Collecting the kit

After many weeks of waiting, I got word from Callum at Raw that everything was ready, and I went to pick the kit. I arrived in Hereford at 3.30pm in a long wheel base transit van. Will handed a me a welcome cup of tea, and I spent a while chatting with Martin and Callum about many aspects of the build, picking Martin’s brains about the fitting of bodywork, which is the area I am most worried about. He advised me to get the tunnel sides sized correctly, but not fit them, and likewise with the seat back panel, before moving on to the floor panels, and then the side panels. All the panels (apart from the floor) can then be put to one side and the rest of the build started. Martin gave a load of other helpful hints, which I hope I manage to remember, but I am sure I will be on the phone and email to him fairly regularly!

I caught sight of my body work in the workshop, and I was very pleased with how the color (Kawasaki Green) had worked out. It is very similar to the standard light bright green that Raw offer, but a little more vivid in my opinion. The pictures below do not do it justice, probably because of the flash. Knowing the RAL code (6018) also means that I can colour match other items if I want to. Indeed, I am going to buy a couple of rattle cans of paint to colour match the engine mounts – swanky!

I handed over the front uprights for modification, but not the driveshafts – it seems that I had been given incorrect information at some point; to use the lighter Golf rear brake assembly I need to use Tripode (push in) driveshafts, so my carefully cleaned Lobro driveshafts were not suitable after all, which was a disappointment. However, Callum offered me a set of re-conditioned, already shortened, push in driveshafts at cost price, which I was very happy with. This does leave me with a bit of a conundrum about a limited slip differential, as a Sierra viscous coupling cannot be fitted with push in shafts. So I am left with the choice of the Quaife unit, or building some hybrid shafts; I will worry about this at some point in the future, as I will get the car on the road without a LSD. I will pick up the uprights from Raw at the Stoneleigh Kit Car show at the beginning of May, together with a few other bits that were not quite ready.

After looking at the various cars in the workshop, including Will’s 5PW R1, and Jeremy’s Hayabusa hill climb car, and trying out the various seats, I realised that I had been gassing for nearly 3 hours! Callum and Will helped me load up the van, making sure that none of the bodywork rubbed against anything, and I set off back to Reading at a sedate pace.

I arrived back around 9pm, and unloaded everything into the garage. At first I thought that the chassis would be too long, but it all went in ok ( I really must sell my mountain bike!). I shut the garage door, dropped the van back to hire place, and went to bed.