Rogue Runners Day One (Two)

Day two of the 2016 Rogue Runners trip, or day one for me as I joined today due to family commitmentse.

I was awake at 04:30, so got up & had a drink, sorted myself out & at 05:30 my running mate Duncan appeared from Eastbourne – a VERY early start for him. We motored due north until we hit the M40 & took that as far as Banbury where Reg’s excellent cafe is located – except that on a Saturday it doesn’t open until 08:00, so no breakfast for us.

We refuelled & had a coffee & headed for Birmingham, skirting the outskirts on the M42, until we dived onto the smaller roads just before the M6 toll. We were heading for the Peak District & found a few very nice roads & eventually stopped in the small, stone built town of Longnor, blased with a small town square completely full of hiking types & no fewer than three cafés. We went into the smallest of these & had a truly excellent breakfast & coffee for £5, & later we'd discover that the reast of the group, travelling to a different destination, on a different route, the day before, had stopped & breakfasted at the SAME small café! Spooky. Then we headed off for Buxton – where it all went wrong.

Well, not wrong as such, we did have a remarkable piece of luck on a lovely sweeping A road when we got stuck behind a farmer type on a quad (complete with sheepdog standing on the back) doing 20, I could’ve overtaken but Duncan was a car or two back & it would’ve been a bit risky, so I waited & round the very next bend was a camera van. Oh how I rejoiced.

After that we had to pass between Manchester & I’s neighbours, undoubtedly the worst part of the day. We had only just past a speed camera (mostly painted matt green) when the SatNav would “bong” for the next one. There were 30 limits everywhere even out in the sticks – until we passed the sign for Lancashire, when the cameras stopped, the speed limits rose & the roads got curvy, but the rain started. In fact it pelted down, after a while we found a railway bridge to shelter beneath while we erected the soft tops, but it didn’t really get dry until we reached Scotland.

Lancashire gave way to North Yorkshire & the roads got better, but the weather got worse, until at last we hit the M6 just about at Tebay services, where we had another drink stop, bought some presents to take back & avoided filling up with petrol.

From there it was just motorway, probably a good thing as we’d been travelling for ten hours by then. Shortly after that we were passed by another two of the Rogue Runners pack, but we didn’t try to keep up & eventually arrived at Dumfries, topped up the tanks & went to find the hotel. Which is when I found that I’d written the route on the SatNavs by starting with “Home” & ending at “Dumfries”, intending to go back & put in the hotel Post code later – guess what, I didn’t – oh how we laughed. Fortunately my running mate had a new-fangled phone with internet & was able to get us to our destination, we weren’t even close.

So we met up with the rest of the crew & exchanged stories, turns out I was probably fortunate in missing day one as it tipped with rain, the roads were either deep with water or loose chippings which got everywhere, even into one of the driver’s bra – don’t ask Linda about the boulders in her bra – she’s now heard all the possible jokes. One of the runners had overheating problems, then broke a drive shaft, got relayed home, picked up the tin-top & arrived back at 22:00. That’s dedication that is.

 

Looks A Bit Rude

Doesn't look at all like something from
Ann Summers' electrical dep't 

There was some kerfuffle going on at the stables, which meant Mrs Blatter was out, which meant I could get into the garage unobserved.

 

Today the Postman bought a small piece of aluminium tube I’d bought to create a handbrake handle. Up to now I’d used the standard Sierra handbrake with all the plastic handle stripped off, it looked rather too basic & there was a slot under my finger when I pulled the brake on.

Still haven't worked out how to turn pictures round

I didn’t want an “aftermarket” one as they generally have “GT TURBO” or somesuch written all over them, so I carefully measured the lever & bought a tube with an I/D just bigger – no, the I/D was just smaller, The seller did say it was 3/4" - 19mm, but not exactly which - so it wouldn’t fit.
Not to be thwarted, I dremelled the inside until I could hammer a socket in to both stretch & score the I/D a little larger & after a couple of hours faffing about I was able to tap the new handle into place.
Good isn't it?

Hose

 

What began as me wandering out to the garage looking for something to do turned into a couple of small but quite significant changes. Firstly I cut two holes in the cam wheel cover & painted the rather-too-nice-to-hide five spoke cam wheels red, then I noticed some red silicone hose left over from a job I'd done on Mrs Blatter's car ("The Pimp-Mobile") & re-plumbed the radiator vent hose, from the rad, up along the cam cover through aircraft P-clips, to meet with the vent hose from the thermostat housing & then to the expansion tank & another piece to replace the tank vent hose.

Ideally the hose should be blue, but when ordering it for Mrs Blatter's car, blue was out of stock. The run along the cam cover is higher than the old one along the chassis which means the rad will auto-vent where previously I had to pull the hose off to get the air out. Another small-but-significant job was to put the passenger footwell carpet back in. Astute readers will note that I put this in last week, but when setting off for work in the Fury or Tuesday I found the carpet on the floor - normally a good place for carpet, but not on this ocasion.

So the Velcro was all torn off & I used high temp contact adhesive (yes that smelly stuff) instead & it seems to have worked - Hurrah! Having taken the car 60 miles on a return trip to my Dads, I can say that it seems noticeably quieter over bumps & the passenger footwell seems a lot cooler (as tester by a non-calibrated hand). Hopefully Mrs Blatter will remain uncooked on the trip to Cheltenham next month.

Red Gaiter

A few days ago I fitted a cold air blown heat shield & the chassis side panel was noticeably cooler, but there's still work to do, this evening I've replaced the "witch's hat"  (gearstick gaiter) with a new red one I got from Stoneliegh.
 

Wife Cooler 2

I've had a bit of a change of plan - no, I'm not leaving my wife at home - I've decided to shroud the radiator & add an intake duct to collect air for the exhaust bay spray bar. Naturally the shrouding will be black & the intake trumpet will be anodised red. This plan means I can add another intake at the back supplying air to the back of the spray pipe if the front one doesn't supply enough "woof" & I also have a planette for adding a vent direct into the footwell with a cable operated diverter - this may be getting overly complex though.

I'm thinking of taking Friday off to intall & test all this.

Wife Cooler

On the Rallye Des Jonquilles, Mrs Blatter had mentioned that the passenger side got very warm - fine for April, but likely to be uncomfortable on the WAGS Weekend in June (when it'll be much MUCH warmer won't it?). It's warm on that side because the exhaust runs through the side pod, & although it's vented & lined with heat mat, the warmth still gets through.

So today I spent a long time looking into ways of cooling the passenger footwell & have settled on a two-pronged approach.

Prong 1 is to drill a line of holes at the front of the footwell, with a ramp ahead of them to create a low pressure area, this should draw air out, improve the flow & prevent heat building up.

Prong 2 is to fit a scoop (CAD designed & 3D printed) ahead of the nearside rear wheel connected to a duct taking cooling air to the cockpit side wall, as shown in the pic (scoop is dark grey, duct is silver, side pod it not shown).

 

The idea is that high pressure air under the car will be forced into the scoop, up the duct & spray out along the cockpit side panel, thus cooling it - or at least stirring up the warm air a bit.

 

 

 

I also found the new thermostat housing was dripping, so took the cover off & fitted another O-ring around the thermostat. That seems to have done the trick.

 

AND – I stuck the “WAGS Weekend” sticker on, though I’m getting seriously short of space for trip stickers.

Watertight

Messing about under the car taking measurements for alloy panels I noticed the starter motor appeared to be leaking. Clambering topside, I realised the leak was coming from a seam in the thermostat housing - a known problem with zetecs, but not one I was expecting to encounter yet.

I went straight to Ebay & there was an early zetec housing up for sale, these are alloy castings & much more robust (& shiny), I put on an outrageously large bid & got it for just less.

The alloy ‘stat housing arrived & I cleaned it up, all the pipes are in the same place as the plastic one, but there was one open threaded hole in the top. This was the fan switch on the car it came from, my car has a fan switch in the radiator & is also switched by the ECU, so I don’t need this hole. I was just going to plug it, but I took it into work to measure the thread & a conversation got going, the upshot of which was that it went down to the machine shop to get the area around the thread flattened off, so I can fit a plug, a vent, or a thermo-switch as required. In this photo, the old split one is black & the shiny ally one is the new (older) one.

 

I had to make a gasket as the old one has a rubber o-ring & the new one is more old school, but it’ll be fine with some jollop on. The alloy housing is a lot heavier than the plastic one, but reliability wins this one.

Yesterday evening I took the housings apart to find the alloy one all covered with silicone sealant & the thermostat rattling about. The thermostat should have a seal round it that seals between the body & the cap, so with it missing there was nothing to stop the coolant peeing out, hence the silicone the previous owner had ladled on. I re-assembled it correctly.

On the way home from work I called into Margnor & picked up three stainless cap head bolts & washers to hold the cap onto the body & an M16 x 1.5 tapered grub screw to seal the hole in the top. Unfortunately the grub screw didn’t quite seal, after ten minutes running it had just filled the hex socket, good, but not good enough - it must've been leaking atom by atom. So back to the excellent Margnor where they produced a “cylindrical plug” which when used in conjunction with a soft copper washer onto my new machined flat face – sealed. Yay!

So another plastic part is replaced by a nice shiny alloy one & the car's got a little bit better. At some point I'll swap the plug for a rad fan switch, monitoring the temperature of the coolant in the radiator makes no sense to me, it's the temperature of the engine that's important.