Friday 23 June 2017

By the skin of my teeth

... But a PASS 



So,  last night I tightened up the handbrake and used a cable tie and pipe to hold the brake cable away from the rear wishbone.

This morning,  I went to a local garage to do a brake test - handbrake came up at 26% efficient (needs to be 18%) and brakes seemed OK but they don't do the test the same as IVA,  so I couldn't be sure. They also wouldn't let me just run on the rollers for a while to try bed the pads in - they were worried about damaging their stuff. So,  I had to hope it would work out...

Journey from Hell again to get to West London - if my car can survive doing 30 miles in an hour and 40 minutes,  it can survive anything! Poor thing has had a baptism of fire for its first 150 miles of its life.

I would highly recommend going for your test on a Friday - my tester was demob-happy and it really helped. He glanced at the brake line fixes and gaiter clearances - no problem. Up on the ramp,  he was very impressed with the way I had done the fix for the rear brake line and he was also very impressed with my build overall - he gave me a few horror stories of other kit cars he had had to test. He was strangely pleased to see I had put yellow paint marks on my bolts as well.... all this helped immensely with the next stage.

The brake test didn't seem to go much better than last time - I could see the figures he was writing down and they seemed similar to last time but he seemed happy. However,  the handbrake didn't come up to scratch - better but still too low,  he said,  despite my earlier MOT test at the garage. He then asked if I wanted to do any adjustment - I didn't really know what to do as I had adjusted it to the limit I could the night before but he obviously wanted me to pass,  so I simply tightened the handbrake as far as I could - so far,  in fact,  that I couldn't move the car by hand with the handbrake off. But he redid the test,  pronounced it a pass and then also very kindly allowed the 2mm of travel as enough of a reserve (I didn't even realise that was a requirement - it hadn't been mentioned in my first test). He went off to do the paperwork and I loosened the handbrake back to 'normal'.

So,  a pass but I feel a tad lucky - if I had caught the tester on a bad day,  it may have been another fail.

Took a slightly better route home and felt great - you can't be too shy in a kit car,  loads of people stare at you,  other drivers strike up conversations as you're sitting in traffic, no-one hoots at you when you do something illegal (I twice had to do a dodgy turn) and people wave you out all the time.

So, the main task is done - build a functioning,  road-legal car. The next steps are:

Bonnet louvres to help keep the engine cool.
Windscreen.
Roof (canvas).
Doors.

I could also do with calming the idle - it's at about 1050 rpm at the moment - could do with being 950.

In true awards ceremony style,  I'd like to thank some people for getting me to this stage:

1. Simon from GBS (well,  not any more) - I am the top poster on the GBS owners forum because I asked so many questions and Simon answered them all - his help was essential. No chance I would have finished without him.

2. Bob Tucker from the RHOCAR forum for welding my VIN plate on.

3. Colin from the same forum for loan of his brake pipe flaring tool and Jon for loan of the engine crane.

4. Several other builders blogs but mostly Richard Lincoln's - much clearer than my rambling.

It has been a great 2 years and I've thoroughly enjoyed the build,  in fact a little sad it's mostly over. But this should be a great summer!

Did I mention I passed? :-)

Thursday 22 June 2017

Sweat shop

Hottest day of the year and I spent 3.5 hours in my garage last night - 32 degC, too much body fat and light exercise don't make a pretty sight.

But a good session; the issues with the steering rack gaiters touching the suspension was because, early in the build, I added a spacer under the O/S end of the rack to add some clearance from the wishbone. However, I didn't put a matching one on the other side, which is why one end is up in the air, the other down low, almost touching the wishbone mount. So, I made up another spacer and fitted it to the N/S end of the rack to level it up and it's much better now - decent clearance all round. That also might improve my self-centering....?

I adjusted the O/S brake line to the caliper to remove the pig-tail that the tester picked up on and that forced a brake bleed (which I wanted to do anyway).

The tester also failed me on a brake line into the master cylinder but at the end of the test, I think he was having second thoughts. He was concerned that a graze on the side of the pipe (caused by the brake flaring tool I used) might fail but he admitted it might take years before that happened, if at all. He suggested I just cover the line so the next tester can't see it and it would be fine :-) So, I bought some special tape which is designed to repair cracked pipes and covered the offending pipe in that - hopefully that will be ok.

My biggest worry is how to sort out the brake strength - I failed because, at slow speed, my front brakes are slightly weaker than the rears (fine at higher speeds). I've booked into a local garage tomorrow morning and I'm hoping to simply put the car on their rollers and just brake on and off, to try bed the brakes in and make them stronger that way.

Just have the wayward rear brake line to tie up out of the way of the wishbone and the handbrake to adjust to try make it stronger. There is an adjuster built into the system and I remember I did have a small amount of adjustment left to make the handbrake stronger - just have to hope that's enough.

Wednesday 21 June 2017

No pressure, then

So, yesterday I phone up DVSA to book a re-test date. My options? This Friday or July 31st!!! 3 days or 40 days! Nothing in between!

I just can't wait until the end of July for what should be a 30 minute re-test, so I've gone for Friday - some long evenings coming up...I've got tonight, tomorrow and a bit of Friday morning as the test isn't until 2pm.

This could get messy...

Monday 19 June 2017

Close but no cigar

Sadly,  IVA was a fail but for minor stuff so one more test should do it.

I had hoped for a dry day and I got that OK,  as well as 32 degC,  hottest day of the year so far. With hindsight,  a test centre in West London was not the best choice when you need to get there by 8am through rush hour. Well,  I'd hoped leaving at 6am would mean missing rush hour but I didn't  realise how early rush hour starts these days. The heat was the main problem and I had images of me breaking down before I even got there.  The gauge hovered just below the 100 mark the whole time,  with the fan going pretty constantly but no leaks,  which was good.

For the first 28 miles,  everything was fine and then,  2 miles from the centre,  my throttle started sticking on. I managed to struggle the last 2 miles but I couldn't work out what the problem was - everything looked fine. The test bloke was very good about it and started the test anyway while I had a think. While he was doing his stuff,  I called GBS and Richard suggested it must be the cable or pedal - I had been concentrating on the throttle body. With the pedal box open,  I realised the heat must have expanded the bolt that the throttle pedal pivoted on,  making it very stiff. A quarter turn to loosen it and all OK.

Not the impression I wanted to make 5 minutes after arrival:


Waiting in the torture chamber:



While the box was off,  the tester checked inside and wasn't happy with one of my brake lines into the master cylinder - it had a slight kink and some damage; a small graze on the side. So,  10 minutes in,  I knew I was going to fail, which was very depressing.

In total,  he found a few other faults;

1. Front brake line to caliper of twisted at full lock.
2. Rear brake line touching wishbone.
3. Steering rack gaiter touching wishbone at full lock and too close to the panel on the other side. I had checked this early on in my build but I recently lowered the front suspension to help with self-centering and I think that is what has caused that.
4. Handbrake not strong enough.
5. Rear brakes slightly stronger than the front brakes.

So a pretty simple list to fix except for the brakes - how do you make brakes weaker?

He said the self-centering was pretty minimal but he let me off and he didn't even check the front indicator height,  so that wasn't an issue.

Unbelievably, the emissions test sailed through - it took him longer to get the gas analyser working! Huge thanks to Simon (ex-GBS) for his emissions map and instructions on how to adjust it - worked a charm and promising for future MOTs.

Interestingly, he didn't seem to do a noise test or check the side mirror views and he made no comment about the edge trim on my steering wheel spokes.

I was very impressed with how the car handled the heat and traffic; I did have nightmares about breaking down in the middle of rush hour.

So,  a slightly disappointing day but,  with hindsight, it could have been much worse and most of those failures I couldn't have foreseen.

On with the fixes...

Sunday 18 June 2017

The die is set

A few final adjustments; the speedo is programmable and reading the manual,  I followed the process (that I should have done before) to set it. I haven't gone out to test it but I know how to adjust it again if I find it's no good tomorrow. 

I took the nose off to get to the bottom hose clip and found that it was one of the cheap ones I had used at the start. I've replaced all the others with decent quality ones but I must have missed this one,  so a quick swap over to a decent one and hopefully that will stop the leak. 

I noticed that my handbrake light wasn't coming on which was a worry but I took off the gaiter and I could see that one of the plugs had come off,  so quick fix. 

Slight concern that my front indicators may be too low. They're supposed to be 350mm from the ground but the bottom edge is only 310mm after I lowered my front suspension to try improve the self-centering. The centre is at 340mm so I'm just hoping the tester is in a good mood. 

Finally,  some brake pipe over the headlamp bolt and edge trim on that bracket. 

And. It. Is. Done. 



IVA tomorrow - wish me luck! 

Saturday 17 June 2017

Mixed bag

Well,  an interesting day - drove about 3 miles to the garage for an emissions test.

First impressions of my car? It's very low! Everything else on the road towers over you.  A truck pulled up behind me at the lights and I was in its shade! It gets thrown off line by any reasonable size bump or hole in the road so you have to constantly adjust the steering. I think a session with a suspension expert post-IVA will be needed.

The steering is surprisingly light on the move and the brakes are improving all the time and the exhaust note sounds very promising for when I can give it some beans.

A problem however; my speedo is over-reading by a lot - OK up to 30mph but by about 45, it is showing 70, which is outside the tolerance allowed by IVA. Bugger...

Amazingly,   the whole emissions test went swimmingly.  Initially,  my CO figure was showing about 7 at idle,  when it needed to be below 0.3! And the HC value was 600 and needed to be below 200!

But removing fuel (lowering injection values) and retarding the ignition soon reduced them down to below the required levels.

At fast idle (2500 rpm), it was already quite good but a slight adjustment of the ignition map at the 3000 rpm site seemed to bring it right down to the required values.

I'm a bit worried that this was too easy - we'll see on Monday,  I guess.

The coolant leak is from the pipe at the bottom of the radiator and even with the car up on the ramp,  I couldn't get to it to tighten it. I'll have to take the nose off tomorrow to get access.

Also got the headlights adjusted so I just need to add some covering over the nut and bolt.

Thursday 15 June 2017

Hotting up

Continuing with testing, I drove a mile or so up and down my road with the bonnet on for the first time, to see how the cooling system handled it.

While I was moving, it was fine - fan kicked in and temperature held around 96 degC. However, I sat idling in the drive for a while (testing all the lights, indicators etc still worked - they do) and then spent ages trying to get back into my garage (lots of revving) and the coolant temp hit 105 degC. Looked OK at the time but when I went to look this morning, I've lost a load of coolant from somewhere. It doesn't look like it came out of the header tank either, so I might have a leak in the system at high temps.

So, first job after IVA is to get bonnet louvres cut. I need to find someone to do that for me - I'll make a dog's dinner of it...

I can't get the self-centering any better so going to have to cross my fingers and hope the tiny amount I do have is good enough.

Booked in to a local garage on Saturday morning to test the emissions. I've spent some time with various sources trying to understand how to adjust the map and what the figures mean - should be ..er... interesting.

4 days to IVA...

Sunday 11 June 2017

Round the bend... and back

Success!  I have some self-centering and when I say 'some',  I mean like a vague suggestion of self-centering  if you squint sideways... but I believe that is normal and acceptable for IVA.

I'm not sure what fixed it but I did the following:

1. Lowered the front - it should be 10mm lower than the rear but mine was the same.
2. Reduced tyre pressures by 2 psi.
3. Switched the indicator cam round that sits between wheel and column. I don't have column stalks so I don't need the cam but Simon suggested I should leave it in.  When I took the wheel off,  I realised the cam was squashed in and didn't turn,  suggesting either it was in the wrong way or the wheel was tightened up too much (very likely for me).  So swapped it round - I may go back and loosen the bolt as well as that simply holds the steering wheel to the column and I don't think it needs to be as tight as I have it.

Much happier now...

Thursday 8 June 2017

Mr Cockup returns for a late encore

The chap from Emerald connected up to my PC (amazingly,  this all worked first time) but he noticed an immediate problem with my TPS signal - it was showing a value of 420 at zero throttle when it should have been around the 200 mark. Also, it initially DROPPED to 410 as I pressed the accelerator before rising up to about 600 - it should go up smoothly to a maximum of around 900.

I had a panic attack about having to spend £70 on a new TPS and wait days for it to be delivered. After much panic Googling and posts on forums,  another bloke at Emerald suggested it was more likely to be the wiring to the TPS plug (Simon also said this). 

At first,  I just couldn't understand that; the engine started,  ran and idled pretty well -  surely if the TPS wiring was wrong,  there would be more obvious symptoms? 

There  are only 3 wires into the TPS plug; ground,  positive 5V from the ECU and the signal back to the ECU. Could I be that stupid to get them wrong? Well,  a few tests with a multimeter gave me the answer.  I can't remember where I got the TPS pin layout from but it was obviously wrong. Half an hour to redo the wires and now, 180 to 850 showing in the Emerald software - what a relief! I don't need this sort of panic so close to IVA. 

I was at least able to confirm that my map switch works - got it flicking between a power map and another map that will be the emissions when I upload that (Simon has sent it to me). I've got some instructions from Simon and Emerald to help fiddle with the map when I have the car connected up to a gas analyser (booked in for Saturday before IVA - first weekend day I could get). 

Went for a drive up the road - still no self-centering of the steering and getting a little concerned about that now. I'm going to check the front ride height (maybe it could be lowered although not sure if that will help) and might drop the tyre pressures a little (20 psi at the moment,  18 psi is a common setting but I don't know how much difference that will make). Last resort is to try adjust the front tie rods for some more toe-in and maybe loosen the steering rack even more? 

11 days to IVA... 

Sunday 4 June 2017

The Fat Lady's Singing

... and that,  my loyal fans, after almost exactly 700 days, signifies the end - well,  up to IVA anyway.

The last job,  fitting the seats, is done:


Some engine tuning help this week and then an MOT (sort of) and IVA in 2 weeks.