Instrument Of Doom

Some time ago the oil pressure gauge stopped working, I took the side pod off (the oil pressure sender is in the side pod) & found the spade terminal had come off, this wasn't good. I took the sender off the car & managed to solder a wire onto what was left, but it still didn't work.

I wasn't that bothered as the oil warning light triggers at 20psi & it was steadfastly off, but having a dead gauge is rather irritating. Now a year or two after I bought the gauge set for the Fury, the gauge maker changed a few things - including the oil pressure gauge. My sender was £15, the new one is £50, & doesn't work with the old gauges. What to do?

I looked at getting the mechanical Racetech gauge, but the face is completely different, but then I had a little luck & on the third page of a Google search was a Co. called "RallyNuts" who I think I've used before, they were offering the new Racetech gauge & sender £20 less than anyone else 7 since Christmas is coming, so is a new gauge & sender.

But to take a step back, while taking off the side pod, one of the bolts went Crunch - Splinter, never a good sound, the anchor nut had sheared it's rivets & was going round with the bolt - BUT fortunately I could reach the anchor nut through the battery bay door & managed (after some thinking & some swearing) to stop it turning with a bike spanner. I've just riveted it back on, but I need to put some copperslip in the anchor nuts to (hopefully) stop it happening again.

Cap-In-Hand

One of the things happening to the car at the moment is "retroization" (yes, I did just invent that word). The red scallops, the alloy cam cover, the "Fury" script on the bonnet. But an idea occurred to me to further the cause. The alloy cam cover effect is slightly spoiled by the plastic filler cap. However I have now designed THIS!:-

The idea is that it will be printed (so will strictly speaking will still be plastic) & will clip over the existing cap after being painted silver red & black. It should look much more BDA than Zetec. There are precious few parts on the car that are purely cosmetic, but this will be one. I thing it'll look quite good.

Hooter Re-mounted

When the Fury was built I got a "low tone" hooter for it, disappointingly it produced more of a squeak, what I wanted was more of a bellow. On the last trip out I realised the hooter was no longer squeaking, so I scoured Ebay & found a pair of Lucas horns, one "low tone" & one "high tone". A brief test suggested "OI - GET OUT OF THE WAY" whereas the old hooter suggested "excuse me - I'm over here" But mounting them proved to be troublesome. Obviously I wanted them together for the artistic effect, but everywhere I tried to fit them was just a little too small, one would fit, but not both. Until that is, my eyes fell on an offcut from the clutch beam. I cut a shape to fit to the central tube upright on the chassis & to go around the upper cross tube, the hooters would fit on the flanges - like this:-

 

The flange you can see bottom left will bolt to the car through the two 5mm holes. I've fitted rivnuts to the chassis so I just need to do some wiring & bolt them on












UPDATE:-
The hooters are now fitted with a couple of 5mm titanium bolts & all wired up. Parp parp they go instead of eee eee. This is a good thing.

 

Smoking Banned

With the car SORN’d it was time to tackle the smoky idle. The Fury doesn't smoke - it's a new engine for goodness sake, so I was surprised & perturbed when the MoT man approached me during the last MoT & said "your car's a bit smoky", I wandered through to the test are to find the whole place FILLED with blue smoke!
It passed MoT, & the smoke cleared after a brief post MoT blatt, but it's continued to smoke whenever it's been left to idle for more than a couple of minutes. So, with the car on SORN it was time to do something about it. I'd thought long & hard about possible causes & had come to the conclusion that all the years the engine had spent in it's crate with the top of the engine never seeing oil had dried the valve stem oil seals & in the absence of any better ideas I was just about to order the seals, new head bolts & a new head gasket – literally just about to press the “order now” when I thought I’d ask the SKCC forum again & this time Dick came up trumps, “perhaps” he said “one of the butterflies is fully closing & the vacuum is drawing air up from the sump? Suddenly it all made perfect sense.

So when I got into the garage I took time to understand how all the linkages worked (each throttle body drives the next in one direction to open & from the other direction to close. I carefully adjusted all the many many linkages, then re-balanced the airflow in each & suddenly there was no smoke, sometimes it was difficult to tell because of the steam (it is November & very damp), but the smoky smell has gone, so I think that’s it cured. Hoorah! This morning I started it up from cold & it started on the button & ran very sweetly indeed from cold & again, no smoky smell..

Phew.

Hose Changed

After last Fridays exciting event (the brakes failed) I called Fury Sports Cars & Steve sent me a new hose. Like a lot of things since he took over, this seems to be better quality - it's all stainless, but the design has changed, it now has a 90deg fitting at the wheel end which made it more difficult to route. I fitted it into the lower port on the slave cylinder & swapped the bleed nipple to the upper one to make it easier to bleed - that wasn't possible with the old hose.



This End's Up

While I had the wheel out I added one turn of camber to both rear wheels, this was suggested at the limits day last week after the Fury showed a tendency to oversteer into corners. I also turned up the front shocks by a couple of clicks.

Then it was just a case of bleeding the rear brakes through & I took it round to Sainsburys to check the tyre pressures (15psi all round, should be 17) & I have to say it did feel more planted, not much to go on admittedly, I might get a chance for a fuller appraisal tomorrow. I think it may need one more turn to give it a little more camber, but pleased with the results so far

Car Limits - Now with Added Videoness

A sleepless night suffering from man-flu provided the opportunity for a little video editing

 

Car Limits Found

Each year the best car club on the planet - the Southern Kit Car Club has a "Car Limits Day" at North Weald aerodrome, this year I went for the first time. So yesterday I was up before the sun & on my way to Egham to meet with David T in his tiger Avon & Crunchie in his brand spanking new Zenos E10S.

I was late - I missed the meet point, got into all sorts of a tangle with the one way system & various dual carriage ways & eventually re-found them 20min late. Fortunately due to a clear M25 we were early to the venue so no harm done.

The day began with a briefing & the signing of waiver forms before we headed out for a "high speed curve" test, we went barrelling along a straight & had to turn at the end, the idea here was to get the highest reading on a speed gun without spinning off the curve. I found this incredibly difficult to judge as there were very few points of reference, but at the end I was about the middle of the group, so quite satisfied.

Then we were split into two groups & each group had a small circuit to drive against the clock. This was much easier to get a grip on. Accelerate into a wide area, round two cones, accelerate along a straight, turn round a cone at the other end, accelerate back, round the cones & brake to a halt. This was great fun though from the footage I seem to have forgotten the camera mounted on the side when passing cones at 50+ mph

After this we swapped circuits with the other group. The second circuit involved accelerating to a cone, round it & back to a twisting section of tarmac, down to the cone again & back to stop between two cones. Again huge fun, with the twisting tarmac's curve tightening markedly before changing direction to unsettle the cars. On each run I seemed to get better & smoother, but the times stayed pretty much the same.

After lunch - when I nipped out for fuel & got lost again, the two groups were combined & a much larger circuit combining the three previous exercises was set up. So from the start line round a cone, hard right - left - right -left onto the long straight from the first exercise, round two cones from the second, back along the long straight, hard left, round the tarmac wiggle, accelerate down to another cone & hard right before accelerating back & stopping at the finish. Fantastic. The car was oversteering a little, but easy to control & my times were in the top half which I was pleased with as the Fury was giving away 90bhp to the front runners & 240bhp to the most powerful.

Then on the last stop of the last run, I pushed the brake just a little harder, there was a pop & the pedal went down to the bulkhead. On the way bach to the "pits" I found I had a little braking right at the end of the pedal travel. At first I thought the pivot bolt had broken or come undone, but no. Surely the master cylinder hadn't pushed off the bulk head? No - a pool of oil under one of the rear tyres told it's own story.

I assumed the rear brake shoes must've allowed the seals in the slave cylinder to come out some how, chatting this through with some of the guys we decided the front brakes would still be working so I drove under escort (thanks again Crunchie & David T) to a local McDonalds for a coffee & a think. I decided to drive the car home as I still had brakes, it was mostly on motorway & so I could control the amount of gap ahead of me.

So I got home without further incident & the following day I stripped the brake down - it was dry, all the seals were still in place. BUT, there was a small drip of oil on the brake hose union & following that I found this:-

It seems a P-clip used to hold the hose in place has succumbed to metal fatigue allowing the hose to rub on the outboard CV joint housing & has worn right through the braiding & into the hose itself. Stamp hard on the brakes & there's nothing resisting the pressure & POP.

I'm just glad it happened in a safe environment, not out on the road.

So I have a little mending to do, but I think the car might be off the road now until the spring while I do some other jobs, so no real harm done.