the car is now back on the road fully and being used daily. over the past few weeks ive had a few problems but they have been sorted now.
firstly my power steering wasn't working. this was do to a custom rack to pump line I had made kept blowing off . the first time it blew of was because the place that made it had used the wrong olive in the connection so didn't get a proper grip of it. next time to other end blew off due to no being tight enough this was might fault for not checking it properly. so after these problems were sorted out i re fitted the line all was fine till it started weeping from the main connection, i gave it a 1/4 turn to make sure it was fully tight. what a mistake this 1/4 turn blew the side of pinion part of the rack. a new pinion part was need to fix it.
i bought a replacement rack from northy over on WC so i could change just the pinion part to save myself some time and have a spare rack if needs be.
the part that needed removing
pipes removed
the part that i needed
i then remove then same part of the rack on the car. this was very awkward to do whilst the rack was in the car to do it I had to unbolt it completely from the car bar the track rods.
this i how much room i had it looks more than it actually is.
the damage to the pinion
yep well and truly f**ked.
i then set about fitting the new pinion, i tried and tried for about an hour to get it to fit but it wasn't having any off it. so i removed the rack from the car it literally just fits the drivers side wheel well.
with the rack removed i tried to fit the pinion again and it still wasn't having any off it. I only realised where i was going wrong when i compared the pinions with each other.
old broken one
new one
the new one had 7 splines and the old one had 6 splines so wouldn't fit. pissed off wasn't the word but it was an unknown whether they were fully interchangeable and by this time it was getting dark so i packed up and left it for the day.
the next day i set about having to fit the whole new rack that i had purchased, but it was an unknown and need new ball joints. just after i finished building it back up the post man turned up with the pinion that i had bought off matteh as back up. when i checked it had 6 splines like my original, i checked it fit, it slipped in the rack a dream. the rack was then reassembled then re fitted. again refitting it very awkward but doable.
i then reassembled all the piping but instead of using the custom rack to pump line i used the line that came with the rack i had bought. it worked out to be a better fit and cleared the downpipe unlike the original pipe.
the pas fluid was then refilled and i started the bleeding process when the pas sensor on the 172 pump blew off and sprayed the bay for the 3rd time in pas fluid. just after it had done this the pulley for the pump started rubbing on the bracket. i then changed the pump for the valver on so get it running again and to do away with the pas sensor.
it went in relatively painlessly and i started filling it again and to my surprise it held pressure and fluid and bleed all ok.
when i checked the 172 pump it seems that the bearings had failed in it. suppose that's what happens when you run it dry for a couple of weeks.
heres a couple of photos to show what it looked like after i had finished the work on it.
a few days later i broken down, the car spluttered and died with a lack of fuel. initially I thought that the crash switch had activated seeing that i had just gone over a bump. this wasn't so because i could smell a strong smell of petrol, looked out the window down on the floor and there was a pool of petrol forming. this was not a great time to brake down i was on the main road in rush hour, luckily i was about a hundred yards from a pub car park i managed to push it to it to check how bad the problem was.
The bodged fuel lines had pulled out under the car, all i could do was find a screwdriver in the boot and jam it up the pipe and jubilee it on till the next morning. The next morning i went of to the local factors to grab some fuel pipes and all the necessary bits to run new fuel lines. an hour later new fuel lines on and back up and running.
the sticking idle was then fixed when i visited f0xy, he gave me some of his patented power bands which sorted the idle a treat.
sorry for the massive post and lack of pic for some of it, just wasn't in the mood to be taking photos for some of it
