Had me worried for a sec. The long line aint gonna leave much room for a rad!
Had me worried for a sec. The long line aint gonna leave much room for a rad!
after a host of test fits and some trimming of the fiats inner fenders the front clip was starting to set down on the body pretty well
so who sees the next issue? a little hint...... there is a reason the cowl panel isnt flush
so yea... the cowl panel. it was pretty obvious when i removed the miata windshield that the lower windshield frame was significantly above the door edge on mock up. i dint think it would be this much taller.
i had been hoping i could salvage the miata windshield wiper assembly but it is looking like that isn't really possible. not only does the wiper motor assembly sit too high for the fiat windshield, the radius of the windshield at the bottom edge is tighter for the fiat. and the fiat windshield is shorter than the miata so the pivot points would need to be different to be at all effective. so the decision was made to cut out the miata lower windshield frame and wiper supports. it is a convertible AND a race car after all. am i really going to drive it in the rain?.....
i figured it would be a good idea to mock up the windshield to help guide the cowl construction. since the windshield angle was set by the vent windows i figured the first step was to mock them into the stripped door shells.
obviously the firewall is still too high for the cowl, but a pretty good mock up. its really starting to look like a fiat.
so, the firewall needed to be cut down a little and the notch i placed a few months ago needed to be patched. here was my solution.....
Are the mounting points for the front windshield still attached to the cars front clip? The way it's coming together they would still work for mounting the front windshield and being level with the door wing windows.
Yeah...firewall is fun ain't it? Complicated. Pretty much all systems come into play at this point and a swap is bound to annoy something. If it is going to be a well executed street car, this is a big make or break point.
Wipers might be the one remaining "I have no clue how it is going to work out" areas that I have to deal with.
they dont fit. the miata chassis is about 2" wider than the fiat was. i couldnt figure out a way to make the mounting tabs work so i cut them off. it looks like i could mount a horizontal plate to the cut end of the windshield frame and mount it to the firewall support that way. ive been toying with putting a cage in it though and if i did i think id attach the windscreen to the cage with mounting tabs....im also not sure i will be using the glass. it is a little hazy..... and heavy. we will see which way it goes.
no home, i can only imagine what you are going through. having the "eh race car" button makes everything tolerable....i want it to be able to be driven on the street, but there are compromises that need to be made for speed, and safety at speed. but if i was trying to make a fully functional and dd finished car, with a comfy interior and creature comforts like air conditioning, it would be 2018 before it hit the street!
I will say at least the steering wheel doesn't look like you're driving a bus like all fiats do.
In reply to brad131a4:
Power steering is a good thing....
I see that you have a seat in there. Have you sat in the seat to get a feel for what the line of sight is over the dashboard and through the window frame? How does your arm sit if you hang it on the top of the door in "Cruise Mode" While you want to be able to see over the dash, it looks like you will be looking way over the fiat dash by the amount you had to slice off.
I had the opposite problem in that the Miata cowl was lower than the Volvo cowl and had to drop the body until the best compromise could be reached. Still 1.5' below the Volvo cowl and I might raise the seat and steering to compensate. Big game of 3D chess where you always have to be thinking 5 steps ahead.
I have taken a few tries at sitting in the seat. Steering wheel is pretty good position wise. I think the seat will be good once it has some padding on it. I'm about 1/2 to 3/4 inches low for the steering and need some leg bolster for the pedals. For visibility it isn't bad. My e30 is better but it also has less nose height at the front corners. The price we pay for Italian style! It also doesn't help that the motor and trans are out so the front end is up from normal.
Once we get the motor and trans in and some weights to mimic the other stuff like radiator and exhaust we can adjust the ride height a little and recheck.
So today was the first day working on the Fiata in a while... Mostly it was digging the car out from under a bunch of other materials. Once excavated I patched some lingering holes in the firewall, added to the cowl panel boxing in, and setting studs for future heat panels in the trans tunnel/ exhaust header area. Not pretty, not photo worthy, but enought to document that my project isn't dead.......
Love to see this one back on track.
ok. so i didn't get a lot of time with the project this weekend either, but i needed to at least get something done. so i decided i at least needed to get the firewall finished enough to seam seal and get some primer on it. i'm running out of bigger sheet metal pieces so the new top of the cowl is looking a little like a quilt. i did manage to get some primer on it though so it didn't look so bad.
i also welded on a little bit of scrap to support the cowl panel on either side at the fender.
i haven't finished out the full cowl top yet as i need to get under the fender to do it. since I'm still in the fitting up stage i don't want to pull the front clip off right now so these end sections will have to wait a little while
from there it was time to start applying the seam sealer to the firewall. turns out i didn't have a brush that would work to spread the sealer well so i was using my fingers. not a great plan. it really ended up looking like i painted the whole firewall section by the time i got it into all the joints.
if you look at this picture you can also see the bolts i welded to the firewall last week to hold heat shielding. i think my feet will thank me for that as this exhaust header is going to be about 4" from my foot at the gas pedal. some header wrap will also be required but that is a later part of the build....
the next day i bought some brushes to apply the sealer. chip brushes cut down to a 3/4" bristle length seemed to work well. so i touched up yesterdays work and proceeded to seal the inside seams.
as noted previously i made support brackets for the cowl panel so it could sit flush while i adjusted everything else.
at this point it was already 10pm on sunday night. i guess i got excited about seeing the cowl panel stay flush or something and the "just one more thing" bug got me. so 2 hours, a roll of paper towels, a vacuum cleaner, an old toothbrush, and a good bit of acetone later the bay was primed and ready
and now with a few more clothes on.....
right about then (2:15 am) my wife walked out to the shed to see why she was sleeping alone.... i didn't want to be the one sleeping alone from then on, so time to pack up and go to bed!
Looking good.
with most of the body panels roughly located the attention needed to shift to fitting some of the internals. stuff like where the radiator will live, how the exhaust will get out. where the steering fluid reservoir goes, how the trans mount will be attached without having to have two people turning the bolts....where in the pile of loose bolts are the ones used to attach the calipers to the car. ...... you know, silly stuff!
i also needed to be able to locate the seat in the car and that meant getting a real idea about how the seat angle is set and the height is set so i can see the road. with no engine or trans all of these things are difficult since the nose is pointing up in the air.
first point of business... re instal the engine and trans. once i got i everything sitting where i wanted it, i welded the top of the trans mount bolts to the floor to make them work like studs. no more two person gymnastics to fasten those bolts! yay!
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