Saturday 6 May 2017

The Great Unveiling

Today was a biggie - my seats arrived and look great, although tiny. Unfortunately,  they're so small that the universal runners I've got are too wide for them,  so a new set are on order.

I needed to get a photo of the car 'finished' for the IVA application which was a great excuse to get it out the garage,  seats in (vaguely) and the last of the panel covering removed - ta dah!





Sorry,  should have got a clearer shot of the seats - I'll do that for next time.

While the car was out,  I wanted to go for a real drive,  just up the road but enough to check out if she actually vaguely works. First,  I wanted to try play with the ECU but I couldn't get my PC to connect up. After some mucking about,  it briefly connected but went again,  which suggests the cheap USB adaptor I bought has gone AOL. I've been to Maplins and bought a decent one and I'll try again tomorrow.

As I haven't actually started the car since November,  I was a bit apprehensive but no worries,  started first time. The idle isn't very smooth (which is why I wanted to play with the mapping) but not too bad.

So,  bright sunny day, a rumbling engine in a sexy little body (the car,  not me) - it would be rude not to. So off I rumbled up the road... 200m and back. She runs horribly; map desperately needs sorting out and I have no self-centering of the steering which is an IVA fail,  so needs fixing.

The brakes are rubbish but I'm not sure if that's just me not being used to non-servo brakes,  the pads needing bedding in or bleeding - most likely all three.

Positives? The speedo works,  which I'm very happy about because it could be annoying to fix.

But the best bit was the drive; the noise,  the wind (even at 25mph), the mechanical clunk's and whines - awesome! My wife became my first passenger and even she loved it (she's shown little interest up to now).

So,  list of jobs:

1. Steering self-centering.
2. Brake bleeding.
3. Fit seats.
4. Engine map improvement.

In other news,  my IVA is being engraved on a steel tab at a local shoe repair shop and a nice chap from the RHOCAR forum has kindly offered to weld it for me.

I've made an utter dogs dinner of the gearstick gaiter,  getting glue everywhere but it will do for now.

And finally,  the story of the day:


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