[2savage]

The manual indicates that the firewall should be riveted after the 'F's. Do they mean just the aluminum part across the top of the engine bay or does this also include the forward facing parts of the foot boxes? Also, which is the part that should be left loose to feed the loom through later?

 

[ORANGE CRUSH]

There is plenty of room to wire with the fire wall fully attached. You need to leave the the front of the drivers foot box loose from the top to about your first rivet in the bottom. The inside of the drives foot box above the steering shaft is better left loose for now as well.
Mike

 

[d isham]

Firewall is the aluminum part across the top of the engine bay. Drill but leave rivets out of leading edge of panel on driver side. You will need to pull the panel away frome frame a bit when feeding wire loom thru. Once this is complete you can pop the rivets in before completing the driverside footbox.

Doug
FFR2625

 

[bill32]

Any place an aluminum panel touches the vertical firewall panel it would be riveted. There are 4 places on the driver's foot box panels that have special treatment when it comes to riveting. These are:

1. The engine side vertical panel has a slot cut in it to allow the rear wiring harness to enter the foot box. This slot is about 2/3 of the way up the rear side (the side you rivet to the fire wall. Do not rivet above the slot until after you have slid the rear harness down the crack and into the slot, which is a little later in the build. I do suggest you drill the holes in this area and make sure they all line up as these holes are hard to get at later.

2. Do not rivet or install the two top panels until you are almost done with the car. the engine side top panel you want to drill the holes just before you install the engine as the holes it has in common with the top of the vertical panel are difficult to drill with the engine in the way. The outside top panel can wait until just before you install the body. You need access for putting on pedal box, wiring, clutch cable, master cyl, and other things and this is a lot easier without these panels in the way. Once most of those steps are done you can rivet on the engine side top panel, but wait on the outside top panel until you have to.

4. The outside vertical panel. Do not drill or rivet the very top horizonal line of rivets. Do these when you finally install the outside top panel as the rivets hold both.

Hope this helps. The manual can be rather confusing about this and many of us have done one un-riveting. If you do need to remove rivets it is easy. Just use the same 1/8 drill and carefully drill in the center of the rivet and it will pop out cleanly and you can put a new rivet in the same hole.

Regards,
Bill Haas

[ October 18, 2002, 10:42 AM: Message edited by: Bill32 ]