Axle Possibly Cured.

 Having obtained some new O-rings I found that the size wasn't quite right & the bearing was reluctant to go into the axle. So I drew up the O-ring & printed a seal in polyurethane. This might work & it might not, there's no relative movement, no real heat & no pressure, so it might well work, time will tell. if not I'll try harder to fit the O-ring.

For the corrosion, I've now cleaned the non-adhering paint & rust off the chassis in both rear wheel arches, also cleared the mud off the inside of the bodywork. There wasn't any bad corrosion, just a bit of surface rust, so it got a coat of CBS "Wunderseal" on the steel work & the inside of the GRP & that was overcoated with stone chip paint, so that should be all sorted. The suspension is all back together & I just have the perennial problem of lining up the holes in the passenger seat with the holes in the floor so I can bolt it down (sigh).

Axle Not Cured

 ARSE!

It was dry - then when I returned home from my Girlfriend's house, the off side very much wasn't. A brief investigation revealed that I'd caught & cut the O-Ring when I pushed the halfshaft in.

I measured & ordered new O-rings, but the closest size I could get was reluctant to go into the housing, so I drew up & printed one & a seal for the end of the housing. will this work? Well it fitted together nicely, but only time will tell if it seals or hardens & as the car is now on a SORN (again), that may be some time.

While fitting this all back together I noticed the end of a chassis tube was wet, the last time the car saw any water was almost a month ago. I poked a screwdriver between the floor & the GRP sill & water came out - quite a lot of water. That in the bowl plus all the water that ran out while I was looking for that bowl. It seems to be coming in at the front & getting trapped, so I'll need to put some drain holes in the sill.

Also while I was round there I made the mistake of poking the inner wheelarch & some paint came off. It turns out that what appears to be paint is in fact a waffer theen smear almost - but not quite - in contact with some rusty steel. I've peeled off a fair bit of it, but it'll need many more unpleasant hours under the car with a selection of wire brushes before it's all ready for a re-paint (sigh).

The main area of concern is right at the front with the trailing arm bracket, it's not in any danger of failing - it's not even pitted, but it's going to clog up with mud again, the passenger side has a sizeable gap for water, mud, sheep doodoo etc to escape through. I need to cut something similar on the driver's side.

Axle Cured

When I bought the car the rear axle was leaking (just one of many problems it had), I read up on it & the internet suggested that the oil could leak round the outside of the wheel bearing. It wasn't a problem for Fords as they force-fitted the bearings, but as the axle got older & perhaps the bearings were changed, the tolerances weren't what they once were. I pulled both 1/2 shafts & put some sealant around the bearings & all was good.

Scroll forward 3 or so years & they started leaking again. At Camberley car show I found myself talking to some people who ran a local garage, not a "£50 to service your Fiesta" place, but proper engineers. They were stood by their 1930's Riley which had been cleverly modified with parts they had designed & manufactured themselves. I took a card & squirreled it away.

So when I needed the rear wheel bearings replaced - not a simple job - I knew where to go. The bearings are held in place by a shrunk - on ring which needs to be carefully cut off, then the new bearing fitted & a new ring heated up & pressed on. I took them in, went to my girlfriend's house for a few days & they called me to say they were all done. I picked them up when I got home, fitted them that evening, checked the axle oil level & put the car back on its wheels (I swapped the front & rear wheels as the LSD is starting to wear the rears a bit).

I got the new bearings from Burtons & interestingly (interesting if you're like me - other opinions are available) they now have a thin O-ring on the outer face to stop the oil leaking

Today I took the car to work & the engine was fine after all its' troubles & when I got home the inside of the back wheels are DRY.

So, this is a BIG thank you to Harding Auto Services, who are based near Woking & have excellent people & facilities. It's wonderful to find a garage that can do more than plug in a laptop & replace whatever it tells them to replace.

Oh yes - I said "took it to work" - my third attempt at retiring has failed, I'm back designing stuff for Surrey Satellite. So that'll be 49 years in Aerospace then 😧.

Is It Now Finally Sorted? Is it? Is it Though?

 I took the Stylus out last week for a test run, I trundled round the houses for a bit, then out onto the main road & back, then along to Blackbushe. All was well, so I got brave & decided to drive to Winchester. It was perfect & I was a happy bunny.

Two days ago I decided to drive to Portsmouth to visit a friend, I went out to the garage, started the car - "squeak, squeak, squeak squeak" it said in time with the engine, just like before.

Looked like I'd be staying at home then. It sounded mechanical, like a dry bearing, but on a hunch I tightened the Jubilee clips holding the silicone hoses onto the inlet manifold stubs & when I got to No.3, the tone of the squeak changed & then turned to a small hiss.

Gotcha!

I really dislike the inlet arrangement, it consists of the throttle bodies from a motorcycle - which is fine, but they are attached by silicone hose cones on a not-wide-enough flange & on the engine side they pass over a pipe welded to the inlet plate. the pipe is round at the free end, but oval at the engine end, so where the jubilee clips fit, they are trying to clamp a round thing to an oval thing, there is obviously little pressure at the centre of the flat at the top & bottom, so it leaks / whistles. As a temporary fix I tightened the jubilee clips resulting in one of them stripping. Arse!

So what to do? The obvious answer would be to spend £££ on a set of Jenveys, a new airbox & a rolling road session.

OK, what else can I do?

I did some careful measuring & drew up a sleeve to fit over the inlet manifold stubs, it's very thin - only 1mm thick mostly At the engine end I made it the oval shape inside, but round outside, at the other end it's just round. I printed a test article in 95shore hardness polyurethane & tried it on the engine, it was a little loose. The next one was a nice tight fit, so another three were printed & fitted between the silicone hose & the stub pipe. Even with the stripped Jubilee clip this seemed to work, but would the polyurethane take the heat?  I ran the car until the fan cut in, then a little longer, I tested the temperature where the stub pipe is welded on (the theoretically hottest point) & it reached the low 60 degrees mark, turning the engine off raised this to 65ish degrees (it's air-cooled when it's running), so with the bonnet closed it shouldn't get above the mid 70s, so should be OK.

The following day I took the car to Guildford & it was good, but on my return I fitted shiny new Jubilee clips to all four stubs & yes, the sleeves were just fine.

REALLY hoping this is the end of the saga

Boot Tidy

 No, not a cheaply made bag thing to store oddments, the Stylus' boot is now tidy.

When I bough it, the wiring in the boot was a mess. OK, the wiring everywhere was pretty bad - it's a kit car - but the boot was particularly bad. I did tidy it up a bit, but there were so many earth wires that I thought I'd leave it until I understood it better. With the engine now purring I decided that today was the day! Exhibit 1 is the rear bulkhead - it wasn't this bad, I had bound it in tape & tyraped it to structure, but there were just too many wires.

The fuel level sensor wire came a foot into the boot, then turned & went out again through the same hole - with an extension wire to reach, so that all got shortened & run nicely. There was a switch for the fuel pump - the one that gave all the problems a couple of months ago, so again, that got moved to a better place & the wires shortened. The mad earths which seemed to work in spite of me never really finding where it was attached to the chassis got given a positive path (see what I did there?) & the sheer quantity of wires reduced. I cut out the Fiat tail light connectors & shortened the wires - the nearside stop / tail light wires went right across to the off side, then came back, just so the Fiat connector could be used, but the wires to the off side lights were too short making the wiring cut across the corner. Having taped up the near side & clipped it to structure I then unwound the wrapping on the offside, to find that most of the wires were two feet too long & doubled back, only the earth was too short.

Having sorted all that out I did a final test. The near side brake light didn't work. Bu99er. I thought I checked things as I went, but now I was going to have to unwrap the loom to fault find, but just before that - check the bulb, just in case. The stop filament had blown. Phew. Easy fix. 

So there is is, all improved & properly clipped out of the way. Only took me three years to get round to it.

And of course there's some spare wire.

 

More Zetec Killing Attempts Thwarted

 I decided the Stylus was all fixed & I could take it out, so started it up & noticed a small squeak in time with the engine such as you might get from a fan belt, I revved the engine, it seemed to be only doing it at idle, so assuming one of the butterflies was whistling, I set off gently. After a mile or so I could hear it over the engine, so turned round & took it home. I was concerned that the valve that had the bolt was slightly bent & was now rubbing on the valve guide - it seemed unlikely, but needed looking at.

After a little investigation it was misfiring too!

Fearing the worst I took off all the throttle bodies, re-aligned all the hoses that connect them & re-assembled it. It was now worse.

Oh good.

After a look around I wondered if the coil pack had given up & swapped it & the leads in a "jury rigged" fashion, it ran but was no better, but on re-connecting the coil pack on the car, I noticed the centre pin in the connector was being pushed back. I sorted that out & started it up again, It ran better, it was lumpy at idle, but seemed OK when revved. Then I noticed "smoke" from the exhaust, then realised it wasn't smoke, it was soot & walking round the exhaust side of the car, found a very sooty patch on the floor (no, it's not a panda skin rug).

I took one of the spark plugs out & that looked like it had been upholstered in black velvet!

I called my brother & we decided it was over-fuelling, the ECU won't over-fuel it, so it must be a sensor, there's only four, so not many to check.

Not the Crank Position Sensor as the engine ran, Not the Inlet Air Temperature as that defaults to 20C, the hose to the Manifold Absolute Pressure was all connected, so......

<--- Throttle Position?

That'll be it then!

Clearly I had inadvertently pulled the wire out when fiddling with things under the throttle bodies & a little investigation revealed that all three wires were badly crimped. The ECU was being told the throttle was wide open & fuelling accordingly.

So the connector was taken apart & the wires soldered on to the terminals, re-built, bound in loom tape & re-connected. It now all seems to work nicely again.

And the squeak has gone, so that must've been a tiny air leak at the hoses.

You REALLY Can't Kill A Zetec!

 

Well, for the moment it's confirmed, the engine is good.

I've done a compression test & No.4 cylinder that swallowed the bolt - or at least got one stuck in it's throat - has the highest compression of all the cylinders! I'm not sure how that can be, but I ran the test a few times & No. 4 was consistently the highest.

I made a few minor changes while it was all in bits, I re-printed the trumpets in ABS because while the PLA ones had survived, they had visibly distorted in the heat. ABS has a higher heat tolerance

I also re-drew them as they were drawn in CATIA V5, which is OK, but I now use OnShape, so I have them on file there.

They are of course still orange.

Next were some new bolts, a bit of an extravagance these. They are titanium & drilled for wire locking. I would've been perfectly happy with steel, but it seems if you want them drilled, titanium is what they have to be. Yes, I could've drilled them myself, but that left the problem of de-burring inside the hex & the danger of burrs breaking away & getting into the engine.

So here they are installed (which was a real faff) & wired, not to aircraft standard - the older I get, the better I was - but they're not going to come out again. the two end bolts are wired to locking lugs riveted (with solid rivets) to the airbox back plate.

The airbox went back on with larger, less fiddly bolts, you can just see the lip of No.1 trumpet through the hose connector

The hose from the air filter went back on & that was it all back together. I turned it over & it fired up & settled into a nice smooth idle. I've not taken it out on the road yet, my girlfriend says I need to put the bonnet back on "because it's not a hot rod". So in the next day or so I'll just do that final test.

Phew! I am SO pleased the fix was a simple one.

You Can't Kill A Zetec!

 I've often said it.

Having known a few folks with Zetecs in kits, tuned, supercharged, whatever, doing fast road, track days etc, I've never known one blow up.

So why am I telling you this? Well, a week or so ago I took the Stylus to North Weald Aerodrome for the last of the "Drive Limits" days - it seems Google has bought the land to put a data centre on, because we just can't have too many 13 year old's make-up tips, cat videos, or photos of our lunches.

I set off early - very early. I really didn't want to sit on the M25 past the M4 & M40, so I was up with the lark & gone. I still didn't beat Duncan there though. I think he set off after putting the lark to bed.

Over the next half hour or so other folk arrived, a few kits, a selection of Corvettes (C2 to C8) & a smattering of tin-tops

As usual the day began with accelerating along a straight, then turning left, increasing speed until the car spun. I started with a couple of 0-60 runs, but didn't improve my time over Gurston Down - the first part of the straight was both dusty & lumpy, so I was getting some wheelspin.

After I'd done that a couple of times I settled down & just did the cornering, then my lovely girlfriend arrived & started taking photos, some of which I present here, this first one was taken through haze, my girlfriend hates it because "it's not good enough". I like it, it's not a perfect photograph, but I like it as an image.

Up to now I had been watching the gauges more carefully than I usually do, just because the car was either accelerating furiously, or sat in a queue, but everything looked just fine.

Still looking happy at this point

At this point there was a break for lunch, so I rolled off the last corner & parked up next to my girlfriend's car & the chairs & picnic table came out, closely followed by the picnic which the aforementioned lovely girlfriend had bought along - smoked salmon & cream cheese sandwiches, crisps & a mini pork pie - very nice.

In the afternoon the day gets more interesting as a "track" is laid out in cones & people drive round one at a time trying not to spin out. I started the car - it was clearly running on three cylinders.

This was not a good thing.

I opened the bonnet & gave it a hard stare - it carried on running on three cylinders.

It was clearly getting sparks, so it must be the injectors yes? Unplugging them one at a time showed that No. 4 wasn't contributing. This wasn't good news as I don't really know what bike they came from, which makes finding spares - tricky.

I wondered if the rubber connector between the inlet manifold & the throttle body had become mis-aligned letting air in, but I was struggling with the minimum tooling I was carrying. I flagged Duncan down & one or two others & assembled a tool kit & one or two people were kind enough to miss a couple of runs trying to find the fault to no avail. After an hour or so I decided it was time to call in the lorry, so after some confusion with a website, I was picked up directly - no waiting an hour for a man in a van to say "you need a lorry - it'll be here in two hours" when I knew I needed a lorry from the start. Lantern Recovery were excellent & arrived in 50 mins. In fact we didn't have any trouble at all getting home, not even with the M25 & the driver regaled me with stories of all the electric cars he'd been called out to.

So the fault finding began in earnest. The first thing I realised was that there was no compression at all in cylinder No.4. Then I found the oil catch tank, which I look at once a year & never has more than a dribble of oily water in it, was 1/4 full of oil. It was looking worse. Then I took off the throttle bodies, the photo is the back (engine side) of No. 4 butterfly & yes the bright specks are metal fragments.

It didn't look good. It looked like I had killed a Zetec

When I bought this engine in 2022 to replace a Silvertop that had run air cooled for a couple of hours & still didn't fail, I just went to the local scrappie & had my choice of six 2.0 Zetecs for £350 each. now, there are none to be had. There are no cars with them in because ULEZ scrapped them all & the new crate engines like I bought for the Fury for £600 delivered are now around £3,000 & have been in a crate for 21 years.

I needed to consider my options carefully. I was pretty down about the whole thing at this stage. That night I dreamt I'd holed the piston, but a poke around with a borescope the following morning showed it was fine - apart from all the oil & the metal shavings obviously.

I spent the next few days at my girlfriends house & came home determined to stop sulking & turn a problem into a project. I had decided to take the head off the engine to see what was what, but having taken the cam cover off I found I lacked the very long torx driver that's needed, so I put one on order. 

After it arrived I sallied forth & immediately noticed a thing.

One of  No.4's inlet valve followers was lower than the other - not by a little bit. I removed the inlet manifold to see what I could see - & peering down the intake tract, I saw - a bolt head, the picture's rubbish I know.

I knew the bolt had come from one of the trumpets & I thought "I bet I used stainless bolts", but no! A magnet stuck very firmly to one of the bolts still in place on the trumpet, so very gingerly indeed I turned the engine to push on that valve & lifted the offending item out.

And there it is. The missing threads are the source of the debris in the inlet tract.

Investigations continued, feeler gauges under the cam suggested the valve was now fully closed, a compression tester had to be used with the rubber cone type end on as the threaded adaptor isn't deep enough for the Zetec. It registered 125psi before it blew off - I was on my own & had one hand on the starter button in the middle of the dash, the other pushing on the tester half way down the engine bay.

With all this news being positive I decided to do some other jobs I now had access to before re-building the inlet side & starting the engine. I couldn't do any more damage than had already been done & having done that, it fired up beautifully & settled into a smooth idle, better than it usually does in fact. I left it to warm up & all the gauges did their usual things, then I turned it off & checked the catch tank. there was a dribble of oil in it, I suspect it's just left over from emptying it, but I shall be watching it closely.

As I write I haven't driven it on the road, partly because it has no bonnet (yeah, right - as if that's going to stop me), but mostly because I have some drilled bolts on order to replace the ones holding the trumpets on. This time they'll be WIRE-LOCKED.

So this is why I say you can't kill a Zetec, though I'll admit I may still find there's a problem when I try driving it. My guess is that the bolt, having escaped from trumpet No.1, made its way back to trumpet No.4, was thrown about by the bumpy bit of track & rattled around above the valve. When I stopped for lunch, the engine happened to stop with No.4 inlet valves open & it dropped in. I checked my videos as part of my investigations, all of the gauges were always normal & there was no smoke from the exhaust, so hopefully this is the end of this particular story.

On the up-side, it gave me the opportunity & the access to re-paint the chassis where a gush of hydraulic oil stripped it when trying to bleed the brakes some time ago as well as one or two other small jobs which got dealt with.

Update

 There's been a few things happening in Blatterworld.

The Stylus went to Gurston Down hillclimb school - a birthday present from my lovely girlfriend, who also drove the back up car & took many photos, which I haven't see yet because her camera works in RAW format & that needs processing apparently. Yes, she is cleverer than me - how did you guess?

There is however a video here:-

It's a really good day out for the car minded - proper cars that is - electrics & hybrids are specifically banned. As you'll see in the video (ish), there's a briefing, followed by walking the track with an instructor pointing out the salient points & where your car should be are which point. All of which was forgotten in the het of my first practice run of course, though some of it came back to me in the second one. Then there was a de-brief by the instructors, followed by an excellent lunch, after which we did another few runs up the hill with the marker cones removed & with the instructors marking. Right at the end the heavens opened, so the last run was very much slower.

But an excellent day, very well run in a very professional but relaxed manner - the marshals drove my girlfriend up the hill & showed her where she could stand to take photos, which was very kind & very much appreciated

So what did I learn? Principally that the older I get, the faster I was, because you see, I've done the school before in the Fury & I was a little faster (measured on the Go-Pro time stamp), but I knew this. I've felt slower since the crash that destroyed the Fury. Another thing I knew but was reinforced is that the Stylus - like all Jeremy Phillips' cars is just brilliant. Apart from the two 1930s racers there, the Stylus had the narrowest tyres (175/70x 13) & pretty tall gearing (the RS2000 diff) but still managed a 5.2sec 0-60 & I didn't go near the red line.

This is the Fury video - watch out for that door!

There's also another Fury related update, I made a rack for the Fury for going on trips with a passenger. I've looked at it several times with a view to using it on the Stylus, but never worked out how & anyway the Fury had a zip-out back window meaning the rack could pass through in inclement weather, the Stylus hasn't meaning the roof would be unusable with the rack on. However, I realised that if I shortened the rack, it would stand up behind the roll bar, meaning I could take the picnic basket on the rack & in the case of a downpour, the basket could replace the large side windows in the boot, the rack would stand up & we could get home dryish (it's a kit car, dry is too much to hope for).

And there's another thing. On the road trip the driver's door latch failed, that is the connection between the door handle & the latch broke. I sort of fixed it with a tyrap (which to be fair is all it ever had), but at Gurston Down it failed again, leaving me with a problem because I needed the roof up, but couldn't open the door to get in.

This is the surviving one from the passenger side, you can see the offending tyrap in the middle. 

Unfortunately I didn't photograph the new ones before installation, so there's a really bad phone photo, showing(ish) that the lower bit of bent wire coat hanger has been replaced by an alloy rod with a rose joint

Pine Ridge July

Yes, after an early start for Wallop Wings & Wheels, it was another early one the following day to go to Pine Ridge for the breakfast meet. Apparently last month it was a bit sparse, not so this time, we just about got the last space.

About the first thing we saw was my nephew & his new car - I say new, it's 95 years old. He drove it home from Yorkshire & the only part that gave any trouble was the new computerised distributor.

Blue & orange - it's the future.

School bus, you just would wouldn't you?

Yes, of course is has a V8

Two Pops, the one on the right is pretty extreme, until you look at the one on the left, which is 10 litres & runs the standing 1/4 in 7 1/2 seconds. Let's put that in perspective. If you were to drive past that Pop at 100mph & it set off as you past it, it would get to the 1/4 mile line a second & a half before you.

Ford '32 model B

It's a land crab, but not as you know it.....

It's an Australian "Ute" (utility) sent to Aus as a knock-down kit.

Now that would be a good photo if it wasn't for the Challenger & the people.

Lovely '57 Chevy Two door Bel-Air Sport Coupe - rolls off the tongue doesn't it? 

Almost Forgot

 My lovely girlfriend & I attended the Grimsthorpe Speed Trials this year. It's just a run up the driveway of Grimsthorpe Castle - some of the competitors were trying, others were just having a nice day out - & when you have one of the spectacular old cars in attendance - why not?

There were a few cars in a concours area outside the castle, & a paddock with the competing cars & bikes, it was all very laid back, all very pleasant, apparently smaller than in previous years, but there was another event on the same weekend which will have depleted the numbers a bit.

The first thing to attract my attention (after the signpost to the loos) was this. someone's pretty serious when they have a vintage transporter to move their Bugatti about.

Not a '36 Ford as I had thought, but a '36 Plymouth - & people say modern cars all look the same, this was absolutely stunning.

It's rare to see two Austin sevens that look even similar, but these two were almost identical, same model, same colour, only the after-market lights & some stickers differed

Coachbuilt MG was very nice & really quite swoopy, but.......

.....rather out done by the car next to it. 

By the way, that's not an over-large bonnet mascot, it's a statue behind the car - sack the photographer.

This Bentley had similar levels of sheer style, compare that to a Bentayga 

The prototype of this Seven Special was at Brooklands a couple of weeks before, I think the notes said about 50 were built for racing, is seems at least two survived. Not comfortable for the passenger / mechanic sitting beside & behind the driver. 

Morgan - brilliant

Ratty Bugatti looked absolutely fantastic.

No idea which one came on the transporter.

Yes it gets driven on the road like that, there's videos on youtube, the previous weekend it had been racing on the beach at Bridlington. Perhaps the owner's building it from one of those magazines where you get a few parts each week & the body hasn't come yet?

It stark contrast, this was wafting up the course making no noise at all. Of course it's a Bentley.

Big headlights

Even bigger brakes

Amilcar - just stunning

Riley looked fast even when it wasn't moving.

Got to have an Alfa at a motorsport event.

ERA was a new-build & wasn't sparing the horses, it did the run in a little over half the time most cars did it in.

And then the BBMF's Lancaster did a few fly-bys just for good measure.

Castle - Bugatti - Lancaster

Excellent

Is that ULEZ compliant?

It was a two-stroke AND VERY VERY NOISY INDEED

Results - I don't think many people cared, we'd all just had a nice day out.