Sunday 30 October 2016

The Beast Awakens

One of the best days of my build so far...

The plan today was to get the wheels on,  roll the car out,  clear out the dump that is my garage and try get the engine tuned to run better. 

Firstly,  tidied up some tunnel wiring:


I had to cut-out a small piece of the dash support piece on the side where the Carling switches are,  to enable the dash to be fitted in place:


Only 3 holes line up with the rivnuts on the dash support -  I will need to fettle the others at some later point. 

With that done,  out came the wheels for the first time and simply bolted on. The next step was getting the car down off the axle jacks, which was trickier than I expected; the rear wasn't too bad as my jack could go up enough to lift the car,  removed the rear stands and lowered the car to the floor. The front was more difficult as my jack wouldn't extend up high enough to get under the front chassis rail - I had to use an extra piece of wood and,  after removing the front stands,  then I lowered the car too quickly,  trapping the jack underneath! Luckily,  a neighbour came to the rescue with his own jack,  which I used to recover mine. 

So,  the car was on its wheels for the first time! Damn,  it's low... 

Now to get out my garage which has a 2 inch lip down... my son in the driving seat to work the brakes,  my neighbour pushing from behind and me at the front checking nothing grounded. I used a couple of wood pieces as ramps and slowly,  she rolled out to meet the world - and looked amazing:




Absolutely love those wheels!

My garage looked a state:


... but a bit of work and tidiness was restored:



The one bit of bad news was that I couldn't get my ECU to talk to my laptop - I recently had to overwrite Windows with Ubuntu (because of a virus) and it doesn't seem to recognise the USB port. Not sure how to fix that... 

I left the engine running for long enough for the fan to come on,  which is great to know that works and my thermostat seems to work as all the coolant pipes got hot (and didn't start leaking). Brake lines all still leak-free as well,  all my electrics seemed to still be working and all the gauges do something - wonderful!

Even the handbrake works well without any adjustment (although I should maybe do some to make it come on with less travel). 

Even the wife,  dad and dog got involved:


But best of all (after a weekend of great things) was DRIVING MY car!! OK,  2 metres forward and several back but IT MOVES! Like a real car! 

Spent a while having to adjust the clutch cable (and still needs fine-tuning) but all gears were easy to select and power goes to the wheels. 

Which is lucky because I had hoped to reverse the car back into the garage,  which I was able to do,  with some wheel spin,  lots of fumes and wonderful noise. 


I am a very,  very happy chappy. 

There are some issues to be addressed; the horn didn't work and the wheel alignment needs work and I may have done the rear suspension bolts up too tight all those months ago; there is no give in the rear at all,  even with my weight on it. 

But it has been a weekend of great import and I am,  as the kids say,  stoked! 


Saturday 29 October 2016

Finally, a car shape

Lucky you -  2 posts in one day...

I hadn't planned to even go into the garage today but I somehow managed to squeeze in what I thought would be a quick session to start on the nose cone

Several other blogs seem to have had issues with their nose cone so I was a little concerned but it turned out to be much easier than I expected. First was some rivnuts in the top chassis brackets:


The nose needed a little bit of the flange trimmed off to allow it to fit over the outside of those brackets.  Then 2 holes underneath in the lower chassis rail with rivnuts,  a little jiggery-pokery with the holes in the nose cone and voila:



As I still seemed to have some (stolen)  time left,  I thought I'd try fit the scuttle. Again,  this was something that seemed a bit daunting but unless I've done something wrong,  it was very simple. Maybe this was because I already had the correct shape formed but all I had to do was bolt it in place and tighten the bolts gradually. It tightened down perfectly:


Finally, something I've wanted to do for ages - fit the steering wheel. A few simple bolts and done - placed the dash roughly in place for the full effect:


So I finally have something that looks far more car-shaped which should please my son who keeps complaining that it doesn't look like anything!



DiVINe

Just a short post to mention a further step along the path to legitimacy - got an email through from the DVLA with my VIN number they have allocated me.

A small thing that strangely feels like a big deal.


Wednesday 26 October 2016

Auxiliary battle

Brake fluid in and bled and,  touch wood,  no leaks so far since the Great Flare Fiasco.

Spent some time on the front tunnel and auxiliary panel,  drilling holes and fitting rivnuts. Once again,  I've not done a great job here - I fitted 4 rivnuts a few months ago before I had the auxiliary panel delivered. However,  once it got delivered,  I realised it needed extra holes. The result is I have drilled 11 holes in the front tunnel panel when it only needed 6! Luckily,  it's not a structural part and the extra holes will be covered by vinyl but I'm getting a bit more slapdash as the build goes on - not a good sign. 


This is with the extra bits roughly in place; main beam flash button on the right,  12V power socket, 2 USB sockets (both under rubber covers) and then a spare (not quite sure what for yet but a few options). 

This is it vinyl-covered and buttons /sockets in place:


Not too shabby, if I do say so myself...


Tuesday 18 October 2016

Broken brakes

Well,  you live and learn,  I guess.  This week,  my education involves the relevant merits of single and double flares on brake lines. Bottom line? Don't use single flares as they may not be strong enough for the pressures they will eventually have to deal with.

Guess what I did on all my brake lines? Yup,  you guessed it...

In my meagre defence,  I did those brake lines in the first couple of months of my build and most people buy the pipes ready - flared from GBS,  so no-one in their blog ever discusses them.

Fortunately, the fix isn't too bad. Through the RHOCAR forum, I borrowed a smaller,  hand-held brake pipe flare tool which turned out to be far better than mine (thanks Colin). Drained the brake fluid and managed to re-flare the front brake lines and those going into the master cylinder. Tricky but they do look much better than before.

The rear lines were much easier as I could take them out completely and redo them on my bench.

Just waiting for some more brake fluid to arrive so I can refill the system and pray the leaks are all gone.

Took 30 minutes to fit the anti-rattle  clip on the brake calipers. Hard work and scraped off quite a bit of my nice,  yellow paint. Will try touch that up.

Finally tonight,  added the wiring in for the main beam flash button that will go on the aux panel.

Tuesday 11 October 2016

Chinese fluid torture

Thread lock arrived so I was able to bolt up the rear brake calipers and test the brakes.  All seems to be fine - discs lock when pedal is pressed and release OK and the handbrake seems to work as well although I guess it will need some final adjustment later.

However, I've got an annoying,  tiny leak from the front join between copper and flexi pipe. It's literally a drop a day but I just can't fix it. Tightened and adjusted several times and finally decided to take the plunge and re-flare the pipe which is a nightmare with difficult access and slippery fluid dripping out the pipe all the time. Improved the flare but not sure if it's any better - I've left it now and will check again in the morning.

Bit more tidying up - cable-tied the throttle cable to the offside brake line,  put some corrugated conduit over the brake lines where they pass under the steering column in the footwell,  riveted the indicator relay to the firewall and went round with the paint pen to mark all the recently re-done bolts.

Wednesday 5 October 2016

Spic and span

I ordered thread lock from someone on eBay where the advert said 'UK stock' and 3 days delivery - checked it today and it says at least another 10 days for delivery! Turns out it's coming from China...I've reported him to eBay and ordered more from elsewhere... 

Forgot to mention last time that I moved the car about 6 inches to one side,  so I could get to the offside more easily. Scary job - car balanced on the jack at the rear and I found the car is now too heavy for me to lift at the front,  not even the few mm needed to allow the move.  I had to make use of my  car jack to lift the front and then pull it sideways. 

With no thread lock,  I couldn't tighten up the rear calipers and test the brakes,  so I decided to concentrate on tidying up bits and pieces in preparation for rolling the car out the garage. 

First off,  I decided to move the ECU from the special bracket I made a few months ago to be on the firewall. I've decided I'm not going to install a heater in the future so I don't need to leave space on the firewall for it. 
 
I've put a thin layer of foam and some rubber mat between the firewall and ECU for some heat and vibration protection (no idea if that is needed but can't do any harm).

Fitted the steering column shaft and tidied up the engine loom,  alternator wire and HP fuel line by cable-tieing (is that a word?) them to the brake line. I'll check with GBS that it is OK to have those 3 tied together. I also need to check if I'll need to trim down the bolt on the steering shaft:


It's not close to anything but just looks a tad long. 

Sunday 2 October 2016

Bleedin' 'ell

Time to sort out the brakes - bolts arrived so bolted the front calipers on:


And fitted the front flexible brake lines to the copper brake lines - all pretty straightforward.

For brake bleeding,  I bought the Eazeebleed system that others have used and it was very good,  although I'm not sure how much I needed it. I assumed it would take forever to manually pump the fluid through the system but after only a minute of pumping the pedal by hand,  fluid had got to the calipers. How did I know this? Because I kept hearing a squirt  of liquid every time I pumped and I ignored it for several pumps before it suddenly dawned on me that I may have a leak,  which I did - a large puddle of fluid on the front nearside junction of the copper and flexible brake lines. Tightened up and seemed OK.

No other obvious leaks, so on went the Eazeebleed system - nice and easy,  fluid in the bottle,  connected up to a tyre with pressure reduced to 20psi. Small plastic tube on each bleed nipple in turn,  loosen and wait a few seconds for the fluid to come through. Done in minutes although,  like  I said,  wouldn't have been much longer doing it the old fashioned way (but I guess I would have needed my sons help to make it easier, so maybe not that simple).

At first,  there didn't seem to be any leaks and then I noticed a tiny leak on the front offside join - and then all went a bit pear-shaped.  I won't bore you with the details - suffice to say I went through 4 pairs of disposable gloves,  I had to bin a rag and there are several large puddles of brake fluid dotted round the garage.

I think it's all OK now but I couldn't test it because I can't bolt the rear calipers back on as I've run out of thread lock.

One issue with that Eazeebleed system is that it leaves the fluid reservoir full to the brim and the cap on this GBS system has a large float on it which means you have to get some fluid out of the reservoir before you can put the GBS cap back on. You might be able to see how full it is even after getting some out: