First Scrape! and other stuff

It's not as bad as it sounds...... caught the bottom of the oil cooler scoop on a road hump on the way into a friends estate - no real damage other than some scrape marks underneath out of sight.

On a similar vein - I had the front wheels off this weekend to get them balanced again (long story) and noticed that there was an area of underseal underneath each arch that had been rubbed off by the tyres. So as a consequence of this, and the scrape, I've raised the front ride height slightly. I may revise this after fitting the front anti-roll bar. I've tentatively arranged with Andy to go down to GD end of September and get them to fit the anti-roll bar there and then and get Andy to finish tweaking the suspension.

Going back to the wheel balancing issue - I was getting a slight tremor at 75ish that you could drive through and would be gone by 90. Nothing too drastic but it was starting to annoy me - particularly as I had been and had them balanced on two previous occasions but it had never quite solved the problem. So this time I carefully checked wheel rim and tyre run out (both in line and laterally) and also checked the wheel bearings. Everything checked out within acceptable limits so it was off to a different tyre place that didn't employ "yoofs"!

I stood over the the guy this time and watched the process - as the wheels are quite wide it was explained that I would need two sets of weights on each wheel to get the dynamic balance right - one set on the back edge of the rim the other set towards the front edge but just behind the wheel face so they are not visible. So 10 minutes and 25 quid later job done. It turned out to be a marked improvement and has cured the issue.

It was also time for another clean and polish after spending 4 hours driving in the rain at the last monthly meet. This time I had a change of heart and instead of using Auto Gylm products I used One Grand Omega Glaze followed by One Grand Blitz Wax (Carnauba). In all the whole process took about 8 hours but I was quite pleased with the results:

Finally, after a discussion with my Engine Builder, Jez, we have concluded that I can turn up my rev-limiter from a conservative 5200rpm to 6000rpm - this will give me an approximate increase of 15% in road speed for each gear. This will come in handy as the thing accelarates so quickly I was not spending much time in the lower gears! I just need to psyche myself up for another upside down in the footwell episode first - perhaps in hindsight I should have put the Mallory Hy-Fire unit somewhere more accessible? where though I'm not sure.

First Mods

Right then, time to change some things. Wind wings, sun visors and headrests fitted:

Fog light swapped back and reflectors removed:

Suspension dropped 25mm for now (left some room for it to settle so we'll see how we get on) and spinners fitted - tyre pressures set to 23psi all round

Steering wheel nearly fitted:

The Mota-Lita boss hasn't had the taper machined correctly so it will not go on to the shaft properly. Another one on its way up from GD next week.

After a little hiccup with my insurance cover note it has gone off with the MAC to the DVLA. So now we wait for an age related registration to turn up in the post sometime.

More or less ready for SVA

Last post I was talking about lockstops. The front tyres are 245/40/18's and as such they foul the inner wings on full lock. The problem is made worse by having to raise the car to get the front indicators up to the required height. This means that the suspension is in droop relative to the chassis (by winding up the bottom spring pans), with the movement of the wishbones these moves the wheels even closer to the inner wings!!

So I need to fit lockstops to the steering rack. First job was to unto the ties and pull the boots back:

Here you can see the rack shaft and the stock nylon lock stop. Any additional stops need to be fitted on the outside of the nylon stop so that they don't get ingested into the rack internals.

Here we see plan A on the left and plan B on the right:

Plan A was a split 2mm thick aluminium washer. The idea being to bend it open, fit on the rack and bend it back. however...... I have very little room to get my arms in due to the Accusump being in the way. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't bend them closed again!

So plan B was to use some 1.6mm thick polycarbonate. The beauty of this plan is that they simply be "snapped" onto the rack due to thier felxibility:

So process was them simple - insert a polycarbonate spacer - check for wheel rub - if so add another. Easy and only took a few minutes, once the spacers had been made (I even made some spares for the SVA just in case!). You can see the spacers here on the outside of the white nylon spacer:

The boots were pulled back over and new ties added to fix them.

This of course necessitated driving around outside the house to thoroughly test the performance of full lock - importantly the steering was making an effort to self centre at relatively slow speeds.

And that was that really...... time for some more photo's:

Put a couple of clips on the throttle cable to tidy it up, calibrated the speedo, polished a few things, sat and stared at various things for a while, and in no time at all it was dusk so I set out some markings on my garage door and set the headlamp aim up as per the Wipac instructions.

This only left two jobs on the to do list, bedding in the brakes and setting the emissions..... I will attempt the first on the way to SVA and the second at the SVA test - should only require a twiddle of the idle jets on the carb.

I assume over the next few days I might find the odd tweak or two to keep me busy...........

Wheels on... Wheels off... Wheels on... Yawn!

Spent a few hours taking the wheels off, winding up spring pans, putting wheels back on, measuring, taking wheels off, adjusting spring pans etc.. etc..

One thing I noticed was that the handbrake cable rested against the spring pan of one of the rear shocks..... I split some grommets, fixed them over the cable and secured each of them with a cable tie round the circumference to "nip" them onto the cable. This will keep the cable away from the spring and the grommets are too big to allow the cable to fall into the spring. Should be OK for SVA:

After a couple of hours of setting spring lengths, driving it a bit to settle the springs and re-checking I ended up with the front indicators at the correct height (350mm) from the floor.Oh well..... after all the waiting I suppose it's time for the money shots:

It is sitting quite high at the moment but will be lowered after SVA, also there are no spinners on either. I did fit one to see what it looked like but forgot to take a photo.

I had quite a few interruptions today from interested neighbours... funny how the sun brings them out!.... where were they through all those long winter nights freezing in the garage??

Now for the bad news...... the tyres foul the inner wings on full lock..... so that means fitting lock stops to the rack.

More on that tommorrow.... I've just wasted an hour or so with Plan A, but Plan B looks like a goer.

They're Here......

Let the games begin........

......... I got the cobra up on axle stands, took the old jag wheels off, took some measurements, wound up the spring seats, put the new wheels on, dropped the car back on the floor....... bugger ..... rear to high and front too low. (No photo's 'till it's done.... no spoiling the surprise). Too late to do anymore tonight.... So I fixed my knob on instead!

Day off tomorrow.... so hopefully all will be sorted by the end of the day.

Wheels and Tyres

Update on Tyres

Tyres are expected at GD Next Monday, which means I should be able to collect the wheels and tyres on Tuesday.....with 8 days to go till SVA..............