Day 23: boot cover, harnesses

Fitting the boot cover is the kind of job that it pays to take slowly. Following the manual isn't difficult, but the order of things seems to be important.

I am fitting 4-point harnesses, so the following jobs needed to be done first:
- carpets in the cockpit
- boot cover, which also means fitting the hood sticks first (if you're going to fit the hood)

The need to fit the boot cover with hood sticks in place means that if you remove them, you run the chance of the cover looking baggy. But I wanted to keep the option.

Measuring up is the key here. I measured about 10x and cut once! Buy lots of masking tape before you start...

From L-R: fixing bolt, popper, bolt, popper x 2, bolt, popper, bolt!

The bolt positions are fixed by the chassis, but the poppers are up to you - the Assembly Guide tells you where to fit them.

Popper base fitted with self tapper, after a pilot hole is drilled in the chassis rail

The popper bases are easily fixed with self tappers. Once you've fixed all this through the vinyl strip already in place (see carpet fixing), then you're ready to fit the boot cover.

Fitting the hood sticks is easy, but they are sharp little buggers, so be careful of your paintwork.

Popper bases on, and harness fitting bolts in upside to mark exactly where they are

I also fitted the bolts the wrong way up (coming up from underneath), so their position is really easy to detect through the vinyl, once you've laid the cover over for measuring up.

Instead of the Durable Dot tool (eventually) supplied by Caterham, I borrowed a tool from a friend who's just finished rebuilding a Healey. It gives much more control - you squeeze instead of hammer!

Fitting poppers into the vinyl boot hood, with a borrowed tool

They squeeze together nicely

Once I'd done with the poppers, I fitted the boot cover, and then located the holes for the bolts to pass through (easily done as the bolts were pointing up through the chassis rail). I used a leather punch to make neat 12mm holes.

If you then remove the hoodsticks, it does look baggy and a bit unimpressive, compared to the nice taught, flat hood you've just created. So the hoodsticks will stay, possibly with some neoprene tape to prevent them grinding away at each other, and the paintwork.

Fitting the harnesses themselves should be a really easy job. They just bolt in place. But, when tightening up the bolts on the shoulder straps - the ones that go through the boot cover - I found they grabbed the boot cover and put an irritating twist in it. It pays to hold the vinyl firmly while someone else torques the bolts up. I even used a pair of pliers, to prevent it twisting under the fitting.

Happy helpers

Harnesses in place. It looks very nice, I have to say!

Next job, seats. After that, fluids in the engine, and press the starter button...