So its been ages since the last update, what with Xmas, etc., and me just lacking motivation to get everything down and post pics, etc. However, here we go!
I mentioned before I had some roll cage hassles. Here's that little story:
The Safety Devices cage that I have is the full 6 point jobbie, which I bought used from Dansport near Chesterfield. Obviously, with a roll cage there's always some possibility its been fiddled with or tweaked for a particular car - or has changed shape given that in this case, the previous car was a rally car! I bought a new fitting kit from Safety Devices which includes all the fasteners and the weld-in bracketry needed to install the cage. This aspect was all well and good. I fitted the rear floor mounts, which required blanking over the "pockets" for the seatbelt reels that 72 onwards cars have.
The hassles started when trying to bolt the main cage in. Apparently, somehow, the right front leg was a couple of cm too short and splayed out too far.
So began a massive PITA detour to get the cage fitting right that ended up encompassing assorted changes. Initially, I took the cage to a fabricators here in Macclesfield who specialise in cages amongst other things and they did lengthen the leg and heat it to pull it in. Unfortunately (and 300 quid) later it still wasn't right and remained too short, and thus I decided to bite the bullet and sort it myself. Luckily, the fabricator's mod had included welding a steel bar inside the lower leg, which aside from making it well tougher than factory, also meant I could cut around the tube, slide the foot down a bit and weld in a collar to lengthen the leg further, while also tweaking the angle a tad more. In the next photo you can see the end result - there's no sign of alteration visible and it attaches perfectly. The pic also shows the next stage underway, which was welding the seat mounts back in. The rear one requires some mods to clear the cage mount.
The cage issues weren't done with though. But first, a deviation to cover the install of the left side seat mounts. The front factory seat mount was shot. Too rusty to waste time repairing, so I bought a replacement from Andy Plant. The only issue is that Andy's seat mount doesn't have a section to clear the hump in the floor. So the floor required a little fabrication work:
Sorted.
Next post - back to the cage again...