixing under the car.

4 point belts fixed

To keep the IVA inspector happy, I will edge the belt fixings with rubber trim to make sure that the curves are of sufficient radius.

Dashboard electrics connection

Connecting the looms

Spaghetti!

There are two main black connectors on the dash board loom which can only fit one way in to the other half of the connector on the main body loom. Then there re two white connector blocks which link the dash loom to the body loom. Finally there is a white connector which has four earth (black) wires, which is again connected to the body loom.

The five connectors

The column wiring 'sub looms' connect to the dashboard loom in to the designated connectors. Again they will only go in to one connector.

Column switch connections

The brake fluid warning wires (green and green/white) were fed through the bulkhead and connected to the brake fluid reservoir. Then the two wires that I had added for the auxiliary power socket were attached after small terminals had been attached.

Next the wires were attached to the ignition switch (see diagram from GD below).

Lower right diagram shows how to connect the ignition switch

Larger gauge wire crimp connectors (yellow) were needed for two of the wires. One of these needed a large 9.5 mm terminal too. See photo below.

Ignition switch connections

Once all the connections had been made, it was time to test if the electrical items worked. That will follow shortly.

NOTE ADDED LATER: Take note of the "GD427 Mk4 Vauxhall column connections" document notes. These changes should ideally be made before the loom is put in place! A lot easier. Will post wiring changes later.

Steering column - switches and wiring

This is the second part of my steering column switches and wiring post.

The switches were removed from the column mounting. The original stalks were cut off above the rubber gaitor locator towards the stalk end - see the photo below.

Cut stalk alongside an in-cut one

The end of the 'switch stalk' was then filed flat, drilled and tapped to take the replacement GD stainless stalks. The plastic flange that locates the rubber boot is at a slight angle, so the hole needed to be drilled to take account of this.

The plastic flange that the rubber boot is located on. Note that it is not 90 deg to the stalk

The new turned stalks were screwed in and a small amount of 'loctite' used to make sure they do not work loose. The column adjuster was fitted and a small grommet fitted to the leather to finish it off. This was glued to the leather to keep it in place.

New stalk fitted

The wires were connected to the column switches using the wiring diagram from GD. I will come on to the ignition switch later.

Wiring for column connectors

The wires have had female crimp connectors attached at the ends of the cut wires. Connectors are attached at the other end to link to the the dashboard loom using the block connector.

A switch with the wires connected

Don't push the switches fully home on the steering column at this stage, as they will need to be removed to install the dashboard.

What did you do with your Cobra today?

Did nothing today. Too busy letting my nail polish dry! Normally I don't wear any, but my 4 year old grand daughter insisted I did for Christmas day. Not sure it goes with the Cobra image though.

Need to avoid chipping it when next working on the Cobra!

Steering column - leather, trim and switches

Managed to get a couple of hours on the Cobra today before Christmas.

Stainless steel shroud

The leather was cut to an approximate length to go around the shroud and the thickness of the shroud marked with chalk.

Metal shroud and marked up leather (the area to glue is nearest the camera)

Contact adhesive was applied to the metal shroud and leather (within the chalk mark). After 'drying the contact adhesive' the leather was fixed to the metal shroud. It was then trimmed to expose the control stalk holes.

Leather glued and fitted to metal shroud prior to being trimmed

The shroud was tried in the stainless steel trim plate and needed a small amount removing with metal shears at the joint.

The plastic mounting needs to have the two pre-drilled holes opening out a little and then tapped to take M8 threads. I used a 6.5 mm drill bit to open out the hole and a sharp M8 tap to create the thread.

Tapping for the M8 thread

The old mounting brackets (plastic below and metal above) were removed.

Old brackets removed (lower bracket already done)

Next the ignition switch barrel was removed. This is achieved by turning the ignition key clockwise one click to position one. A thin allen key is inserted in the small hole just above the barrel (see photo below) and the barrel just pops out.

Hole to release ignition barrel

The leather on the shroud was cut to the indicator and wiper switches using a craft knife. The shroud was then fed over the column. The switches were then put in place on the column. The stainless steel stalks will be fitted later.

The stainless steel trim plate was fitted to the column and over the shroud using M8 buttonhead bolts to fix it. The leather covered shroud is a friction fit to the stainless steel trim plate, so does not need any fixings.

Old type stalks in place (they will be replaced)

On the plate are operating symbols for the lights, wipers, horn etc, so the stainless steel GD stalks can be fitted before the IVA.

The leather was trimmed around the inside of the ignition barrel.

Leather cut around the barrel

Seat fixing - the runners

Runners

This is the easy bit!

Seat base as delivered

First job was to find the captive threads on the seat bases under the leather. The holes were found by finger and then a small indentation was made by pressing the leather over each hole. There were four of these - one at each corner. These were exposed by carefully cutting around the holes with a sharp craft knife.

Captive threads exposed

The threads needed running through with an M8 tap to clear the them. Eight bolts (M8) had been supplied by GD to fix the runners. One runner was fixed to each seat, making sure that the adjuster spring was nearest to the seat base (the runners are also handed). Next the adjuster handle was fitted over the peg and between the two locating lugs on the fixed runner. Then the other runner was put in to place and fixed to the seat. I have head restraints fixed to the seats, so it was okay to fit the adjuster bar at this stage. If you have head restraints fixed to the roll over hoops, then the adjuster bars should not be fitted for the IVA test as the seats need to be in a fixed position.

Two runners and adjustment bar fitted

Now I just need to fit them to the car

Thank you!

Over 30,000 page views! Wow.

To all those in the US, UK, Russia, Australia, France, Ireland, Guernsey, Ukraine, Canada, Netherlands, China, Indonesia and everyone who has had a look at my blog in the last month.

A BIG THANK YOU!