Job Done

Earlier today I had a small excursion to the local petrol station, where I purchased almost six litres of fuel. I put half in the Fury & waited - no splashing sounds - good. I put the rest in & looked underneath - no drips - even better.

I left it for a while in case some small seepage became apparent, but there was none, so I turned on the ignition (no fireball - getting better & better) & turned on the fuel pump. Nothing.

Peering under car's pert rump, I found a spade terminal disconnected. With that fixed I moved the switch again & was rewarded with a weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeoooooooooooooooooooh, as the pump flooded the system & built up pressure. Still no leaks.

I turned the pump off & back on while watching the return hose - no jumping (regular readers may recall this was the reason for fiddling with the fuel system in the first place). So that gripe appears to be sorted. I'll have to run the pump for longer & do a proper leak check, but nothing's gushing.

So the only thing left was the un-bled brakes. My wife returned from a shopping trip & offered to operate the brake pedal (usually a comical sight to behold as she's very nearly a foot shorter than me & has to sit in the footwell to reach).

I moved the car out & jacked up the rear, found some hydraulic fluid, but could I find a jam jar & length of clear hose? No dear reader I could not.

However, I did find an "eezibleed" kit I'd bought some years ago, so I set about the car solo. The rears bled down pretty easily, opening & closing the valve helped move some reluctant bubbles, I then opened the valves in the Wilwood front callipers just to get some fresh fluid into them. I climbed aboard the car & pushed the centre pedal, it went half way to the bulkhead. I jiggled it up & down in the time honoured method of "pumping up" brakes with air in, but nothing changed. I tried bleeding the rears again & managed to loosen a few bubbles who thought there were there for the long haul, but not enough to give me half a pedal back.

Only one thing for it, the "self adjusting" brakes hadn't, no surprise there then, they never seem to. I took off the wheels & the drums & adjusted them by hand, re-assembled & I now seem to have serviceable brakes Hoorah!

So the car's ready to go as soon as the month turns & I get it taxed. Thanks to being made redundant I've done a whole winter's refurb in two weeks as well as a whole bunch of decorating & landscaping & ironing & washing up.

What a virtuous person I am.

Back Together

Today was a good day. After breakfast with the guys I'll be travelling to Boscombe with, I started on the Fury. The Waxoyl was ladled about & the wishbones, upright & drive shaft were re-assembled with the shock absorber, all the bolts were treated to a little waxoyl, but not tightened until the car is back on the ground. As I may have said, the brakes were stopping me re-assembling the hub & fitting the wheel, so I moved on to the fuel tank.

I connected up the new fuel return line & the wires for the ign-live & earth for the level sender & lifted it into position. Fitting the nuts onto the tank fixings is always a hassle, but it is at least do-able which wasn't the case the way it was supposed to be arranged.

It was now time to move on to one of those jobs I wanted to do to from the outset. I shortened the fuel tank outlet pipe & fitted a three way junction, two 12mm & one 8mm. Obviously the two 12s take the main fuel supply, the 8mm joins to a copper pipe which passes though a stop valve & a stop-end behind the rear chassis member. The plan here is that next time I need to drain the tank I can remove the stop-end & put the pipe in a jerry can, remove the panel under the diff & turn on the fuel cock. Proper control over the draining, but if some joker thinks they can steal the petrol by opening the stop-end they'll meet with disappointment as the cock will be off so they'll get nowt.

Right at the top of this pic, you can see the tee piece with a large hose passing inside the diff cage to meet the filter & pump. Coming down is a joiner hose & an 8mm copper pipe which goes forwards & inboard under the diff, through the stop-cock (you can see the yellow bit on the handle) & then out of the back. I've now cut the bit at the back down & fitted the stop-end.

So I'm now waiting for the brake slave cylinders to arrive & I can finish the car off ready for a club outing to Brands Hatch next month.

Worn Out Slave

Did I mention the off side rear brake slave cylinder was leaking? A certain wetness around the seal suggested that I'd stripped the brakes not a moment too soon, but the brake hardware was all new when I built the Fury, so they've only done 10k miles.



Whatever, it'd need to be changed. Googling for the parts suggested there were two sizes, I needed the smaller one (fastidiously keeping the details of the donor car has it's rewards), but to be on the safe side I stripped the leaking one to measure it & found this tale of woe:-


I ask you dear reader, does that look like it's done 10k miles?



I found a Ford parts site which wanted £20 + VAT + postage each, then a motor factor in Norwich who could do a pair of QH pattern parts less than that delivered. Now being brakes, there's a school of thought that says one shouldn't compromise, however, I wonder when the last time Ford made Sierra parts was? And the important bit is rubber. So an ancient original part, or a more recent - but still high quality - pattern part. I've never had a problem with QH before, so I went with them.

As for the bigger picture, The off side is now cleaned, surface treated, & painted RED, so later today I'll stipple on some wunderseal to stone-chip affected areas, tomorrow will be waxoyl & re-assemble, so just as soon as the slave cylinders appear (Ok a day or two later), It'll be ready for taxing on the 1st of Nov.

Carrying On

So, the near side suspension is all done & back together - on to the other side.

Things to note, the brake slave cylinder is weeping & one of the upper wishbone bolts wasn't tight, well it was tightish, but not TIGHT. All the moving parts are stripped out & the wishbones are cleaned & on a radiator drying (yes, my wife is out). I've started cleaning the chassis with a rotary wire brush & on a couple of tubes the powder coat just fell off in about three sheets, it's RUBBISH! So a little more abrading to do there, then:-
Clean & paint the upright, chassis & wishbones,
Re-fit the fuel tank & pump,
Fit a seal kit to the slave cylinder,
Re-assemble the suspension.

Then it's good for re-taxing from the 1st ready because there's a kit car show at Brands Hatch & apparently the Southern Kit Car Club has been invited, so as we get to do a "procession" on the track, it would be rude not to attend.

But before then (next Monday in fact (eek)) I start my new job.

I watched Guy Martin building a Spitfire on the TV at the weekend - a very enjoyable programme & I take my hat off to Guy Martin without hesitation, but WHY do they never check the "facts" with the experts? The narrator said the Spitfire was made using "exactly the same" methods as were used in the factory - sorry, no, in the factory most of that would've been done using press tools & stretch forming, not the hand methods they were using. They said the rivets were "steel alloy" but were annealed using the process for aluminium alloy rivets. They said the mock dog-fight was with a Messerschmitt 109, when it was clearly a Hispano Bouchon - a post war Spanish built 109ish with a Merlin engine.

I know all these things are a bit pedantic, but why say the wrong thing when it's easy to check with the guys at Duxford? (sigh).

Belt Up

Not much on the car today, I was supposed to be putting up a fence out the back, but I was having a fumble day. Every time I turned round I knocked something off a shelf, whenever I put something down it rolled off the bench & when I tried to walk I tripped over some unseen object. I eventually got the new rear gate hung. I'll do the fencing tomorrow (touché).

But while waiting for a shower to pass, I drove over to West Byfleet to pick up my modified lap straps from F.D.T.S. They'd been changed from "pull down to tighten" to "pull up to tighten", reason being, I could never get them tight enough as my hand hit something on the inside of the car first. The nice people there made me a prototype belt which I fitted, measured & sent the details in, & they fit perfectly, with the adjuster about an inch above the side of the seat.

Nice when you find a small local firm that does what you want in the way you want it done.

Piping

I've always been a bit suspicious of the fuel return line on the Fury, it carries excess fuel from the fuel rail back to the tank, so there should be no pressure in it right? But when I turn on the fuel pump the return hose "jumps" so it has pressure in it. This might not be important at all, but my train of thought went .......... When the engine's racing, a lot of fuel is being used from the fuel rail, so not much is being sent down the return line. Conversely when it's idling very little is being used, so quite a lot is returned. If there's pressure in the return line, the regulator may not be able to dump enough pressure at idle & the fuel rail may be running over-pressure.

 So today I ran a new 8mm return line through the tunnel. It looked as if it would be a real git to do as the bends were complex, with no access to get the pipe bender in & if it was bent on the bench it would be impossible to thread the finished pipe through the chassis. After contemplating this for a long time I realised that the existing pressure pipe went more or less where I wanted & had a break in the tunnel, so it was easier to make the rear section of that pipe into the return line & make a new pressure pipe, so that’s what I did, then took off the tunnel side panel, ran the pipe right to the front, re-attached the tunnel side (I need to get some more bolts as the heads of some are worn & the alan key slips). I still need to connect up both ends, but that should be easy.

I also painted the rear upright (red - because I'd run out of yellow) & then re-assembled the wishbones, shock, hub & driveshaft. At the moment the bolts are all loose because of course they're only tightened with the weight on the wheels.







Still to do on this side:-
Reassemble the brakes.
Waxoyl the rear upright.
Fit the wheel.
Put the car back on the ground.
Tighten all the wishbone bolts
 

Out & About

The car's still in dry dock in the garage but a shout on the SKCC forum from David T asked if anyone was interested in doing the Goodwood Breakfast Club, I said I would, but I'd need to passenger. The arrangements were made & we met on the Shepherd & Flock roundabout in Farnham.

David's car is a Tiger Avon - a Seven style car with - crucially at this time of year - no windscreen. At the last moment I remembered to pick my gloves & silly (but warm) hat out of the Fury. Then I saw the ice on the windscreen of the tin-top & realised it was colder than the weather forecast had erm forecast. To say a 70(ish)mph blast of 1deg C air is "refreshing" would perhaps be understating things. This is the second time I've passenged in the Avon & it always impresses me with it's smoothness.

David had plotted an excellent route with some previously undiscovered roads, we zig-zagged about as we approached Goodwood & arrived at Goodwood from the opposite direction to everyone else . We were queuing to park up in a field when what appeared to be the lead yellow-jackets shouted "doughnut it!" - well - t'would've been rude to disappoint wouldn't it?

Also worthy of note on the journey there was quite a lot of near suicidal wildlife. We followed flocks of Partridge, Grouse & Pheasant as they ambled down the road, ignoring hoots & revving, until at last one of them seemed to remember it could fly & prompted the rest into the air. Then 1/2 mile down the road, it all happened again with another flock.

So, thanks again to DT, I feel suitably prompted to get on with the car properly.

A Little More

Not much to report, I received the 1/2 shaft seals from Burton's - excellent service, I only ordered them Sunday eve on the cheapest postage & they arrived Tuesday morning. So I tapped one of them in & applied some Wunderseal on the chassis areas most vulnerable to stone-chips.

I also too the harness lap-straps into Sue at FDTS Seatbelts who were recommended by Willans. I want the lap-straps changed from "pull down" to "pull up" to make them easier (OK, possible) to adjust I thought this would be a simple thing, but Sue pointed out a few problems with my plan & even sent me home with a mock up she'd made on the spot to test & measure (which I've done). They should be ready to pick up next week.

One by one the car's irritations are ironed out.

No Further Injuries

Yes! I have no more injuries to report.

I have been under the car & given the nearside rear of the chassis a coat of POR-15, which is a sort of rust-killing glaze, a coat of red Hammerite, & later today I'll get under it again & coat some areas vulnerable to stone chips a coat of "wunderseal" from Car Builder Solutions. Then tomorrow I'll splash some Waxoyl around in a last ditch effort to keep water out of hidden corners. The Fury's pretty good & there are no obvious water traps, but I'll do it anyway.

I've also ordered a couple of oil seals for the drive shafts - the nearside one was weeping - & some ethanol-proof fuel hose & copper pipe to re-make the fuel return line as I think the current one is too small at 5mm & may be raising the fuel pressure at idle.

Just to show I've been virtuous, I've ALSO re-painted the main bedroom & shower room ceilings!

No photos again today, maybe when I start rebuilding.