Return of the Loud Pedal

 So GBS delivered the cable and shortened throttle kit in quick time. The new pedal is identical except for the location of the fulcrum:

Fitting the new cable was relatively painless but the throttle kit was annoying. It should have been easy really but little things ruined it. I had to take the damn thing off and on again about 5 times; the hole at the top needed to be drilled out bigger to fit the cleavis GBS supplied (why isn't it the right size?), the throttle stop bolt was impossible for my chunky fingers to get in once the pedal was in; the extra hole needed couldn't be drilled with the pedal in etc, etc. 

However, once it was finally done, it is superb; really solid and a huge improvement on the old one (along with the extra plate I added to the pedal box) :

The one weakness in the supplied throttle cable is the way GBS expect you to just wrap the cable around the square edge of the clasp that goes in the top of the pedal. It was that bad design which caused my first throttle cable to snap after just 4k miles. At some point in the past, I bought a set of metal cable bits, which included a U-shaped channeled piece which allows the cable to loop round in a neat, unstressed way (difficult to explain - hopefully the pics below make it clear) :

I'm so pleased with this job; a massive improvement over previous attempts and hopefully it will last much longer. 

I used the Emerald software to recalibrate the TPS positions (although iit shouldn't have changed) and a quick test start proved it all worked well. 

Strangely, I have had a burst of creative ideas recently. The underneath of the nose is scratched to pieces, so I've bought a new sheet of ally and I'm going to make a small splitter; really just a sheet sticking out the front an inch or 2, sprayed black and with a slightly rolled edge. Apart from looking good, it should prevent any further damage to the underside of the nose.

I've also started planning how to make a glove box in the free space of my dash and I bought this cheap unit which is just stuck on the bulkhead between the seats:

It may fall off in a week but if not, it helps to keep odds and ends rolling around the passenger footwell.

Spring is on its way and Zedster is looking gooood... 

Snap to it

 With another sunny but cold day beckoning, I popped out for a short run with my son in his car. All going well until - PING - there goes my throttle cable again!

Luckily, I was able to roll to a convenient layby where my son then watched some quality Heath Robinson jiggery-pokery to lash up a new cable using a bicycle brake cable I keep for just this sort of emergency. I managed to limp home and I've ordered a new cable from GBS.

I have also decided to buy their short throw throttle conversion kit - basically, a new pedal with the fulcrum a few inches lower than the standard pedal. This means a shorter movement of the pedal for the same effect, which actually doesn't sound great to me because I imagine at slow speeds, that might be quite jerky?

However, the advantage of this kit is that it includes a solid steel bracket with built-in throttle stops in both directions. So the pedal should be firmer (mine has always been a bit wobbly) but, more importantly, I won't be stressing the cable as much when I go for full throttle, which is probably what has contributed to it's short life.

In a way, I'm quite glad this has happened - I've always worried about the strength of my throttle setup; this has given me an excuse to improve it. There is a YT video from GBS showing how to install this kit and I noticed that they have also strengthened the pedal box using an extra plate, which makes a lot of sense. With my existing setup, you can see the walls of the pedal box bending every time the throttle is moved, so I'll be adding that same plate.

Before the cable went, my son caught me on his dashcam attempting some feeble power slide - it felt much more impressive from my point-of-view (and you may well agree with my son's comment on the video):

I do NOT need this...

 Holy Cow, what an horrendous couple of days! A couple of posts ago, I worried about changing anything in case it endangered my Wales trip, so what do I go and do...?

In my defence, it seemed innocent enough - sort out the throttle cable so it didn't keep popping out of the bracket on the throttle body and clean out the fuel filter to maybe improve the hot starting - what could go wrong?

I worked out a much better way of re-using the old plastic pieces on the throttle cable to get it running smoothly and securely - much better than it was, thought I.

The fuel filter is supposed to be cleanable, so I unscrewed it and actually replaced the plastic insert with a new one from a spare filter I had.

Now, I thought, let's go for a drive and see if I have cured my hot-starting problems. Start the engine and....Holy Feck, what the Hell?! Engine started but wouldn't idle or run unless I kept revving it, popping and running like a 3-legged dog in a bag.

Fired up the laptop and re-calibrated the TPS, no change. Re-loaded the map - no change. The Lambda sensor was all over the place, not getting anywhere near its target AFR. So many things were wrong, I couldn't work out where to start.

At worst, I thought maybe I had somehow fried the £700 ECU, or maybe introduced dirt into the fuel system while changing the filter. Most likely, given my history, was the possibility that I had knocked a wire out somewhere, maybe to the fuel injectors? The possibilities were endless...

I started with the cheap options and tried to reverse the changes I made. So I disconnected the throttle cable and actually completely removed the plastic insert in the fuel filter, as well as re-calibrating the TPS again. Now, I could get the engine to idle, just. But any small throttle input caused the engine to stall.

At this point, I noticed that when opening the throttle to half way, the Emerald software showed it just open to 17%, which was strange. I re-calibrated the TPS for at least the 3rd time but I had spent so long cranking the engine, my battery was low on charge, so I left the charger on while I got back to my day job.

After work, I reluctantly dragged myself to the garage for round 7 of a battle I felt I was losing, turned the key and.....hey presto, Zedster fired up as normal, settling to a normal tickover, with the throttle working as normal!! WTactualF!!!

So it looks like the ECU was just not saving the TPS settings properly? I dunno, it's just weird - the TPS calibration function is pretty straightforward - how could I have got it wrong 3 times but then it worked on the 4th? I didn't do anything differently. Maybe it was doing it with a fully-charged battery?

Whatever - the relief is wonderful but, damn, I really didn't need that stress.

One bonus - I went for a test drive and I seem to have 100% throttle travel because Zedster felt like a rocket ship! Seriously, I really don't remember him being that fast since I finished the build. Have I really had that little throttle travel for 3 years!!!

So, lets hope nothing happens between now and Friday morning - bring on Wales!

Feeling the pressure

 So time to try sort out my hot-start problems. Online research suggested fuel starvation is the most likely problem and the most likely cause of that is simply clogged up fuel filters.

I recently added a filter in the HP circuit and it is supposedly cleanable so I took it apart. It looked OK and I couldn't seem to get the filter part any cleaner just using washing-up liquid. Luckily, I had a spare filter (actually, it was a mistaken order), so I just took the filter section out of that and the old one does look quite bad:

...but I don't know if that is 'clogged' or just age.

I was going to go on a test drive to try it out but I thought I'd have a look at my throttle cable first - on my last drive, I'd had the Emerald datalogger running and I was again getting a maximum of 70% throttle only. Looking at the horrendous botch job I did last time (see, it seemed good at the time but, with less biased eyes, it's not), I'm going to have to work out a better solution. I'm not good at 'thinking outside the box', so I've put a post on a forum to see if anyone has any bright ideas.

Needs to be sorted by Friday for the Wales trip...

Order is restored

So once again, as soon as I take the insulation tape off the wiring on the ignition plug, a wire drops out! No wonder my starting was flaky.

Amazing the difference a new soldering iron has - didn't take too long to solder a couple of wires up and one of them almost looks acceptable. Heat shrink and lots of insulation tape made what feels like a more secure connection.

And what a difference! Two cold starts have been almost instantaneous and my alternator seems to be generating slightly more charge? Is that really all down to a better electrical connection? I'll give it a few more runs before I can say it is all fixed.

Finally found a stretch of road for a 0-60 timed run - 7.28 secs. Not very impressive considering 750kg (with me) and 150 bhp gives a power-weight ratio of 200bhp/ton, same as the current Impreza or a C-class AMG Mercedes, which have 0-60 times of 5s. I think that is probably down to my Ford gearbox - I have to do 2 gear changes to get to 60 (might be able to do it with 1?) and the trusty old MT75 isn't a patch on a flappy paddle job in new cars. In theory, I have the GBS 'quickshift' but 'quick' is relative 😉

Next fix? While playing with the Emerald software, I noticed that pressing the throttle to its maximum only shows up as 75% as far as the ECU is concerned, so it looks like I could do with adjusting the cable.

Wall to wall shag

After bonding the boot panels in,  time for some carpeting work. The glue is a real pain,  needing to be warmed up to get it to flow. Just as annoying is how much I'm going to need of it - I've used about half of one tin on just 2 pieces. At £9 a tin,  it isn't cheap...

Did one boot panel and the main rear panel :

Does look  great,  though...

Also stuck some grip tape on the pedals :

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! 

Switched on

Been a bit of a detour as I had problems with my motorbike over the last week or 2.

Also, after the excitement of starting my engine,  my PC decided to get the mother of all viruses and crawled to a halt. This meant I couldn't run the Emerald software. I've wiped my PC and installed Ubuntu but I've had a few problems getting it working with the Emerald software. However,  I think I've got it working so I'll try that next time.

However,  I've decided I need to get the wheels on and roll the car out the garage for engine tuning - it's too dangerous in my garage because the fumes build up very quickly when the engine is running,  especially as it's running very rich at the moment.

In the meantime,  the Carling rocker switches arrived and they are superb - lovely quality,  lovely illumination, superb movement and the same price as the rubbish ones from CBS:

Also finally got round to finishing off the accelerator pedal,  with a home-made pedal stop:

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.

Turned the key and...

... yup,  the steering lock does work. Sorry,  didn't mean to get you all excited :-).  Yes,  the reason I couldn't turn the boss was that the steering lock (a little metal block) was stopping it. It never occurred to me that's what it was... good to know it works.

The accelerator pedal turned out to be very fiddly.

First,  I had to enlarge the hole in the top to M5 size for a clevis pin but,  crikey,  that metal was a nightmare to drill through. I had to do it in 0.5mm stages as my cobalt drill bits just couldn't seem to get through it in one go.

GBS had sent me a diagram of how to best fit the accelerator pedal which required trimming the side pieces where the bolt goes through. Unfortunately,  I took too much off - luckily,  I was able to retrieve the bit I hacked off from the bin and just fitted it on the bolt as if it had never come off. Genius,  me. In fact,  it was very helpful as it allowed me to put an extra penny washer on that side,  to keep the pedal away from the side of the pedal box.

Anyway,  took a couple of hours but I think I've finally sorted it:
                                  

The clevis pin hasn't arrived yet and that isn't the final nut on the bolt,  in case you notice.

The loud pedal

Next up were holes in the firewall for the battery cables. The wiper motor arrived and I sited and drilled holes for it in the firewall. That will now wait until after IVA to be fitted.

With that sorted,  I could decide where to put holes for the battery cables. The grommets that come with the cables are pretty huge so the holes had to be as well,  much larger than any drill I have. So out came the hole cutter set I bought a while back. This was supposed to be for the dashboard but I thought I could try it here as well. Worked OK for the first hole but it's not a high quality kit and the second hole didn't work well - ended up having to use my largest drill and then a file to extend the hole. Had to use a smaller grommet for the second hole as I couldn't be bothered to spend an hour filing and the first hole was too large for the grommet,  so I had to order one larger one. Weirdly,  even though it said it was coming from China,  it arrived the next day! Anyway,  2 holes finally made...

Good news on the dash instruments wiring - GBS have found a 20-pin flying loom and will make me a 18-pin one for about £50. Not bad,  considering just the plugs I ordered cost £25 and this way saves me having to crimp 76 pins! I'll have to try get a refund on the plugs...

Next up was the throttle cable and the accelerator pedal. The cable needed a bit of modification at the body end,  from this:

... to this:

Basically needed 2 cm or so hacking off the 2 pieces,  to allow full travel when the cable is pulled.

Tried to make a start on the accelerator pedal but I seem to have mislaid the bolt I need. Either I've lost it or I used it somewhere else - I'll have to go and get one tomorrow. I had previously trimmed some width of the pedal but looks like I need to do more.

Driller Killer

A post on the RHOCAR forum about my thermostat conundrum brought up an interesting suggestion - make a hole in the thermostat for the sensor. I'd already bought an adaptor from Emerald to fit into an M12 threaded hole which I thought was there but wasn't,  so why not make one?

Looking at the thermostat,  there are in fact 2 possible places this could be done; one on top,  one underneath. If it doesn't work,  I'll be trashing the thermostat but not a problem as the only other alternative (the water rail) doesn't need it.

So,  took the thermostat off and attacked it with a small drill bit to start with and opened the hole out with the largest bit I have,  10mm. I decided to go in through the top in the naive hope that it is less likely to leak than a hole underneath. Also,  the plug will be more accessible that way.  It looks pretty neat so far:

                         

Can't do anymore until my new tap set arrives.

Minor milestone - I wired up my first sensor,  the crank position sensor:

I'll be honest,  the crimping isn't the neatest under the rubber there but it feels very solid,  so hopefully will be OK. Until my other crimping tool comes,  I can't really do much other wiring yet (JNIT again).

Finally for tonight,  I did some work on the pedal box,  fitting rivnuts for the lid:

And extending the hole for the clutch cable to go through.

New GBS model

Just finished the latest GBS kit car,  the GBS mOne (minus one,  geddit? ) :

                      

Not sure if it will get through IVA with those edges :-)

OK,  it's a dolly for the engine which should be being delivered tomorrow. Nicked the idea off Richard L and seems a great idea.

Very little else done - trimmed the accelerator pedal to fit in the pedal box and fitted the number plate light:

After  tomorrow,  I will have a load of work to do - engine,  sump,  alternator and several other bits arriving in one go.

Bit annoyed about the gearbox - a few months ago,  I'm sure I saw it for sale for about £500. Contacted the same company and it's now £800,  the same as GBS. I was hoping to save some money there - darn. So that's on order but might take up to 3 weeks.

In my previous post,  I had forgotten to include the windscreen and wet weather gear in my spreadsheet,  so that's added a £1k to my forecasted cost - doh!

Gunk overload

No big step forward but lots of consolidation.

I'd put the large driver side tunnel panel on and that's the last panel for the foreseeable future. As there was still a third of the gunk left in the tube and it would probably be rock solid before I needed it again,  I decided to go nuts and fill as many gaps as I could as well as going over some of the existing runs. Bit messy in places but it's not visible so not a problem.

Cable-tied the LP fuel lines to the brake pipe:

I realised i hadn't tightened the pedals,  went to do this and found the central tube wasn't sticking out of the bush enough to press against the washer,  so the pedals were rock-solid. I had to take the clutch pedal off and file the bush down to finally allow the pedals to be tightened up but still rotate freely.

Connected the swirl pot up to the LP fuel pipes:

Fitted some rivnuts and added brackets on ready for the HP fuel pump

... and then,  disaster - the bottom inlet pipe on the fuel pump is far too big for the 7.6mm fuel pipes I've got. Either I need some sort of adaptor or I've got the wrong pump. Bugger!

I wanted to tighten up the steering rack but the clearance on the off-side between the rubber gaiter and the wishbone bracket was non-existent - literally touching. So,  with my months of engineering experience,  I made a spacer out of some metal bar I had lying about. Fitted this under the existing bracket and voila - a whole 5mm of clearance. My feeling of pride over this tiny bit of Heath Robinson jiggery-pokery is out of all proportion to the difficulty involved - love it.

Pedal to the metal

A few days break and back to work...

The inner pedal tube I've been trying to file down is obviously made of adamantium - after about 3 hours,  3 sheets of emery paper and 2 sheets of aluminium oxide paper (supposedly better than emery paper),  I seemed to be getting nowhere. So out with the big guns,  a file. Even then,  it needed several attempts before I finally got the pedals to go on easily.  Unbelievable.

After that,  the pedals were simple to sort out,  apart from some filing down of spacers:

Nothing tightened up yet - lots to sort out before that. Need to get some proper bolts for the brake cylinder for one.

Finally cleared out the seat belt fix point threads - took quite a while because there were 8 of them to do:

Now started on the proper suspension - I started with the left rear,  having no clue how it was supposed to go on. However,  it seemed pretty straightforward which is worrying because it probably means I've done something wrong.  I'm going to go off now and check a few other blogs to make sure:

Again,  nothing tightened up yet in case it has to come off.

Good progress today...

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...

Swiss cheese

Well,  after a sweltering time in Spain,  back to... er...  hot England and some build problems.

Firstly,  painting the front calipers is not going well. After 4 coats,  it's just not covering as well as the back ones did and the front calipers are more visible than the backs.  I'll persevere...

The tight pedals are a problem so I've had to try take them apart.  It seems I need to get some thickness out of the crush tubes so that the pedals move freely. Unfortunately,  that's not proving easy - I can't get the darn main crush tube out the pedal. I even put it in the freezer hoping it would contract enough but no good. I may have to hack it out and get a new one from GBS.

Then I tried to use the new tap,  now supposedly the right size,  to clear the powder coat out of the seat belt threads. But,  again,  it feels like I'm re-threading rather than clearing out. I've put a question on the GBS forum - maybe that's normal?

I wanted to get on with the diff but I needed some fittings for it. Simple,  you'd think,  in this day and age of instant gratification but no. It seems that 270mm M12 bolts are not available from the usual suspects (Screwfix,  Toolstation etc). Annoyingly,  GBS do a fitting kit with everything needed which,  if I'd thought ahead,  I could have ordered as part of the main kit collection. Now I have to wait for Monday to order it and then try be patient until it gets delivered. I'm not a patient person.

Finally,  in this tail of woe,  GBS  advised that ALL bolts should be of strength 8.8 or higher,  to save hassle at IVA time. So the pack of bolts I bought (4.8) are useless and a waste of £10 or so -  annoying.

The title of this post refers to the fact that I at least did something positive,  drilling holes for the footwell and tunnel panels:

But even that wasn't perfect - there are quite large gaps (3mm) in a couple of corners. I'm not sure if I've put the panel in wrong or that is normal and I'm expected to try fill it with gunk later or just leave it - another question for GBS.

UPDATE: gaps are normal,  fill with gunk (sorry,  bond).

Not a good day but it's never going to go smoothly the whole way.... some good lessons today.

Mistake no. 1

Not a huge one,  I hope but... on collection day,  Richard at GBS suggested I clear the powder coat out of the threads for the seat belts with a 7/16 tap. So I made sure the tap and die set I bought had that size in it. Sadly,  I didn't understand when Richard said '7/16 UNF' and when you buy a set,  there is little detail on what you're getting.  What I got was a tap stamped '7/16 BSF18' which is not the same thing, obviously. Even sadder,  I didn't realise this until about 1/3rd of the way through re-tapping the thread! I'll have to wait until I get the seat belt fixings before deciding the best way forward.

In the meantime, finished all the bushes on the suspension units:

... and picked up the diff:

Unfortunately,  as I didn't get this from GBS,  it doesn't come with the required bolts. As I'm not sure what these should be,  I've ordered a Haynes manual for the Sierra (£2 off eBay).

I also started on the pedals - trying to get the inner tube through the bushes requires  a bit of Heath Robinson jiggery-pokery :

Once again,  I'm a little confused about how this is supposed to work - the tube is a VERY snug fit and,  once in, the pedal is very stiff. I'm assuming that it loosens over time or I've done something stupid.

I didn't continue with the pedals as  it suddenly occurred to me that I better drill all the holes for the footwell  panels while access is easy. Made a start before I was dragged out of the garage by the wife to do 'house stuff'  - boo,  hiss!

On holiday for 10 days from Tuesday so no updates until my return - hope you will survive, my loyal fans ;-)

Staring at things

A couple of hours of...er...doing very little.  I was planning of continuing with drilling the rear panel but then realised that I've been using a 3mm drill bit when the rivets are 3.2mm. I assumed that I'd never manage to drill an EXACT 3mm hole but it seems I'm better than I thought and the rivets don't fit.  Problem is,  I've only got a metric drill set so my next bit size is 3.5mm. I drilled one hole that size and the rivet is just a little loose so it looks like I need to buy some 3.3mm bits.

I then spent 30 minutes finding and then staring stupidly at the pedals. GBS provide a list of items needed for the pedals but absolutely no clue how they go together.  Many thanks to Richard for having an excellent picture on his blog of the pedal setup. Sadly,  none of the bushes for the pedals fit - I need to remove the powder coating from the inner surface of the pedal joint (?),  I think.

The only thing I actually did tonight was to remove the old ignition barrell from the steering column - 30 minutes with a hacksaw,  screwdriver and pliers:

Need to order some bits and pieces - tap and die set in particular to get powder coating out of threads.