Hooray & Hurrah!

I just turned the engine over for the first time after the repairs & it fired after about 1/2 a turn - I LOVE fuel injection!

The starter is now purring like a kitten, so I now need to re-fit the bonnet, give it a wash & polish& re-tax it. On that last note, it'll be taxed from the 1st August because I'm away in Scotland from less than a week's time, so I'd have to tax it for a month to get about four day's use from it.

But - happy bunny to have it back working.

I'm BACK.....

..... BACK from Sweden (temporarily) & BACK working on the car.

Sweden is great - the weather's been good (warmer than the UK until this present spell) the work's good, the people are friendly, the town's nice. There are few places that make me think "I could live here", but where I am in Sweden is one.

However, they are now on a three week summer break, so rather than go into the office & do nothing, I've taken some leave to get some jobs done & top of the list is getting the Fury back in one piece. If you can remember as far back as May, it's problem was the starter ring gear, mashed by the starter being mis-placed on an (I now believe) fake Ford bellhousing. To begin with I had grand ideas about swapping to a lighter flywheel and / or an alloy bellhousing, in the end, after getting no help at all from the purveyors of such items - OK Burtons were some help, but their flywheel isn't much lighter than the Escort one on the car - I got a new ring gear from the Ford dealer's, the local garage fitted it (FREE!) & I've used the steel bellhousing I got from my brother. A bit disappointing, but cheap.

So yesterday I reduced the weight of the heavy steel bellhousing by painting it with aluminium paint. This must work as a method of lightening or else why would people wrap their steel bonnets in carbon fibre vinyl? I can't imagine why the aerospace industry hasn't picked up on this. Anyway, I needed  dirt shield for the front, so I set about making one. This was going swimmingly until I realised I'd cut out bits I shouldn't have & cut the hole for the starter to match the 98mm hole in the bellhousing, not the 76mm shoulder on the starter. At this point I may have said "drat" - but I probably said FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!

So this PM in the hottest weather for a few years, I made another, which looks like this:-

You can see ranged around it the instruments of the master craftsman, the dividers, the outside callipers & the erm big claw hammer. It fits the bellhousing, it fits the engine & it fits the starter, so hopefully I should be able to get the engine back in tomorrow.

Inferno Avoided

As you'll have realised, progress on the Fury has been painfully slow since I've been working abroad, but as reported last time, while investigating the alternator fault, I also found the resistor that takes (or in fact creates) a load on the alternator if the switch is switched, had some heat damage from an earlier wiring fault - that one caused by my own hand. Briefly, thinking the wire to the old Lucas alt. was too small a gauge, I'd added another wire, but to save time I'd run it to the starter motor. This meant the battery was directly connected to the resistor when the switch was switched off. A flat battery on a couple of occasions was the symptom & I soon realised the problem & corrected it, BUT, on taking the pod off to rectify the latest wiring problem I found this:-

That's burn marks at the corners that is & it appears to be actual burning of the ceramic where it was touching the rubber lined P-clip. The rubber had solidified & chipped away & you may be able to see some cracks? There's a much bigger one along the length on the far side. So that's got pretty hot then. Fortunately the p-clip rubber didn't ignite or I'd have come out of work to a pile of ash.

So, that resistor's been discarded & there's a new one in it's place - this time mounted with locking wire, so it's a little more heat resistant.

Hopefully the ring gear I've ordered from the Ford dealer in Guilford will turn up in the week & I can get the car back together for the start of August.