Friday 12[SUP]th[/SUP] October 2012
Well another update that I am very pleased about. Luke kindly gave up his Friday afternoon (we finish at 1pm on a Friday) and we cracked on with welding the roll cage in place. The final pieces to the puzzle.
Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures of it when we were doing it as I was too busy trying to get it done.
First of all we cut the bits off in front of the rear struts (This is where the rear bench locks in place) as we had not enough room to get the lance around the strut tops to weld it in place.
We then tack welded the two downward bars from the main hoop to the strut.
We then began to profile the diagonal bar so it would fit nice and snugly, once that was all done we tack welded that bar in place as well. This is basically where I left Luke to get on with it as there was nothing more that I could do. So whilst he was welding up front I decided to investigate the oil leak.
I had pretty much decided that the leak was either due to a missing bolt in the inner cambelt cover or the pressure switch had not been fitted correctly. The first thing I did was remove the lower cambelt cover so I could try and see if there were an bolts missing from the inner cover. This was pretty much impossible without removing and engine mount and lowering the engine down one side. Therefore I thought I would try and tighten the pressure switch. For some unknown reason I thought it was a 22mm spanner needed to nip this up. Unfortunately I could not access it due to the spanner being to big so I used my cunning to see if I could move the switch by hand. Well the pressure switch was not even hand tight. FACEPALM! So I unscrewed the pressure switch and found out it was in fact a 19mm spanner needed so I screwed it back in and nipped it up with the spanner. As we had removed all of the petrol so Luke can do the welding I was unable to test it to see if it worked. Oh well.
I then refitted the cambelt cover and waited for Luke to finish. Once Luke had ‘finished’ we looked over the welds on the car to ensure they were all adequate and we stood back and admired what we had done! The welding is not completely finished as we started to loose light. Unfortunately Luke cannot get the lance in position to finish off two of the welds. What we are going to need to do is knock the rear quarter windows out, weld it up and then ill fit some polycarb ones in instead of the heavy glass but in all honesty I don’t think this will be done this year. Unfortunately that means I cannot use the car on track until this is done but with the weather the way it is I don’t think I will be going on track anytime soon anyway.
Here are a couple of pictures that we took right at the end.
Saturday 13[SUP]th[/SUP] October 2012
So I have a bit of a lay in and decide to go down and get the car finished and MOT’d today. Well that was the plan. I rung my MOT tester in the morning and said what is the latest time you can book me in for an MOT? He basically said 4pm as he was going home at 5. That was alright as I was confident that I could get the car finished for then.
First on the list of things to do was the bloody subframe and decat flange had to have a bit shaved off as it was hitting and vibrating through the car.
So I jacked the car up nice and high:
Then I undone all of the parts preventing the subframe from dropping and then slowly lifted it down so I could have some room to play with the grinder.
First thing I did was shave a tiny little bit off of the subframe on the area that it had been hitting (as it had removed the paint). I then got under the car and grinded a bit of the flange away. I didn’t remove that much that it would weaken anything I only removed the unnecessary excess metal.
Subframe:
Decat Flange:
I then got the red hammerite out and touched up the subframe, whilst I was there I also redone the callipers and carriers and I wasn’t fond of the silver/red theme I had before. Lol
I then fitted all of the subframe and everything back up and made sure that everything was tight.
My mate Luke turned up (another Luke) to lend a hand with the last finishing touches of the car prior to the MOT. Whilst the car was up in the air we sorted the tracking (by eye) and tightened it all up. We then dropped the car on the floor and proceeded to fit the wiper motor and arms etc. We plugged it in and tried the wipers.....no joy they would not work. This was really strange as I had never had a problem with them before. The only thing that concerned me was the amount of wiring that I had put in the scuttle area as I was still using the standard unchopped/untaped main loom. After playing about with it for a bit and getting nowhere I gave up. Rung up my MOT tester and said that I would not be down today
. As I had more time and was not rushing I decided to finish it off properly so that I wouldn’t have to go back over it at a later date.
Luke ended up going after a while and I carried on and done the following:
I retaped the entire scuttle loom in self amalgamating tape to try and tidy it up a bit for when I installed the wiper motor.
I removed the main interior wiring loom and started chopping it all down so I could remove all of the unnecessary wires that I would not be using. This was a bit of a gamble with all of the other looms I had tried to chop down and failed (well it may have been something to do with mixing different phase looms).
After a while I gave up as my back was in pieces and I could just about move.
I called it a night after that.
Sunday 14[SUP]th[/SUP] October 2012
Well I had a nice real early start by getting down to my nans for about 7.30am as I wanted to ensure that I had everything done so that I could finally get the car MOT’d.
The first thing that I did was finish cutting out the unnecessary wires. I then trial tested the loom......and the car wouldn’t start. Absolutely fuming I took it all out and tried my old phase 1 loom to see if it was me. The difference with this time was I actually tightened the interior earths properly and not by hand. All the ignition turned on so I removed it again and fitted the phase 2 chopped loom and tightened the earths properly. Cranked her over and she sprung into life.! I was basically doing cartwheels around my nans garden! Happy days.
Quick little video she still abit tappy.
I then removed the loom and taped the lot in self amalgamating tape to try and tidy it up. I then mounted all of the wiring inside the car and plugged everything in that needed to be plugged in. I cable tied all of the wiring out of place and started going through the different lights, horn, wiper etc to ensure everything was working. Unfortunately the horn and wipers where not working. The rear number plate light was coming on when I pressed the brake and the fuel gauge was sticking and not returning when I turned the ignition off. So out of that list the things I needed to sort was everything apart from the fuel gauge as that isn’t really an issue for the MOT test anyway.
First thing on the list were the wipers. I cut a plug off an old loom and connected that direct to a battery to try and get them working. They moved and then got stuck. It looks like the wiper motor arm had been slightly bent so it was hitting itself when doing its cycle. I bent it back into place and tested the wipers on the battery and everything was fine. (talk about miss the obvious thing!). I plugged it back into the main loom and then tested it on the wiper stalk. Everything worked wonderful.
Next job was the rear number plate light. As I did originally have this working on the old phase 1 rear loom iot must have been something I had wired up wrong when installing the new one. I had noticed that the numberplate wire that branches off the plug was in fact for the stop light (according to my notes) so I decided to cut that off and try and see if it would work if I connected it to the blue wire. Sure enough it did and it worked as it should do and didn’t come on when I pressed the brake pedal lol.
The final job..... the horn. What an arsehole this was. I removed the unit. Cleaned all of the connections, cleaned the chassis where it earths against and it still wouldn’t work. I played around with this for a while and even connected it direct to a battery to see if it worked....which it didn’t.
Well I thought it was the final job but then I remembered...
I did notice when I put my lights on I had no dash lights! I must have cut the plug off that controls that and removed the wires so this is something that I had to address. So I got my spare loom and the Haynes sat there and pondered it for a while and then set to work on removing the light wires (pin 3 on oil dials) and pin 2 on the plug behind the speedo (horizontal one). I connected them together and then attached them to a blue wire in the loom that sends the signal for the lights. All sorted! The only problem is now that are on full all the time but that doesn’t worry me to be honest.
Luckily I had a spare unit lying about so I checked that on the battery and it worked fine. I installed it and tested it and it worked lovely.
All the little jobs done. Now it was just time to ensure my harnesses where mounted properly on the harness bar, check oil level, check coolant level, check brake fluid level and then go and get her tested.
Here are a few quick snaps before her little journey to the MOT tester!
It was quite an interesting drive down to the MOT test station. The car felt wonderful (although the steering wheel angle a bit iffy and the steering wheel being way to close into my chest). It was all wonderful until I got about a mile away from the station. The brakes started squeaking horrendously so I pulled over to investigate. With no tools, jack etc I was a bit stumped. There was nothing majorly obvious that was wrong with the car. I stopped off at home on the way through and got the jack out of the garage to investigate further. This was no good as I didn’t have my long series 19mm with me so I couldn’t take the wheels off. I had realised what I had done though I hadn’t tightened the driveshaft nuts up to the required torque but as I didn’t have the correct tools at my house there was naff all I could do. So I gently limped her to the MOT station and borrowed the guys jack and tools. 5 Minutes later it was sorted.! I did feel like a bit of a nob doing that but oh well the car was ok and was about to get tested!
Anyway the MOT happened and the car passed! Happy days. I very quickly shot down to the post office and slapped 12 months tax on her. She was finally on the road!!!!
I had a bit of ‘fun’ on the way home and then tucked her up on the drive. I was very comfortable driving her so I decided to try and put a smaller boss in place as the wheel was far to close to me to drive comfortably.
I must have moved the wheel back a good 80mm . The position was much more comfortable now the steering wheel was actually dead straight with the new boss in place. Happy days.
Didn’t get a before and after unfortunately but this is the new position.
Thursday 18[SUP]th[/SUP] October 2012
I went round to my uncles to show him the track car and also to borrow his tools so that I could set the camber up with the eibach camber bolts I had.
We ended up playing around with it for quite a bit to get it so that I was running around 1.5 degrees of camber.
Once that was all done I had a look around his project a Ford Escort RSR or something like that. Its basically a space frame with a fibreglass shell over the top it’s a beautiful bit of kit and a money pit. Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures but next time I go down there I will make sure that I do get some nice shots. I can’t wait until this is up and running its going to be a real weapon!
That was basically it for the night next on the list was to get the tracking sorted after work tomorrow.
Friday 19[SUP]th[/SUP] October 2012
So whilst at work I wanted to ensure that my uncle and I had put the camber bolts in the correct hole, so a quick phone call to Danny @ 519 confirmed that we had in fact put the camber bolts in the wrong hole. So straight after work in the pouring rain I removed the camber bolts and replaced the original bolts so that I could go and get the 4 wheel alignment done.
I went down to Jet Tyres in Benfleet and they done the necessary checks.
I was over the moon with the result as he said that the toe on the front was withing tolerance, the sterring wheel was perfectly straight and the rear beam did not need realigning. Happy days.
I got a quote for the tracking which was £36 which is reasonable and then I asked how much to set the camber up aswell. Dave (the guy doing the alignment) said he would do the camber adjustment for free but I would have to go home and refit the camber bolts as it was too involved to do it at the price I was quoted.
So off I went home and fitted the camber bolts in the correct hole (the top one) in the pouring rain.
I literally just chucked them in there as they were going to be set up correctly at Jet Tyres.
I get back down there and have a bit of a chat with Dave whilst he worked away on the car. He actually commented on how ‘brand new’ everything was on the car and complemented the wor I had done....which was nice lol.
He did the realignment and because I fitted the camber bolts it had infact put the tracking out of tolerance so he adjusted that to include a bit of toe out and then adjusted the camber bolts to the maximum which I believe is just over 1 degree of negative camber. I only got this amount of movement due to the castor being set to maximum on my AST top mounts. I have got a print out of what was done to the car I just need to take a picture of it and upload it on here.
The car is basically done now apart from a few things I need to do which are as follows:
- Buy a new AEM gauge as I have bloody lost mine! (I have all the wiring which is annoying!)
- Remove rear Quarter windows and finish welding the inaccessible parts of the cage.
- Refit poly carb windows to the rear quarters (and possibly the fronts)
- Buy a gearstick stiffening kit as mine is a little floppy.
- Spray the welded areas matt black
- Make a switch panel and mount them all in place,
- Run the wiring neatly through the car using cable ties and sticky pads.
- Buy some carbon Lorraine brakes for track
- Buy another set of track wheels for the R888’s
Then its just a case of booking a track day and enjoying the car. Cams may be on the cards for the future but I want to see how the car performs on track before I make any hasty decisions.
I finally got there in the end (well its not finished) but at least the majority of it is working.
Thanks for reading.