Goggled Up

One of the problems I have when driving the Fury - the other being an innate lack of skill - is "stuff" getting in my eyes.

I wasn't expecting this.

I thought that I'd be pretty immune from "stuff" as my eyes are behind not only the windscreen, but my glasses as well.

I was wrong. On almost every drive, "stuff" gets in one eye or the other, last week I was doing 70 on the motorway when "stuff" got one eye & both eyes involuntarily shut for what seemed like a week, but was maybe two seconds. I decided it was only a matter of time before "stuff" got in both eyes at once & I crashed.

So what to do? A helmet on the road, in a car with a windscreen makes you look like - a helmet & as I'd want a open face one, wouldn't necessarily solve the problem. You can buy goggles that fit over glasses - but it seems, not my glasses. The solution was goggles with lenses built in. The SKCC has a discount code for www.i-sunglasses.com who do just the thing. Just a light plastic pair of goggles with interchangeable screens (tinted, clear & yellow) & a small metal frame inside to mount prescription lenses. I placed an order & they appeared within one working day - so far so good. To get the lenses fitted you contact www.ciliaryblue.com, who send you a box. In the box you place the glasses, & the prescription, post it off to them & they come back sorted. Hurrah - no more "stuff".

Having got the goggles, tried them on & succeded in looking like a know on the office, I needed to order the lenses. But like a twit I put the wrong e-mail on the order. The first half of the work address, the second half of the home address. Twit. This was about 17:30 yesterday, so I hit the "contact us" link, told them what a silly boy I'd been & in the time it took to walk upstairs & print the receipt, I'd had a reply saying they'd corrected the order & it was all sorted.

I like service like that.

So in about a week's time (once they've been off on their travels & returned) my driving should be "stuff" free.

I will however bear more than a passing resemblance to a teenage-mutant-ninja-turtle.

Frustrated

So, up with the - erm - what gets up late? Up with the teenager sounds a bit - Savillesque. Anyway, up later-than-usual-but-still-quite-early, I'd intended taking the Fury out to swill the coolant round the pipes a bit & persuade any trapped air to vacate the premises. Then Mrs Blatter pointed out that she was dining in with friends in the evening & as she would be working all day, could I tidy the house? My heart sank.

My household consists of myself & three females (two of which are daughters I should point out), so every flat surface is festooned with bits of paper with four seemingly random words written on, handbags - how can there be more than three at any time? Or discarded food wrappers. Abandoned pop-socks are another favourite - a nasty bu99er is Johnny Popsock, I've come to the conclusion that in the wild their  natural habitat is a draughty tunnel, because they lie in wait under a sofa, only to make a dash & leap into the mouth of the hoover nozzle as it passes.

My shoes are in the wardrobe or on my feet. Going by the sheer number of other shoes about the place, there are at least fourteen women living here. Presumably they bed down among the piles of coats strewn about the place. Medicines are another bugbear. When the kiddies were small, any medicines were located well out of reach. Now you can't move in the utility room for small cardboard packets lying on the worktop, the floor, by the microwave, anywhere in fact you can put down a glass of water long enough to open the box, then retrieving the water, wander off.

<sigh>

Anyway, I diligently set to, hoovering & tidying up as best I could considering that none of the stuff that needed putting away was mine & therefore I'd not learnt the owner, the "right place" or in extreme cases, the name of the offending feminine accoutrement. That finished to my own satisfaction (i.e. not actually finished) I headed out to the garage & pushed the Fury out, intending to make my way to the office via the Pirbright ring. I had not gone more than a mile when the rain started. Great lumps of cold water were making their way for me with singularly vindictive precision, so I gave that up as a bad job & made my way home.

<sigh>

I put the car back in the garage, checked & topped up the water (no leaks - Hurrah!), then looked at the main fuel line. When the high pressure pump moved to the back of the car, I'd attempted to make the end of the fuel hard line into a nice sweeping curve, but it buckled. Obviously the fuel flow was sufficient, but it looked a mess, so I cut it off short, flared the end & fitted a nice hose section taking a more direct route. That meant the return line was no-longer supported, so I added a p-clip or two, then as a finale, removed the filter on the cam cover & replaced that with some hose into the catch tank. So a decent bit of tidying & some minor improvements. But not the day I'd had in mind.

<sigh>

Cool!

Not sure why it took a WEEK for the hose I ordered to arrive, but I suspect that as I needed a 45 degree reducing hose, 38>35mm it maybe had to be made specially? Well it's here now, fitted & the Fury's been run. I took it round the bloke on a data-logging run after the nice man at OMEX sent me a new map. It felt smoother, too soon to be sure yet, I'll need to take it out for a proper run. The newly modded & lightweight cooling system worked though, but there's probably some air needs to come out. Anyway, chuffed as ninepence as my Mum used to say - I think it was a positive thing when she said it.

So that's another two irritations sorted (hopefully) if the ground stays dry for a while, there's some things to do underneath & I've just ordered a Suzuki brake light switch & spent the day (the week if truth-be-told) drawing up a mod to the pedal arrangements which should improve the brake feel, stop the MoT man complaining about the bulkhead moving under pedal pressure next year & be the proper final solution for the brake lights (sigh). Also on the agenda for when it's dry AND above freezing, is a little GRP work on the bonnet. The new one is a little flared along the bottom edge & needs the NACA intake from the old one fitting.

I'm wittering now, so I shall stop.

If It Ain't Broke ...........

........... I mess with it until it is.

When I put the Zetec in the Fury I looked at the cooling system on the internet & there seemed to be some confusion. A lot of folks were having trouble & it seemed to be down to a Westfield diagram in their build manual. The water comes out of the engine at the back (in a Rear Wheel Drive car) into a large plastic brick which has tubes sprouting from all directions, it houses the thermostat, the top hose outlet, the heater hose outlet & the 'stat bypass outlet as well as an air outlet.
Unlike older engines, when the thermostat is closed, it's completely closed, so the bypass hose allows a small water flow direct to the bottom hose (by-passing the radiator) so with a cold engine, heated water is passed back into the engine, warming it up quicker. When the engine's hot, the bypass is closed off so the engine can only draw in cooled water from the radiator.

The heater hose flows all the time, but the water is in theory, cooled by the heater matrix, which outputs to the bottom hose also.

The air hose goes to the top of the expansion tank.

Simple enough so far, but I have no heater so the hose goes direct to the bottom hose. SO, it's supplying hot water to the water pump & engine - exactly what the bypass hose is shut off so it doesn't do. In my defence, several places in the internet said to do it that way. Anyway I have now blanked off the heater outlet & removed the hose. Moved the bypass hose connection from the radiator outlet back to the connection vacated by the heater hose & moved the top hose from close to the chassis floor up to near the top rail.

This completely unnecessary faffing has several effects:-
A warm engine will ONLY take in cooled water.
The bottom hose is tucked in towards the chassis more as it passes the front wheel.
There are a couple less joints to potentially leak.
Access to the starter motor is greatly improved.
The weight of the cooling system is reduced by several Jubilee clips, two 19mm x 180degree silicone hoses, a yard & a half of straight rubber hose & all the water they would contain. Almost a kilo, which is a worthwhile saving.

Chief among these of course is the vastly improved access to the starter - which is still shrieking like a banshee, though "simplicate & add lightness" is a mantra I'm well accustomed to chanting.

But there is a downside. I need a new silicone hose. 38 - 35 reducer, 45deg angle. I've ordered it, but the car's U/S until it arrives.

A Solution Presents Itself

I made the bracket as reported, I reduced the idle speed down to 950rpm & I took the car round the block. I can report dear reader, that the burbling idle problem & the hesitancy on acceleration have just about gone! I took the Fury to work the following day & even through the Farnborough traffic it behaved itself.

So an HUGE thank you to Andy at OMEX. The problem never was with the OMEX ECU, but it was his analysis of the datalogs that identified the problem with the throttle cables. I have now set the ECU to run "closed loop" (the lambda sensor in the exhaust is sending signals & the ECU is adjusting the fuelling based on that) & little by little the car is getting more - car like. There are less & less things that need my attention.

The starter's still making a dreadful racket though.

A Little Progress

I took the Fury into work yesterday. The journey there was fairly typical - only colder, the throttle response around idle being best described as "not good" (I'm writing this before the watershed). During lunch time I faffed with the cables a little more trying to make absolutely sure the throttles were closing - they appeared to be, but because the pedal is now so much lighter I shortened the return spring I'd added to the linkage, thus stiffening it by about 50%.

At first the journey home felt much better, the pedal weight was about right, it was idling properly - then it got up to running temperature & it messed about again. When I got home I gave it a really hard stare, then adjusted the throttle stop down to 900 RPM. This made a world of difference on a short test drive. So I'm thinking maybe it's mostly mended. I haven't tried it from cold yet to see if it'll idle nicely, or just cough & die. That'll be this afternoon's effort, along with another cable guide bracket.

Yes - another one. The one I have attached to the airbox isn't good, it moves with the engine, so I need to make up one that's fixed to the chassis.

A REAL Sharp Intake

So much better than the virtual intake reported in the previous post.

I had the day reserved for the Fury as it's MoT was at 8:30 & you never know what they'll find.

That bracket is not as close to the alternator cable in real life!

 After the MoT I set to. I'd bought new throttle cables (OK, bike rear brake cables) as OMEX had suggested there may be a problem with the throttles shutting completely, so that was job 1. when I originally fitted the throttle bodies I'd used bike brake cables & cable outers, using a trick I'd used on the Rickman Zetec, i.e. use rear brake "noodles" to turn the cable through 90deg. now I thought I'd try without, so made up a new cable stop more in line with the pulley, arranged a nice natural run & made up a bracket to mount the cable guide near the throttle pedal end, so the guide was more in line with the stops at that end.

With that sorted I made up the alloy bracket to support the intake duct, fitting it to the duct with riv-nuts & bolts - so even if the bolts come adrift altogether, there'll be nothing loose in the duct to get drawn into the engine. After that it was a simple matter of cutting the hose to length & fitting it all together.

I'm quite pleased with the overall effect, much better than the aluminiumised paper trunking that was there before, but is is heavier, which is unfortunate. but on the up-side it doesn't have holes & dents in it.

In the last pic, you can see the bracket holding the duct to a redundant part of the throttle stop & the new cable guide bracket.

It may have been simpler to cut the top off the cable stop bracket & leave the aluminium duct supported by the hoses at each end, but the triangular black shaft directly under it is the steering column, so I wanted it to be self-supporting. I then took the car out. The throttle was a revelation! When the man-from-OMEX suggested there might be a problem I took off one of the cables, now with the twin system back in place, but with super-slippery PTFE lined cable outer & Teflon (OK, I know that's just PTFE as well) coated cables, the difference in the throttle was astonishing, SO much lighter.

Meanwhile, back at the MoT, as usual the MoT man had failed to get the Fury to engage a gear. Can't explain this but it's the same every year. So he stopped the engine to see if that helped. Then it refused to start again. Battery flat! I have my suspicions about the battery charger, the new alternator seems to be providing 14v. Anyway we started it on a jump pack so that was fine & it passed with flying colours.

 

Hoorah!