Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Spencer has been moving the metal plates about the workshop and I've been bolting in the fuel tanks.










Well I think you can see that the end is in sight.
That is the end of fitting plates to the seat back/roll hoop.
As you can see the tank frame is also coming along very well.
Its hard to fit in there, but goes in.... just.

Monday, November 20, 2006



















Spencer is measuring the panel to make sure we cut it correctly.
We used high tensile button head bolts and special glue to bolt and bond the new panel to the seat back and under the roll hoop, this will make it extra strong.
You can see the special bolts in the pictures as we are admiring our handy work!



























This is the roll hoop and we are moving it out of the way.
While we are moving it I slip and the hoop falls on my paw.......OUCH

As you can see Spencer is much stronger than me and can lift it easily.


I should have worn my pawtectors to stop my paw being squashed, but its ok now as I had a nice cut of tea to make it better.


Spencer is removing the roll hoop so we can fit the extra panels that arrived today.















We are working together to unbolt the roll hoop, Spencer is turning the ratchet to undo the bolts and I'm holding the spanner on the nut.











These are the stays that bolt to the rear panel and this time I've got the ratchet and Spencer is holding the spanner.

















The bolts are easy to remove and it didn't take long for the hold thing to come off.






Spencer and myself are working extra hard to day in order to make some headway on the imporvements to the chassis.
We are having problems with the weather as well and find it hard to move the car in and out of the workshop when it starts to rain so we jacked it up inside and will work on it there!

(Things would be so much easier if someone would let us work on the car in the front room!!)

Here you can see me taking off the wheels after we put the car on axle stands.

Monday, November 06, 2006


Here I am with my two cat's Pearl and Portia (Portia is on my right)
We were talking about the cat food budget and how we might include more sausages in it.










Here I am looking for some new shock absorbers as Spencer told me that the shockers we have now are USELESS!!

But a terrible thing has happened................ All my money has gone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Spencer has now let me know that persons unknown have taken the entire budget and spent it on SHOES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

whats a poor bear to do now,how am I going to get all the parts I need??????

I might have to send my cats out to work!!

Sunday, November 05, 2006



Spencer checking the rear shock absorber mounting is ok, we have had some troubles with these and hope to change them soon


Here is Spencer using the pillar drill to drill a hole in a metal bar.

We have all the latest hi-tech tools and equipment in our workshop.

After he's done that he'll be making the fuel tank support.


He's such a hard working bear!!

Friday, November 03, 2006




This shows some more of the work we did to improve the strength of the rear suspension mounts.

It took us all day and at the end of the day Spencer and myself were KNACKERED.

Here I am fitting bolts to the upper box section as well.
To get the nuts on the inside of the box sections Spencer had a fantastic idea to use a short length of pipe , to which he attached a ring spanner. We then used blu tack to hold the nuts in the spanner and pushed it into the box section to meet up with the bolt.
I held the pipe while Spencer used the allen drive in the rachet to tighten it all up. Teamwork!!!



Here I am under the rear of the car fitting some new bolts to the box section that support the wishbone pivots.

Our first design of this car involved the using of self tapping bolts in this area, but to make this stronger I am replacing all the self tappers with high tensile (10.9) pan head bolts and nyloc nuts.

We have also used a sealing/bonding agent around the bolts and washers to help them resist corrosion.










Well here we are, Spencer and myself in our office
working on some plans for improvements to the
chassis. I've done some drawings for a strengthening
plate to fit behind the seat back and bolt to the
roll hoop.





and I hope you can see me on the phone calling another engineering company to have this plate made up!!

Friday, October 06, 2006


Hi all,
Just back from a visit to the home of Great British Sports Cars in Notts to look around the factory and wish the guy's good luck in their new business.
Also managed to pick up a few bargains in the form of a new loom and some new seat harness's.

The fitting of the loom will,I hope, be next week after the mods to beef up the rear belt mounts and the roll hoop.

The car you can see me sitting on is a lightweight just like mine but in yellow.

I also bought a windscreen to stop the fly's hitting me in the face when we drive the car as its hard to get them me off as I'm dry clean only!!!

Thats me at the autojumble looking for bargains sitting on the rear of another lightweight car.

Tuesday, September 19, 2006



Our next job is to complete the installation of the engine and to test run it to ensure its ok.



The ignition system will have to be built . This is spencers job as he knows someone at nasa who is gonna help him. Its a megajoltlite system and needs a trigger wheel fitted to the crankshaft which i did before fitting the engine into the bay.









We hope to do this soon but need the rest of the fuel system in place and also the alternator needs to be bought.

Once this is running ok we can move onto the next stage in the build.











'' Just when you think its going well is when it all goes wrong'' said Spencer to me today when we heard the news about another car company going into admin. This is very sad but sometimes can't be helped.
Well at lease we don't have that to worry about as all is well at Baxter automobile and design.
So onto the build and Spencer is working on some new designs for the extra strengthening we are adding to the chassis to increase over all strength.




As you can see from the pics i'm using the welder to fix a few bits of metal to other bits of metal!!
Its a great tool, but one i'm not very good with so i think i'll let spencer do the rest.

Well you know how thing are when you are on holiday..... You don't want to come home!!!!
So Spencer and myself decided to stay on for a few extra weeks.
But now we are back and are straight back into the build of our new car.

Friday, August 18, 2006


Hi , just a quick note to let you all know that spencer and myself will be away for the next 2 weeks.
We will be taking our annual break at a private clinic in switzerland to recharge our batteries so see you when we are back!!

Thursday, August 17, 2006



Here we are taking a well earned tea break and Gasket pops in to see how we are.

Its good of him to take time off from winning races to check up on our progress.

I feel I should reply to some of the silly comments posted by some people earlier about Gasket. He is not a donkey, but a race horse who has won lots of races .

The last race he won was at brands hatch, when he was riding a motorbike , so there!!!


This is the exhaust manifold Spencer made.

Its job is to carry away exhaust gases to the silencer, which runs down the drivers side of the car.

He made it from stainless steel so it will look good as well!!

This will help the engine to run well and produce lots of power,we are looking for around 125 bhp which should be reachable with this cam,carb,head and exhaust setup.

Here we are again and you can see me test fitting a coolant hose, This will carry coolant from the engine to the radiator where it is cooled down before it goes back into the engine via another hose.



Spencer is checking the condition of the front suspension rivets as these need to be very strong to hold the wishbones on. Don't worry all is ok.

Spencer made this exhaust manifold for the engine out of stainless steel and it fits very well indeed!
He's very good at welding and can make all manor of things.
But its always hard to tell twins apart.
Spencer says these are the dogs danglelys, but I don't know what he means? Since he came back from NASA he talking strangely. I think its to do with watching a film called Miami vice.



We are test fitting the carbs now. We need to see if they will fit correctly under the bonnet .

They look like they will fit ok but its a close thing

These are twin delorto carbs,and are giving us some problems as we can't tell them apart!