ENGINE LID

HINGES

Quite straightfoward this one. Offer up the lid to the body and hold it there with tape if necessary. Assemble a hinge by fitting a 10mm bolt through the two holes and then offer that up to the lid by going through the quarterlight window hole. Mark the lid where the hinge will sit by scoring down one edge and also centre-punch one of the mounting holes while you are there. (I use an automatic centre-punch- they are invaluble). Drill and tap (6mm) the hole you punched, and, with the 6mm bolt nipped up align the hinge plate with the line you scored. This will now give you the correct hinge angle so you can now centrepunch the other two mounting holes. Drill and tap these two and affix so you now have one fully fitted engine lid hinge plate. Now, keeping the 10mm bolt attached to the chassis hinge offer up the lid again and centrepunch/score the chassis. Remove the lid again and then drill and tap (6mm again) the chassis mount using 2 bolts. Bring up the lid again, put the 10mm bolt through and you should now have a working hinge. Obviously you may have to align the hinges to suit but being slotted this isn't too much of a problem. Fitment of the other hinge is a repeat of the above.

The only two points to note are that the mounting faces on the engine lid were not vertical, thus the chassis mount would not be either. This might look a bit odd but is in fact the only way to do it. Also, I found that due to inaccuracies the nearside chassis mount was outboard of the engine lid hinge, while the offside had to be mounted inboard otherwise there wasn't enough room between the body and the hinge to fit the 10mm nut in there. Again, it doesn't look quite right but it would only be noticed by someone who was being very picky.

STRIKER/CLASP

I bought my clasps for the engine lid and the front boot from Parallel, although they are actually off the Jaguar XK range of vehicles, and are used to hold the bonnet down on the vehicle. You can buy two clasps and the front Jaguar bonnet striker for about £70. The striker will need modifying to use on the front boot lid of the Lambo, but at least it's a starting point. Theres no part available to use for the engine lid striker on the Lambo so you will have to make one.

Once you have the lid fitting right you can fit the latch assembly. I used a 4x30mm steel strip which goes from one side of the chassis to the other. There is a rail on each side of the engine bay in just in the right place to do this. Onto this strip drill two 7mm holes and bolt the clasp (I used Parallel ones which I think are actually Jaguar sourced) to it. Fit the release cable and make up a small retainer to hold the cable adjuster near the clasp. Once the clasp is fitted and the release works OK you can then make a striker. This is simply a square plate with a bolt hole in each corner which has a piece of 8mm diameter rod welded to it. The pictures explain things better.

The picture above right also shows 2 of the 4 right-angle brackets which I bonded to the rear exhaust cover. These serve 2 purposes- to stop fore/aft flexing of the steel strip but also to support the front edge of the lid. The setup works extremely effectively, with both the lid and clasp being held very firmly in all planes.

GAS RAMS

You would think they were fairly straightfoward these- drill and tap the lid 8mm (you will see marks already there) and screw a male balljoint in. However, I found (like most of the so-called bonded in steel plates on my car) that the plates inside were either too small or had shifted during manufacture. So, when I drilled though I caught the edge of the internal steel plate and  so I had to drill and tap another hole lower down the lid which meant that the rams were now too long.... Anyway, screw another male balljoint to the bracket pre-welded to the chassis. Offer up the ram and see if the lid will actually open enough to accomodate it. Mine didn't. After removing a fair bit of material from the front of the engine lid I got a fair bit more opening but it still wasn't enough so I had no option but to lengthen the ram distance by making up some extension plates which I bolted to the original chassis points to bring down the balljoints an inch or so. It's just enough to get the lid opening quite high but not enough for the front edge to touch the body.

Just fit one ram for the moment as you need to de-gas them and it's easier to get them equal if you do each one in turn. De-gas until one ram can just about slowly open the lid itself after say 18 inches of initial opening. Take it off and do the same with the other. Now fit both and try it. You should find that it now opens pretty quickly but just de-gas a little from each ram and you should be nearly there. The idea is that the lid should slowly open itself once opened past say 12 inches. On the other hand, it goes without saying that the lid should stay down for it's first 12 inches of travel without being held. If it doesn't, your rams are in the wrong place.

HIGH LEVEL BRAKE LIGHT

This is one of those jobs which has to be attacked very slowly and carefully because there isn't much margin for error and if you do mess up it's easily seen. You could rectify your mistakes by filling up the hole again but you'll just add far more time to the job than need be. Just go slowly and you'll be better off. NOTE: I found that the light needs to be fitted upside down (going by the writing on it) as it has an angled lens and to follow the lines of the engine lid it's the only way it looks right. It doesn't really matter though as you never see the writing unless your eyeballs are right next to it.

Firstly, offer up the light to the lid and see roughly how big the slot needs to be. I found that there was an outline on my lid which appeared to be the guidelines to cut BUT it would make a bigger hole than my light so DON'T FOLLOW THEM! Obviously start by cutting a smaller slot than need be then it's the long process of offering up/trimming/offering up like many parts on the build. To get the lens flush with the lid I made up some spacing lengths from 5mm bore aluminium tube, then used 2 long bolts which go right through and were secured with 2 nuts on the inside edge of the lid.

The main point to note is don't cut a bigger hole than you absolutely need to. Likewise, don't make the hole too tight as you don't want to force the light in there. If you bought Parallels one as I did then £48 isn't exactly cheap (hell, it's not even a proper LED type!) and you can easily crack the light if it's forced somewhere it doesn't want to be. When you get close to the actual size take VERY small amounts of material off at a time. It's easy to go overboard.

BLACK MESH PANEL

Quite simple this one. Offer up the mesh to the lid and try to get it even all round. Make sure you look at it from the OUTSIDE of the lid as it can look quite different inside. You will see 2 holes pre-drilled in the mesh panel which I opened up so I could use larger self-tappers. Once in place, drill your 2 pilot holes and then affix. At first I didn't think that 2 screws would be enough but it's fine. Theres no movement at all. Be careful not to be tempted to add more fixings along the other edge as you will end up drilling/screwing straight through the outside of the lid. Which is why it's only supposed to be attached at the two points shown of course.

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