Refitting the doors

Re-installed the doors today, set gaps to main body, and filled the trim holes with weld and ground down to smooth. Note: Front fenders are just sitting on the body. They are next, but I needed to get the doors dialed first because the fenders are getting welded on at three points and I needed the doors installed for reference first.

Vintage style custom race seats are here!

The seats showed up from Stefan at GTS classic seats yesterday. A big ups to him for the custom mounts that he hand laid into the fiberglass shells. I sent him some mechanical drawings of the bolt patterns from the stock seats to work from. The original rails bolted right up and they slid into place first try. A very nice touch since the mounts are part of the monocoque floor pan. If I had cut them out and used new generic mounts the seats would never have sat so low, plus its just a lot more "factory" looking this way too. The only modification I had to make was to drill out the holes in the rails to accept M8 hardware instead of M6. I put them in the car along with the steering wheel and column to mock things up and make sure nothing got too tight. I'm happy to say it fit like a glove, or rather a highly supportive race seat. Something a car capable of such high corner speeds deserves.....

Some finish welding

Today I welded the seams on the back of the body right below the tail lights. Then I ground the welds down to finish the surface. Here are some before and after pics.

Cleaning up the front fenders

I welded up the seam on the front and filled in the holes for the trim and mirror mounts on both the front fenders today. Here is a pic of the left one before grinding the welds down.

Total Seal

Thanks to Bobby over at Total Seal in Phoenix we got "gapless" piston rings custom made for the BMW accessory racing pistons I have coming from Germany. Its a product I became very familiar with while building big bore Harley and Buell engines at Nallin Racing's shop. Should be just the first in a number of engine mods to we'll be doing to give the little 700 a respectable level of acceleration.

From Germany with love

A major shipment of parts from an Isetta/600/700 specialist in Germany finally showed up this week. Among the parts was a transmission seal kit. I decided to replace the input shaft and two output shaft seals due to what looked to be cracking and a little seepage. I also, pulled off the differential and gearshift covers in order to inspect the bearings and gears. So those gaskets got replaced as well. And, while the covers were off, I checked several end play and gear lash measurements laid out in the service manual. Man am I glad to have one of those. Since it was included in the kit I did the speedo output seals too. I also thoroughly cleaned the inside of the trans before installing Mobil 1 synthetic hypoid oil. All of this might seem like overkill, but I need to be sure the gearbox will handle the extra power I'm planning on getting out of the engine. At any rate, the trans is ready to go, now on to the engine.

Wheels and tires are in

I got some Superlite GTR wheels last month. I had them powdercoated black cause I didn't like the logos on the rim. They just didn't go with the look I want for the car. Too modern and tuner car. The guys at Tires Plus in Longmont installed a set of Bridgestone Potenza all season sport tires on them today. The wheel wheel next to the Superlite is one of the four that were on the car when we got it. Those weren't the original wheels anyway, they are two piece aluminum wheels with Opel stamped in them. Those wheels and tires are the exact size of the originals steel wheels that came on it new though. Anyway, the new wheels and tires are 165-65-13's instead of 145-80-12's meaning the tires are almost an inch wider. The tire calculations put the new tires as 1.5% larger in terms of the circumference of the originals. The complete wheel and tire combo weighs just one pound more than the Opel set-up meaning they should still be lighter than the OEM steel wheel and smaller tire combo while providing considerably more traction. Not bad, now hopefully I got the backspacing measurements right and we won't have to run spacers.