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Here are (from back to front) battery housing, front splash shields,
radiator surround, beam end covers, and spare wheel mounting. |
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This is the main tub or monocoque at the first stage of lay up in its'
mould. Fibreglass is built on a mould by laying down the outer skin
first, and then building up successive layers of glass and resin working
from the outside inwards. In this picture, the highly polished mould
has been covered with just the coloured gel coat. The yellow you can
see is the inside of the outer, coloured, layer of gel coat. The next
stage is to cover this with several layers of resin and fibre glass to
build up the required thickness for strength. The gel coat layer is of
little strength on its' own, and is quite brittle. The main strength
and stiffness of the central tub, is from the fabrication and
bonding-in of many box sections as this monocoque is built.
In this picture you are looking forward through the left hand door
aperture. The central services tunnel runs down the middle of the
floor, and you can see the foot wells, and two holes for mounting the
heater blower and pedal box through.
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Here's the garage ready to accept the tub for building. The two yellow
build stands were lent to me by Robin, who had built two 500Kg
Caterhams on them. I just hoped they would take the planned 800Kg of
the Libra! My garage is pretty rough, it's an old pre cast concrete
job, with a lot of ventilation! However, in an attempt to keep things
neat, I did paint the floor. As you can see, there were already some
leaves off the adjacent beech hedge on the new paint. |
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COLLECTING THE KIT |
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At that time (November 2002) GTM cars were built at a small works in a
village in Leicestershire. To collect the kit I hired a 7 ton truck
with a tail lift. The truck was bigger than I needed, but it didn't
cost a lot more to hire than the next size down, and it was worth it
for the tail lift alone! I was helped in the collection by Peter
Stevens who is the son of Robin the Seven builder (as mentioned in the
introduction page). Here's the kit in the truck. The various major mouldings are taped into
place around the main tub. At the front of the truck is a collection of
cardboard boxes, which contained bits that I had no idea what they were
for!
The pipework on the right is for taking radiator water and heater water
through the tunnel from the engine at the back to the radiator and
heater at the front. The black framework on the right hand side are the
door frames to carry the window winder mechanisms. You can easily
identify a couple od exhaust bends, and on the left the big frame is
the engine frame which mounts the engine behind the rear bulkhead
(which you can see clearly at the bottom of the picture. |
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Here we are ready for unloading - it is November in England, and yes it
is raining! The little car looks quite lost in the back of the truck. |