North o' Tae Border

Yes good people, I've been to Scotland. Mrs Blatter had never been to the Highlands, so we pointed the turbo diesel north & set off.

To break the journey we did a stop-over in Falkirk, which Mrs Blatter was expecting to be as pretty as Edinburgh - her only other experience of Scotland. We stayed in the salubrious surroundings of a Travelodge & were rewarded by being kept up half the night by a party of Northern Irish pipers shouting at each other. But there was a point to the Falkirk stop.
We went on this:-

The Falkirk Wheel is a piece of modern engineering on a scale that would impress Victorians, if you look at the gondola nearest the water, that's a boat in there - floating. Its actually double the width of a narrow boat, so it's not a small item & as the arms rotate, the boat & all the water is lifted to the canal above - for the energy equivalent of boiling three kettles. Fantastic thing & at £8.50 for the boat trip including two goes on the wheel, something of  bargain.

Following the ride on the wheel, we detoured east a little to see another impressive feat of engineering. In a former life I'd stood under the Forth Bridge a fair bit, as it was close to my first set of in-laws house, but it NEVER fails to impress, particularly when you hear a train & look up to see a tiny thing trundling through the trusses & you realise that this thing is REALLY big. There's a memorial at the side to the guys that died building it. Quite a few did. If you ever find yourself in southern Fife, I urge you to get down to North Queensferry & just stand under the bridge & marvel at it. F you look closely at the bottom of the nearest foot, you can see a whit smudge smaller than the diameter of the tubes - it's a portacabin.

Next we drove to Fort William where we'd rented a small bungalow / called Moidart Cottage. Mrs Blatter rented it for the view from the back.
This was it:-

Stunning yes? The greyish hump to the left of centre is Ben Nevis (more of which later). You could lose hours just watching the light changing on the mountains. To top it off Oystercatchers would come & roost on the shingle bank opposite.

So what did we get up to? It was mostly mountains & waterfalls (being a particular favourite of Mrs Blatter) we did about 1000 miles getting there & back, with another 800 miles touring while we were there.
The next day we tromped off Up Glen Nevis (the glen at the foot of the mountain. The idea was to walk to the Steal Waterfall, which turned out to be a hard - but rewarding slog up a narrow gorge with a torrent cascading through it which suddenly became a high meadow between mountains with a lazy river & wildlife with no fear of people at all. Oh, and a truly magnificent waterfall all down the side of a mountain. We elected to not cross the river as this was what constituted a "bridge". Some girders & three lengths of steel hauser.

 

That was supposed to be a rest day after the journey, because the following day we took "the Jacobite" to Mallaig.

Also known (very unofficially) as "the Harry Potter Train" because it runs over the curved viaduct shown as Harry & Ron were trying not to fall out of the blue Anglia. The ride as a whole was spectacular, pulled by an old "Black Five" engine (they have three) the scenery was breath taking. So why were half the passengers - who'd paid £35 return - playing cards instead of looking out of the window? They all jumped up when we passed over the famous viaduct, but most ignored the stunning views of silver beaches, mountains, waterfalls, islands.

 I find people very strange.

While in Mallaig we had a tea of spectacularly good fish & chips washed down with a heather beer - & we sheltered from the rain.

The next day was a wildlife boat trip south of Oban, so another long, but beautiful drive, ending on the island of Easdale. It really is only just an island, here the Atlantic Ocean is about 20 feet wide & there's an old stone bridge over it. Again I was perplexed, as a bloke walked up onto this fantastic old bridge over an Ocean to take a photo of his Mercedes off-roader in the car park.
 OK I'll admit to taking a photo of Mrs Blatters Focus CC, but at least I had the bridge in the background.

The trip itself was something of a disappointment from the wildlife point of view, we saw some porpoises & some awks, but mostly the wildlife wasn't coming out to play. Again fantastic scenery though, cruising round the inner Hebrides. Rum, Muck & the others.

Of course we couldn't not make an attempt on

Ben Nevis. The plan was to walk a mile or so along the path & go home, but the views were so good we kept going & only turned round just below the clouds at 650m. as we got to the highest point we reached, a bunch came down the mountain carrying a sofa. This was part of a stunt for children-in-need, Mrs Blatter asked them how we could donate & I SO wanted them to say "just leave some coins down the back of the sofa" but they didn't. There was a website - BORING.

We were running short of days, but I had another big trip planned. I wanted to go to Skye. Don't know why, I just had always wanted to. We drove to Malaig & took the ferry to the Sleat peninsular, then north - west - south to Elgol, where there is a hamlet with a jetty, & a fantastic view of the Black Cuillin Mountains.

They were certainly brooding that day. We had another boat trip planned, just across the bay but on that short trip we saw Dolphins, seals, all the seabirds we'd seen on the wildlife trip & more, but we did get VERY rained on on the way back. I'd planned to drive from Elgol back over the Skye Bridge - another bridge over the Atlantic. But Mrs Blatter had other plans & wanted to see the "Fairy Pools", so north again, west again, south again, down a single track road to a place not marked on the map (she'd asked the lady in the harbour where they were) a small - & I MEAN small - sign at the side of the road

pointed the way & off we trouped. We were rewarded by what must be described as a flight of waterfalls, perhaps 15, each more fantastic than the last. We didn't get to the top, it started really raining, we got soaked - again. But mere photos can't convey the beauty of the place. We WILL be returning.

By this time it was rather late & we had 100 miles to go, so we sped though a range of mountains the we really should've taken our time over, but needs must. We stopped off for tea at a large inn festooned with tartan at the end of a glen & I thought this could be good, or very very bad. On a main road in the middle of nowhere they will not get much repeat custom & what there is will be trippers, so won't need to care much about the food. How wrong was I? That was probably the best meal we had & we didn't have a bad one anywhere in Scotland.

So that was about it really, we cruised with the roof down alongside Loch Ness - just because we felt we ought, then it was time to come home stopping off everytime a few gallons of water was seen tumbling off a ledge - which was often given the weather.

So yes it rained, yes we got wet - though I still got home with more of a tan than the elder daughter got in a week in Malia! - & the whole trip cost about £2000 for the three of us including food, fuel & the walking boots I had to buy there because I'd bought the wrong ones with me. But we all thoroughly enjoyed it which is the main thing. In a last desparate attemps to bring this back to the subject of cars, the Focus CC 2.0 turbo Diesel AVERAGED 49.1mpg either winding round lanes or cruising at 70 on the motorway. Quite impressed with that. 

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.

Fault Found

It's a long time ago dear reader, but do you remember I had a problem with the Fury's alternator not charging on day 2 of the road trip?

Think I've found the cause.

When I built the car with the beloved Crossflow, I followed the wiring diagram for the FIA kill switch & ran the coil wire through one set of the FIA switch terminals. When the zetec went in, that wire was redundant, so I capped & stowed it. Then the Denso alternator needed a switched live so - presto - here's just the thing!

I've just taken the pod off & it looks like there's water marks on the switch case, so I'm guessing there's corroded terminals inside. If I'd remembered that wire went through the cut-off & thought to cycle the switch a few times I may have cured the fault!

There's a new switch on the way to be on the safe side.

The Body Beautiful

Beautiful ish.

Sort of beautiful with an interesting mole, or a pierced lip maybe?

Yes I've been working on the headlight socket repair again - & I've met with some success! When we saw it last, it was all lumpy, but yellow at least. I'd rubbed it down & got it smooth at least, but the underlying colour was showing & I'd realised that using the heat gun to cure it was darkening the pigment.

So, today I took the Dremel & cut out the dark areas as well as some cracking in the gel-coat that had shown up after the sanding. Then I made up some more goop & blobbed it in. Realising I could kill two birds with one stone I took the Dremel to the cold air intake & ground out the edges so the GRP could be covered up. This also meant grinding a large lump out of the leading edge "ramp" which had cracked anyway.

The goop was staying resolutely liquid as I attempted to get it to stay in the ground out areas, while at the same time building up the deeper / lower bits. Then after about 1/2 hour there was a noticeable increase in the viscosity of the goop in the tray. I quickly checked for any low areas & added some where it was needed - then suddenly it was solid! - perfect.

After tea, I rubbed down the light socket & the intake. The intake needs a little more work as it's still a little lumpy & the dark GRP is showing through at the sides. On the upside, the intake is a much better shape than it was before (either time) & with a little more work will look good.

Good enough for me at least & when it comes to bodywork, I'm not very picky.

As I said it need a little more work next time I make up some goop & it needs a bit more smoothing both on the bottom ramp & at the sides.

But the point of the exercise was the headlight, & as you can see, it's not half bad for an amateur.

There's a little staining in the colour, but the car's usually dirty enough to hide that. It also need some polishing.

I've polished it a bit, but it's not as glossy as the rest of the area yet - some more to do tomorrow I think.

But certainly when you stand back from it, it doesn't shout "REPAIRED" at you .........
....does it?

Winging It ......

...... in SO many ways.
Firstly the working abroad is going well - thanks for asking - but flying out on a Monday morning & back on Thursday night is taxing when you're in your 50s. Feels odd to be doing proper aircraft design again after faffing with minor mods dressed up to look like something important.

Next, is the repair to the Fury's front wing after I dropped it on the concrete drive. The wounds to my elbow & knees have almost healed - not so the bonnet, so - on to the repair. I had no idea how to go about this so the third use of the title refers to my repair attempts.

This is the sorry state of affairs when I began:-

That's a great chunk of gelcoat missing altogether & some deep scratches around it I think the worst was taken by the winker lens which shattered, & the lamp cover which was tough enough to

withstand the impact. So, first job, fill the hole. Fortunately I had some surfacing fibreglass - almost like cotton wool, so I cut a couple of pieces of that to rough shape, made up some resin mix & daubed it in. Not having measured the quantities it was reluctant to cure, so a little more hardener was added & the new mix daubed on, then as usual the hot-air paint stripper was called into play & it went off in next to no time.
Then I smoothed it off with coarse, then fine, then wet wet&dry, so it looked like this:-       

The profile was pretty good at this point, so out came the Dremel & I ground the main damaged area down & used a ball ended cutter to cut a groove where the cracks in the gelcoat were, so in theory all the damaged area was a little lower than the good surface & as rough as a rough thing to give a good key.

So I then made up some yellow goop - no science here either, just a dollop of yellow gelcoat, a glug of GRP resin & a splash of hardener. This was again daubed on, the heat gun used to skin it over, then more goop added in the low areas & repeat until satisfied. It's now curing off in the sun before I attack it with the wet&dry again. Maybe it'll work nicely, maybe not, but it'll look better than it did before & if next time you see the car it has inch wide black edging to the headlamp covers, you'll know why.