A little update:
The weekend didn't yield much progress as my back wasn't up to it, but I worked on the brakes and also made brackets for, and attached, the anti-roll bar.
I'm also waiting for various things in order to go much further - more steel mainly, and still pondering what to do for the rear end..

No working today, I've managed to knacker my back. I went into town to get some painkillers, and remembered that we're having a fuel crisis at the moment..

The one refinery in the country is closing due to strike action, but this isn't a problem. What is a problem is that everyone seems to have decided to fill their tanks (and every other available receptacle), for, err, some reason. Not surprisingly, the supply chain can't cope with this and everywhere's run out, or is rationing fuel or applying silly prices.

At the supermarket there was petrol station which still had fuel, with very long queues, and it had a sign telling customers that their vehicles had to be "checked by staff" before buying. This may be because of what I heard earlier, that some people were found filling open plastic storage containers in the back of cars with fuel. Not very clever.

Other places have rationing, £10 maximum sale. To translate that for any Americans reading, fuel costs about £1.20 per litre, $9 per gallon, so that's about 2.2 gallons per customer.

This weekend I...

• Attached brackets for the steering rack
• Built up the box area
• Tested the pedals and steering wheel and seating position

So a lot of tacking things in place has been done. I'm fairly sure I'm happy with where everything will fit, but it will require more thinking about before welding it up fully and adding the triangulation.

Service time

Nothing on the chassis today, but I did need to check the brushes on
my 106 and install a stereo. So, that's done..

Squeeze

I've been trying to dismantle a Herald rear hub to see if it will be suitable for the rear wheel drive.  Smashing it with a really big hammer, blow-torching it and using a big puller haven't helped so far, so I'm seeking expert advice on that one!

Meanwhile, I made up some dummy batteries to check that they would after all fit into the frame.  They do, phew!  

The gap in the middle lines up exactly with the top of the damper, which is nice.

Keep your receipts..

Had a quick look on ebay for bushes to replace the couple I wrecked. £70 later I have a complete set of bushes, trunnions, ball joints, brake caliper and master cylinder seal kits and a pair of steering rack gaiters. All courtesy of a helpful seller called "jumblemaster". Too easy, there must be a catch!

Bending brackets..

This weekend I was able to spend both days working on the chassis.
One whole day was used to make the suspension brackets, really laboriously. Getting the exactly right bit of metal involves a bit of forward planning, a trip to Peddies which is only open when I'm at work, and so on. So sometimes you have to make do - in this case I made the steel strips by cutting them out of a 3mm sheet with a jigsaw, then grinding the edges flat, then drilling, then bending. A colleague suggested a better idea which is to obtain box section of the right dimensions and cut one side off. Never mind, it's done now.

So the Herald suspension is now attached. I managed to wreck two of the rubber bushes in the suspension arms, as they were rusted solid to their pins. Hopefully these are still available..

I needed a big space between the front wheels to use as battery box, and it was a bit tricky to make it wide enough. One row will sit on top of the steering rack so it will be raised up a bit, but the rest should go right on the floor.

The strut going across between the uprights should fit between two rows of batteries (it's in a temporary position just now).

So far it weighs 45kg without wheels, 75 with. The chassis itself only weighs 8kg, but it's a long way from finished - no back wheel yet!

Got to start somewhere.

I have been gathering car bits together for too many years, with the idea of sitting down and designing a really good electric car, and
then building it. Unfortunately, I'm quite bad at planning things.
And then, Doug Fambro [edit: slipped up there, meant to say Steve Fambro!)] got his Aptera rolling, which is just about perfect and uses loads of the same ideas I had.

So, this week I finally bought some steel and decided to just start welding stuff together, and see what happens.

So I've started to make a ladder chassis to which I can attach the Triumph Herald suspension units. I've actually got two sets of these,
such is my hoarding inclination.

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