Final Fit

 With the car back from the spray shop it is time for the final fit to bring it all together.

Carpets

If you have the interior pack from AK, you'll have a roll of carpet and two tins of glue. You'll need 10 or 20 pack of Stanley blades (they blunt easy on the carpet and the fiberglass). I'm not a carpet fitter so I just made it up as I went along. Cutting long, fitting the carpet and then final trim to get it exact. The glue needs to be spread on both the carpet and the hard surface, leave 10 minutes and as soon as you bring the two within sniffing distance they will instantly grab and not let go. So you have to position the carpet exactly right before the two surfaces come together. I found the best way was to only coat half of the carpet piece, leaving one half that can be positioned and slid into place. Then smooth down the glued part. When fitted lift the unglued part, spread the glue and smooth down after 10 minutes.

If you have the luxury pack you'll have a piece of leather for the back panel. Put it in position and draw a line around the arc of the edge of the leather trim. It only covers part of the rear panel so you need to carpet the rest. Cut and fit the carpet to overlap the line by an inch or so. Now fit the leather covering. It probably will not exactly follow the arc of the scuttle but it is quite forgiving and can be persuaded into shape. Glue only a 6-8 inch square patch in the centre just to hold it in position. Now trim the carpet so that it overlaps the leather by just the depth of the trim edge otherwise you get an unsightly bump. Cut the leather panel around the centre tunnel. Leave the leather surface extended onto the console by 20mm but cat back the sponge pad underneath. On the console glue the leather down but where it meets the carpeted edge at the sides fold the leather back up and under to create a nice finish. Glue and smooth into position the rest of the leather panel.

Door cards

These will be covered with padded leather which makes it hard to fit back onto the door. Trim the sponge away from where the green clips fit. The card will now have a split in it to facilitate the padded pocket. At first sight it seems as if anything small will fall through and get lost, but after the card is fitted into place the thing squashes down and seals so nothing will fall though. You'll need to give the card a fair whack with your fist to get the green clips to engage properly.

Dashboard

This will now have a lovely padded leather finish if that is what you wanted. If it wasn't then something went wrong in translation, but assuming you are delighted then what will dampen the spirit is the fact that you are now going to have to take a very sharp knife to it to cut the holes for the instrument and lights.

 

On the larger holes, cut in the shape of triangles but don't cut right to the edge. When you fold the leather into the hole, it needs to fold in equally all round the hole. If the cut is right up to the edge there will be a gap when the leather folds in and that changes the shape of the indentation the instrument makes in the padded leather.

 

 

 The ignition switch has two flats on the barrel which help to hold it in place in the hole. With the leather padding, the nut at the back cannot be tightened enough to hold it in position. I made a small plate with a hole with flat sides that exactly fit the ign barrel. Then bond this into place on the rear surface of the dashboard and secure with two small screws. The ign barrel should now be solid. Now is the time to fit an immobiliser as you will need to be cutting into and T'ing off some of the critical wiring that make things work.

Seats

First get the seat belts bolted in. You'll need to drill through the body in a couple of places if AK have not pre drilled. Just look at the opposite hole and drill a pilot hole and feel for the threaded hole with a scribe. Then open up to fit the bolt. These need to be high tensile and are 7/16th UNF. You can fit collars to bridge the gap created by the body panel or just tighten the bolt and scrunch everything up so it is solid. Make sure the top seat belt mounts screw right into the support bracket, so cut the hole in the scuttle large enough for the 'eye' bolt to pas right through. apparently the IVA requires a certain distance between that and the lower part of the seat and we are close to the limit so the 'eye' bolt needs to be up as high as possible and the seat as low as possible.

It seems if slide rails are fitted for the seats now it will fail the IVA. Fit them with at least 2 inches clear between the back of the seat and the rear panel. This is to allow clearance to fit some head rests which will keep the IVA man happy. Use large washers to spread the load when passing bolts through the seat through into the floor pan. Everything will scrunch down and you'll end up with needing shorter bolts than you think. 35mm x 10mm bolts seem to work ok here.

Side Vents

AK will flog you a nice set of polished steel vents for the parallelogram hole in the side of the car. When fitted they will fail the IVA test. And if you don't fit them you will fail the IVA test (I think the testers knee will fit in the hole). So we'll need to cover up the sharp edges when we go for the test. These come as part of a IVA kit AK can loan you.

You will need four pieces of wood around 6-7 inches long and in the region of 15mm x 12mm cross section. Drill two holes in each of the flat bars which the vent blades are welded to. Screw the wood on such that it sits proud of the bar by around 3mm. What we need is a gap between the wood and the blades so that the wood will seat square on the inside of the body and not get caught up around the curved lip that protrudes internally around the hole. Check how the blades sit. I had mine sitting 2mm or 3mm inside the outer flat surface of the body so as to ensure there is definitely no protrusion. Plane or shave the wood accordingly so the vent blades sit square.

Insert the lower edge into the hole, push through and drop down until the top edge can rotate in. Now lift the unit up and pull into place. The offside looks tight what with the brake servo being there but there is actually plenty of room. When you do this for real, have a large splodge of P38/P40 along the face of the wood. Pull outwards to squash the wood against the inside of the body, and either tie it to a static object (a teenager with a mobile phone will do) or sit and hold it until the bonding hardens. When set remove the plastic that covers the shiny surface and admire.

Front Vents

Here we need some wire mesh. Halfords have some for a high price. I found some nice ally mesh on Amazon. The mesh holes are 16mm x 8mm and look quite pleasing when fitted.

Measure the hole and cut the measure to size around 20mm larger all round. The inside edge is right up against the inner wing so make sure it fits snugly here or there will be gaps. It is soft enough to push with finger tips to form the mesh around the edge of the lip and leave around 15-20mm overlay. This is where you will slop a load or P38 to secure it into place. Tie a couple bits of string to the outside of it and again tie to an immovable object. I didn't have a mobile phone bearing teenager so I tied the string through the holes for the nudge bars.

The rest is just assembling everything back on the car as was test fitted before it went for a coat of paint. Glue the boot and bonnet rubbers into place, fit the gear lever, align the headlights, titivate it, clean and polish it, get the neighbours round to admire it, and hope it starts up ok.