June 2007:
Two days into June and I already had more pictures of progress on the car than in my last five months combined. It is amazing what happens when you finally get an entire day that you can commit to the car. It also helps to no longer have a (more important) girlfriend around anymore.

First on the list is the rear brakes. I was able to finish fabricating the mounts and install the brake rotors and calipers from another donor Nissan 240sx. To make them fit I removed the drums and all the hardware associated with the drum brakes, save the backing plate. I then fit the wheel adapters on the bare wheel studs. These adapters, coincidentaly, have the same bolt pattern as a 240sx. This made slipping the rotors on a snap. The tough part was installing the calipers, which needed to be spaced appropriately from inside to outside to wear evenly on the pads. It also needed to be appropriately spaced from the hub. To do this, I fabricated some brackets out of thick sheet steel and bolted the calipers to the drum backing plate with washers as spacers where needed. Now, I know some of you are going to say that this design might not be that safe. I agree, it might not be, but it is good enough to get the car moving and allows me to move on to other things. I have planned from the beginning to remove the backing plate and build up a thick bracket that bolts to the backing plate's mounts. But to remove the backing plate I have to remove the hub. I am just not ready to do that yet. That will be a good winter project next year.

Next is the driveshaft. The front half of the original driveshaft from a Nissan pickup was, coincidentally, almost long enough to work as my entire driveshaft. I only needed to extend it another 3 inches. There was also the problem of no u-joint on that end, though. By pure luck, though, I found that if you cut off the u-joint on a spitfire driveshaft it is about 2 and a half inches long. I gained access to the metal shop on campus this spring. There I was able to fabricate a plate on the end of the u-joint to connect it to the driveshaft. This made the driveshaft less than a quarter inch short of being too long to fit between the gearbox and the final drive. I was able to finish making reliefs on the frame for fitment of the transmission, to get it to drop as much as possible. Here is a photo with the driveshaft in the car.

July 2007:
I rebuilt the original Spitfire brake master cylinder. Due to the custom rear brakes I decided to go with an adjustable proportioning valve to adjust the strength of the rear brakes. The bracket for the master cylinder is a perfect spot to mount the valve. Below is a picture of the rebuilt brake master cylinder installed with the new brake lines and proportioning valve. Next to it is the rebuilt clutch master cylinder with its new lines.

I also installed an aftermarket fuel filter. It is a Fram racing filter with a replaceable inner element. Next to it I put a battery cutoff switch. This was to serve two purposes. First, it is always good to have a cutoff switch in a custom application. Second, it connected the new battery cable to the original. The battery cable from the starter is just long enough to reach the switch. The battery was relocated to the trunk to make room for the wiring harness and to move more weight over the rear axle.

14 July 2007 - She Runs!!! Click here to view the video of the car running under its own power at youtube.

August 2007:

Much work has been done to the wiring harness. I am attempting to keep as much of the original Nissan wiring harness as I can. I attached the fuse box in the footwell of the passenger side. This is where most of the wiring harness has gone. Most of the exposed wiring will eventually be supported out of the way by a plate of some kind. I needed to keep the relay and fuse link box now found in engine bay of most modern cars. To do this I created a plate for the box where the battery used to be. I also needed a place for the ECM, but it still needed to be accessible for diagnostics. I ended up making a bracket and putting it under the dash next to the steering wheel, above the pedals.