Brakes would be nice

On a drive out a few weekends ago, while trying to get past a couple of cyclists on a bend (yeah, my fault), a car came round the corner towards me. I panicked trying to get to the brake pedal and my foot got briefly caught under the pedal, pulling it up. To my horror, the pedal stayed up in the air and I had no brakes! Fortunately,  I was going slow and I was able to come to a stop using the handbrake.

When I got the pedal box opened up, I could see that the pedal had been able to travel so far the wrong way, that the rod that goes into the brake cylinder had come right out, hence no brakes.

This weekend , I finally got round to making up a basic pedal stop for the brake pedal so that I wouldn't be able to lift it up the wrong way again. It's not the greatest piece of mechanical engineering, just a piece of ally bent into a sort of U-shape and attached to the top of the brake pedal but it should do the job.

I think I am losing a bit of coolant from the temp sensor in the top of the thermostat but it's only a little and I don't want to try tighten the sensor too much because if I strip the plastic thread in the thermostat, it's going to be a pain to replace. Just means I have to top up the coolant every month or so - not too much of a hardship.

The brake judder I mentioned last time isn't the brakes - I think it's just the steering column shaking. All the bolts seem tight - I think it's just the fact it's a long length of metal which is only supported at each end which is why it vibrates under heavy braking. But I'll check with the experts on the forum...

Update: Went to a tyre place and got the wheels re-balanced - they were MILES out!! Vibration now hugely improved although not gone totally. I've ordered a dial gauge to check the discs as well.

Garotted

So, on with the repairs... first, take off the N/S front wing. It's attached in the same way as the O/S so it may also make an escape attempt in the near future.

After 2 hours, I was debating the wisdom of this plan - I think I used every item in my garage to try get the damn thing off; screwdrivers, chisels, Dremel and selection of bits etc. Eventually, the best tool was some wire made into a garotte to slice through the gunk between arch and support. This got me some of the way through and then a previously-useless saw with a very flexible blade did most of the rest:

On my last trip, I was getting brake judder when braking hard at speed. Forum discussions suggested the problem may be a lack of grease on the caliper slider pins so while I had the wheel off on this side, I stripped the caliper and re-greased the pins. They didn't seem too dry originally but felt a bit smoother afterwards, so maybe it will help - time will tell. I'll do the other side as well when I take that wheel off.

I'm going to re-attach the arches by making full width ally brackets with large wings and lots of gunk - hopefully, this will make a larger contact patch than just the support was before and will be physically stronger than the mesh I used.

I'm going to repair the damage to the wing with P40 filler (never done this before!) and then, I have a cunning plan to wrap both wings in some vinyl pattern to be determined. This saves trying to find the same shade of blue as the rest of the car and will give Zedster a more unique look, assuming I don't make a dogs dinner of the wrap :-)

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...

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:

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! 

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...

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.

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.

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:

Boxed in

Well,  tonight turned into quite a significant session.

I really want to try fill the coolant system and check for leaks before I go much further but to do that,  I really need the firewall in place and that really needed the pedal box fixed. I realised that I've gone to some effort,  like others,  to use rivnuts for the firewall to make it easily removable in the future BUT unlike others,  I've got a header tank and a brake fluid reservoir bolted to the firewall,  so removing the firewall in future,  even with rivnuts,  isn't going to be that simple. Ah well...

Spent a while staring at the pedal box,  trying to work out if I could safely rivet it in place. Pedals done,  clutch and accelerator cables in place,  brake lines in place - couldn't think of a reason not to,  so out came the gunk and rivets.

After that,  I went a bit nuts and bolted the firewall down and fitted the pipes for the brake fluid as well as a few small jobs - bent the clutch cable bracket a little to give a better angle, grommet in the firewall for the brake fluid level wire and fitted the final pipe in the cooling system,  from the top of the thermostat to the top of the header tank.

All looking pretty good:

Good evening all round - always nice to finally tighten something.

Progress

I was tempted to put a 'milestone' tag on this post but it hasn't really been enough effort to justify it - I've fitted the side panels:

                    

This also allowed me to fit the front brake lines:

A nice bit of progress....

Comedy of Errors

Well,  the 42mm socket arrived - great! It's got a 3/4" drive and my torque wrench has a 1/2" drive! Cue many swear words. Back online to order a converter - one of the things I'm finding is that the normal high Street culprits (Halfords, Screwfix etc) do not do the larger size items like this.

The converter finally arrived and on went the hub nuts. My problem now is how tight to go. It is supposed to be done up to 250nm - my torque wrench only goes to 210nm. Worse,  I can't even get to that figure because I'm tightening a nut on a driveshaft which is designed to...  er... turn. I had a metal pole through the hole in the hub and against the chassis which got it on enough that I could lift the entire chassis on the torque wrench,  before the pole started to bend!

I'm not sure how much more to try - it's difficult to believe it could work loose (it's a nyloc as well) and some on the RHOCAR forum have said they just tightened as best as they could and didn't even use a torque wrench and haven't had any problems since.

I'll think on it - the nut is always accessible to tighten later.... in fact,  thinking about it,  I could probably tighten it once the car is on the ground and the other wheel and handbrake is on?

In the meantime,  I've got the discs,  calipers,  handbrake and brake lines all connected up:

I need to ask about the copper brake lines - everyone else seems to have P-clipped them to the chassis but they seem very sturdy the way I have them and because they aren't clipped on,  they're much further away from that handbrake cable than the others. Yup,  all OK -  IVA rules state they only have to be supported every 300mm.

You may notice that I have one solid rear brake disc whereas most people have twin ventilated discs. I bought mine before I realised I had the choice but there has been an unforeseen advantage -  there is much more space in the caliper for the disc,  with a good 2-3mm each side. This has meant it has been much easier to file the caliper carrier ends down (they're a couple of mm too long,  even after the powder coat is off). That one disc was enough to stop a 1600kg Sierra so I'm sure I won't be under-braked. And they were cheaper.

I've also filled the diff with oil,  properly attached the breather tube and fitted the rear stability bolt,  which was a bit tricky.

After the 93rd time of hitting my head on the roll bar supports,  I fashioned some protection for my head :-)

Crawling on

Starting to get really annoyed with this hub nut socket. I thought I'd measured it to be 40mm and so ordered that size socket. Arrived today - too damn small! Aaarrrgggghhhhh! Now have to go through the hassle of trying to return it and exchange for a 42mm socket. Yet more delay...

Steering ball joints arrived (hurrah) but can't fit them because I need a M18 tap to get the powder coat out of the wishbone thread (boo) - more delay.

Loosely fitted the steering rack to get a feel for it:

The steering column was a bit close to the brake pedal,  so moved the spacers round so there is a whole 3mm between the pedal and column - hope that's enough. As always,  I'm missing bits - this time tie rod extensions. Never heard of them before but pretty essential. Ordered from GBS,  along with some IVA covers for these parts.

Moved the 4-way brake splitter up 5mm or so - much better:

Yet another extra hole in my chassis 😊

The front calipers are finally done - not quite as good as the rears but OK from a distance:

I'm actually starting to run out of parts,  although frustratingly,  most of the parts on the car are not finalised; just loosely attached awaiting other bits. Actually quite impressive for me,  I'm normally very impulsive and would just throw everything on. I'm consciously trying to think ahead but not sure if I'm overdoing it at the moment.

JNIT

JIT is the commonly used industrial system which stands for Just In Time, meaning you ensure that you order parts so they arrive just as they are needed. This ensures that you don't have to waste space storing stuff and you don't lose valuable building time waiting.

I am using the less common Just Not In Time (JNIT) system,  whereby you start something and then realise you are missing a fundamental part,  stop,  go indoors,  order the part and wait 3 days for it to arrive!

GBS are,  I'm afraid to say,  partly to blame here. I ordered brake caliper carriers and rear hubs from them,  for example - is it too much to ask to at least tell me when ordering which nuts and bolts I need for these,  rather than letting me find out when I come to put them on? Also a bit sneaky that I had to pay for them as well - why not include them in the hub costs?  They also forgot to send the main hub nuts but at least they sent them promptly when I called. Now I find that I don't seem to have the top front wishbone ball joints anywhere.  I've got the bottom tie rod ends,  so why not the top? I'm going to be pretty hacked if they try to charge me for them. And I seem to be missing 2 bolts for the front suspension...

As you can tell,  I tried to start on the front suspension this evening but because of these problems,  I could only get this far:

All just loosely in place before I consider how to continue.

I've vaguely done the rear brake lines:

Pretty much everyone else has re-sited that 4-way brake splitter as it is too low and I may do the same.

.... but I can't go any further until I get (yes,  JNIT again) a 40mm socket to tighten the hub nut,  then I can get the calipers on,  then the flexible brake lines...

I've been a bit remiss with the front caliper painting - I still need to do the other side. Did a coat tonight...

Lines of thought

I was getting a bit panicky about how many jobs there were that I'd  started but couldn't finish - handbrake,  pedals,  master cylinder etc. 

But after some thought,  this is the plan of attack:

1. Fit driveshafts (now painted but need new boots fitting). 

2. Fit rear hubs. 

3. Rear brake discs and calipers. 

4. Fit handbrake cable to caliper. 

4. Brake lines from 4-way unit above diff to calipers (copper to braided). 

5. Brake line from master cylinder to 4-way unit. 

Started by fitting a rivnut for the 4-way unit:

More difficult than it sounds - the hole is too big really and I destroyed 4 rivnuts before cunning use of a soldering iron got the job done. 

As I plan to start on brake line routing,  I thought I'd better check where the steering column goes:

Raised a few concerns about proximity of brake pedal to column and if I've done the 'grommet from Hell' properly. 

Mix 'n match

I've been keeping my eye open for a brake fluid reservoir as they're supposed to be hard to find and that was proving to be true.  None on eBay (yes,  it's possible) and no luck on those various sites supposedly linked to breakers yards round the country.  There's one listed on the GBS website but whenever I've looked before,  it's always said 'out of stock'. But suddenly,  while aimlessly looking at other stuff,  it came up as 'in stock'! I've never rushed through a payment process so quick! Arrived yesterday:

UPDATE: I thought this was the standard Sierra reservoir that fits on top of the master cylinder but no,  it's the reservoir that goes with the remote kit that GBS sell - doh! The Sierra ones are almost impossible to get now -  Ford have stopped making them.

Bits and pieces tonight - got the old boots off the driveshaft,  cleaned them up with a wire brush and brake cleaner and put a coat of Hammerite on the main shift. I'll also do the ends another day.

Got the correct bolts for the master brake cylinder and loosely installed them. Loosely because I seem to have a habit of needing to unscrew everything.

Attached the handbrake and cables (loosely ☺) :

Finally tonight,  some practice with brake pipe flaring. First attempts a bit iffy (on the left) but sorted by the 3rd attempt (on the right) :

Update: OK,  major problem here. The flares I did here are single flares and they are NOT right for brake lines. They need to be double flares. 

Two steps forward...

Turns out the only thing I thought I'd done right yesterday was,  in fact,  wrong :-).  Well,  not horrendous but the passenger footwell panel was on the wrong side of the chassis - should have been the engine side. Just means I had some extra holes on the inside,  which actually turned out quite well as it allowed me to attempt my first rivet (as a means of filling in the holes)  - you can see them in this pic:

Other improvements - the latest coat of paint on the caliper has greatly improved things,  although that may be because I went a bit nuts and splodged a thick coat on.

Also,  I finally got the crush tube out of the pedal and started filing it down but it's taking ages and really going through the emery paper:

At least all the interior panels are now drilled and ready to fit.

Called GBS today and they have the diff fitting kit for a measly £14 including delivery,  which is incredibly reasonable (the 2 bolts alone cost £10 undelivered from eBay). On top of that,  I ordered it today and I got a text message from the courier firm to say it would be delivered tomorrow! Very impressed...