Air Filter Can

On a club run last weekend, the car was making a clanking under heavy braking. This was of course the water pump pulley bolts hitting the chassis brace. So yesterday I took some longer bolts to my brother's lathe & turned down the underside of the head (so as not to lose any depth in the allen key socket) & today I've shortened them down & fitted them. No road test yet, but I suspect the pulley wheel itself will touch now. Trouble is I prevaricated about buying the reverse impeller I need to fix it properly & now the guy's on holiday until just before the road trip.

On a more positive note, another piece of black plastic has exited the car. The air filter "can" was carbon fibre, but it's now been replaced with a rolled & riveted 0.5mm aluminium one, it's a bit lairy-bright at the moment, but will dull down as it ages.

I was going to put the seam underneath, but then I liked the "hand made" look & put it at the front

Black Swan

With the chassis welded up & the new brace in place, I took the Fury on a bit of a test run to a "classic car meet" at the black swan in Ockham, I arrived just as it officially opened & there were no spaces left in the car park. As the Fury is pretty small I was directed to park between what appeared to be a Porsche & a Golf.

After a couple of minutes I was bumped into by "SteveRST" from the SKCC who had kindly thought to bring me a selection of single vee pulleys for my next mod project. So there are of course some photos:-

Here is the Fury parked next to what appeared to be a 911, but was I think a Covin from the amount of GRP, the camber on the rear wheels & what certainly seemed to be a supercharged flat four.

Next a '55 (I think) Thunderbird, now why can't one of the many Cobra replica makers do a '55 T-bird shell to fit on a Cobra chassis?

'40 ford pick up hot rod, a bit of a roof chop, immaculate & made all the right noises.















The '40 from the front.

 '32 Hi-boy - I expect he took the mudguards & front No. plate off after he arrived - like I took off the reflective front No plate once on private property

This MkII had Lotus badges but no green stripe - I expect there's a story behind that - Or maybe the owner just doesn't like green

Grey with red wheels - I bet it's a long time since this MG was "on-trend"

Always nice to see a type two or two

How often does a Morris Minor dwarf the car it's parked next to?

The Minor is rodded with an imitation Willys front, the GTM it's next to was very nice indeed

Possibly the most valuable car there - certainly one of the most valuable old cars this orange Mexico was really very nice indeed, the Westfield is SteveRST's "spare" kit car.

Next to the Escort  was a Pop rat rod & a '49 (I think) Merc - no, not Mercedes, Mercury, a lead sled in fact, named for the way all the panel joins were filled with lead to make it smoooooth & of course, roof-chopped











The same two cars from the front. There's an interesting story behind the lead sled style, I'll bore you with it one day.

A little more detail on the Pop pick-up, That's a Rover V8 & very short exhausts, it also sports what's known as a "suicide front end" where a transverse leaf spring is mounted to the very front-centre of the chassis (you can see the spring perches sticking through the grille slats at the bottom) & the axle is controlled by long tubes reaching back to the chassis. It looks good, but there's got to be a reason why it got that name.
 

What they've done with the back of the cab is very clever, there's hours of work gone into that.















Another rodded pick up, not at all sure what this one is, possibly an International?

I do know the yellow & white car is an Austin Nash Metropolitan

 

  
Another Pop in an entirely different style, very '70s & very nicely done, the three hole grille is a rarity from one of the Pop's immediate ancestors, & the rear suspension looks like a jag IRS (as shoved under everything in the '70s) but it again has a transverse leaf spring which would suggest it left the factory under the back of a Corvette

Now this was interesting, I assumed it was a custom bike until an identical one turned up. Very clever detailing on the fame & rear suspension .........

 ......... and the dotty thing under the seat was all the tail-light it had.

This made a man's heart glad. Firstly it's a replica Aston Martin DB2, secondly it has a rolled aluminium body, thirdly it took the old fruit who was driving it a good ten minutes to get out of it which made me think I could be driving the Fury for longer than I thought I'd manage.

A 1963 Porsche - unless he's just put a '63 plate on it like I did with the Fury

A Lancia that didn't rust a soon as you looked at it.

Not at all sure why this Rover was yellow with red wheels. But the chap in the passenger seat did have very big ears.

Steve's Westfield has a turbo, I know this because it's sticking out through the side. I believe it's called "Making a statement" :-)

Yes another rodded pick-up, this time a Chevy .......

 ......... with excellent tail lights

A Caterham, nice enough to be nice, but with just enough shabbiness to suggest it's used & used properly.

Very very nice - where can I get a set of those wheels?

A rose between two thorns?

Just before I left, a lady turned up in this, by the voice, the Labrador sitting in the passenger seat & her attitude to using the car I'd guess she probably was a Lady. She said Daddy had used it every day & kept detailed records of everything that had been done to it over it's 600,000 miles (well, that's what she said)

 

 A 289 Cobra, a replica I'd guess as it has a rear fog light. Very nice though.
 

Cracking Up II - The Worse News

Lots of technical stuff has been going on while the car's been laid up with a cracked chassis. I've finished the chassis brace & fitted it, then ran out of welding rods, so while I was waiting for some new ones to arrive, I did so more mods to the dash.

Since the I bravely (stupidly) took the Sierra hazard light switch apart, I've had no hazard lights - not a problem as I haven't broken down (well, the car hasn't - I've had my moments), I thought I'd worked out what the problem was & drawn a wiring diagram for a solution & ordered some parts to make it all work.

At this point the screen heater & rear fog switches which were skulking down at the very bottom right of the dash, so to make space they have been promoted to a point of prominence on the central clock panel, this leaves four holes at the bottom right.

In one hole is a double pole switch for the hazards, double pole because permanent live comes in one side & through the first switch pole goes out to the flasher unit. The wire from the flasher unit goes to the second pole & goes out to the indicator circuits through a pair of diodes. I could see no reason why this shouldn't work & after the usual amount of confusion when working on car electrics it did work.

Hazard light switches at about 4:30 on the steering wheel

But there were still three holes in the dash. One was easy, a hazard warning warning light as required by the regs. For the third & forth holes I had a cunning plan.

The indicators have a buzzer which buzzes when they're on so I don't forget to switch them off, that's great, but if I ever needed to sit by the roadside for any length of time with the hazards on, the recovery man would find me frothing at the mouth & murmuring "whibble whibble whibble", so the third hole contains a switch that switches off the buzzer for the sake of my sanity - but the cunning bit is that the switch is an "on - on" switch, one way sends power to the buzzer, the other way sends it to a green warning light in the forth hole to remind me that the buzzer is off - the power is coming from the flasher unit, so it flashes green.

Told you it was cunning.

Except of course that I'm not terribly clever when it comes to electrics & turning on the hazards turned the ignition on as well. So I took the dash out again & found that if I cut the link wire I fitted the other day, the hazards worked perfectly - but the indicators didn't. Fortunately I had another diode & re-made the link wire in a more permanent fashion & fitted the diode to it & now it's all superb - except that the buzzer switch is upside down (sigh) - I'll sort that out next time I'm inside the dash.

With that all done I turned my attention back to the chassis crack as the welding rods arrived with a thump on the door mat this morning. I welded along the crack line on top of the chassis tube, then ground it all off & welded it properly.

So now it was tacked, I got a mirror-on-a-stick, had a good look round & realised there was a matching crack on the front face - that meant the front upper cross rail was completely severed - EEEK!

I don't know how long it's been like that, but I stripped & re-painted the front of the chassis over the winter of 2016 - 17, I would've thought I would've noticed.

Yup - that's a crack.

So now I have a job to do on Monday, I need to remove the bonnet, the radiator, the Coanda panel & a brake line, weld all round the tube, probably weld a plate over the crack & a gusset across the corner, then re-paint & re-assemble.

 

Cracking Up

While I was looking at the car trying to find something to tinker with I spotted a line in the paint. I tried to convince myself it was jut a hair from the paint brush, but taking the paint off revealed a crack in the chassis front upper cross bar. I went inside & did some googling which established that it was a known issue on the racers & it was fixed by fitting a brace between the rear upper rocker mounts.

That's easy on a bike engine racer as the engine's so small, not so easy with a Zetec.

I made up a prototype brace from a piece of racking frame liberated from Dunsfold when it closed & it looked just possible to fit it in front of the engine. I cut some more tube & welded it together (& bolted it - I know what my welding's like) & with a few mods it was persuaded to fit - but it's close. I've had to swap the water pump pulley bolts for button heads so the pulley can go round - it's that close. Time will tell if it's far enough away.

Also yesterday the new No. plates & V5 arrived, so the car is officially AFW 817A. I clamped the new & old rear plates together & re-shaped the new one so it fits, then I realised the left hand reverse light would foul the 8, so I took the lights off.

 Having fitted the plate I stuck the new black & white plates over the old plate & put that on too, then peeled off the front plate - which was a git of a job - & stuck the new black & white front plate on in it's place.


Tomorrow I'll look for a way of fitting the reflective plate to the front for MoTs & erm - road driving.

Front

So I now had a pair of LED reversing lights & nowhere to put them.

Rear - All neat & tidy

I made up a bracket, fitted the lights & pulled the wiring right out of one of them - scrap.

Fortunately I've done this before & had to buy another pair, so I had a spare one - which is why the one on the right looks a lot more "used" than the one on the left.







Now I wired them all nicely & fed the wire up into the boot, then cut an area of mesh out in the centre & riveted the bracket on. It really needs a waterproof connector for when the valence comes off, so I'll order one & will have lost it by the time I'm ready to fit it.

Fitted