Thursday 19 December 2013

Camoflage

I'm thinking of changing the colour of the Fury. I thought maybe the black, white, grey "urban camouflage", why?

Folk don't seem to be able to see it. There was the "near death experience" last month & it's now the car's been driven into. I was just arriving at work, the car in front of me turned right into my office car part, I signalled & followed it, but instead of driving into the car park, it turned across the entrance. I stopped while the driver sorted himself out, but then the reversing lights came on & he started coming backwards. I expected him to come back a yard, turn & pull out onto the road again, but no, back & back he came. I laid on the hooter for a good five seconds & watched while he reversed into the front wing of my car. Obviously a bright yellow screaming thing directly across his path wasn't sufficient to gain his attention.

Fortunately there was no damage, GRP is good at withstanding this kind of thing & it was only a nudge, but short of flashing beacons, what can I do?

Monday 9 December 2013

Sump

The Fury’s been leaking oil, slowly getting worse over a few weeks, so I took the sump off as I had some time. The gasket was  flat rubber thing with washers where the bolts went through to stop them crushing the rubber, over time the heat & oil had got to the rubber & it had gone wrinkly
 
After a post or two on the SKCC forum & some replies from the wonderfully knowledgeable & helpful Dick, it turns out I have the right gasket for the engine - what I should've had is the right gasket for the sump. So I ordered silvertop Zetec gasket to replace the blacktop zetec one & hopefully I’ve seen the inside of the engine for the last time. Equally hopefully, I’ll be cleaning oil & the gravel stuck to it out of the engine bay for the last time. I thought I’d seen the last of that when the X-flow went.

After a very long wait for the sump gasket, it finally turned up, so having loads of holiday to take before year end I left work at lunch time & headed home. I took the sump down & cleaned it, paying special attention to the until now unused groove, I checked the seal fitted the groove, I put a bead of sealant in the groove, laid the seal in & put another fine bead of sealant along it’s upper edge. Marvellous – then I couldn’t get the sump back up. Try as I might I couldn’t locate the back, then get the front up past the pick-up pipe. In the end I found the trick was to locate the pick-up pipe first. Hopefully the seal was still in place by the time I’d got it all sorted. Now I need to wait for the sealant to cure before putting fresh oil in & starting it up.

Another thing I did was fit the camera housing to the mounting in the rad intake, just to see what it looked like. It looked like this.......