Fitted new, smaller alternator LRA100/101 which clears the suspension rather better.
Fitted a lock to the boot box again from Merlin and attached a brace to stop the lid flexing up.
Next project looks like some wind deflectors, big problem with these looks like finding some friction hinges.
Bought a voltmeter and an ammeter guage after the battery struggled to turn the engine over after stopping for petrol. I suspect the battery isn't too good. At least if I fit the guages I stand a better chance of seeing whats happening before its too late.
Speedo cable broken. Now how long did that take. Bike speedo on there for the moment (sigma 700, cost £15) seems to work ok but needs calibrating properly. Long term I'll invest in some proper guages but for the moment I'm not prepared to cough up.
The bike speedo seems to have held up, I suspect its over reading slightly, will have to have a play with that at some point.
Adjusted the dzus fasteners so the bonnet fits slightly better, still takes anything up to 5 mins to get it on though, hopefully it will get better with practice.
Fitted an ammeter, after much cogitation and help from the mailing list and a Austin A70 hereford manual! decided it needs to be fitted inline with the thick brown wire to the alternator. Fairly simple job to fit really, a couple of runs of 30A cable and its done. The ammeter actually has a 60A scale which is pretty useless, even when starting the engine it hardly touches 15A. Will probably take it off and swap it for a 30A one, going to bite the bullet and get a proper tacho rather than the hacked one I'm running now.
Made up a wind deflector from a piece of plastic from B&Q and fitted to the passenger side, looks ok. Will do the drivers side next. Rather than hinge the screen and have to source friction hinges I've bent the screen to about 30 degrees so it fixes on directly at roughly the right angle.
The technique seems to be to cut the screen to rough shape, take it into the kitchen heating the oven to 125C. Next upturn a clean baking sheet, brush off any dust etc from the plastic (if you don't do this it will embed itself into the plastic and look pretty awful). Place the plastic on the sheet with about an inch hanging over the edge, this is the bit that will form the angled lip. Put it in the oven and after about 5 mins the lip should have started to droop. Take it out of the oven and using a clean tea towell shape the lip into the desired shape. Be careful not to force it, it will cool pretty quickly and once it has any excess force will crack it.
To finish off the screen cover it in masking tape to protect it and carefully cut/file/sand it down to its final shape. Once you're happy drill it, trial fit it and if that works remove the tape and refit. Easy really.
Tidied up a load of the wiring using cable wrap. Why I didn't fit that to start with I'll never know. In the process discovered that one of the rear wheels has been rubbing on the backs of my mini tail lights and has now worn most of the way through the wireing. Yet another job [sigh].
Fitted the springs, these are slightly stiffer than the ones I was originally supplied. This combined with the extra spacers and winding the spring platforms right up has given me a pretty respectable 70mm of ground clearance.
Bought some lights to replace the rubbing ones. HINT: don't buy standard mini lights, buy the flush fitting "trailer" lights. Must finish fitting those.
Fitted new carb, decided that the 28/30mm DFTH carb I was using was probably strangling the engine so bought a 32/36 DGAV from a breakers along with a new manifold to suit. It needs setting up properly and currently seems to die if the second choke opens suddenly. Service kit for the carb is on the way from europa.
Cleaned off the rocker cover and cleaned that up, finishing it off with a touch of nice red paint to match the bodywork. The paint is very thin and needs 15-20 coats to get a good finish. Its also extremely soft for quite some time. I've got lots of marks from fitting it. I suspect the answer is to bake it off in the oven for a few hours prior to fitting.
Alternator pulley cracked, discovered I'd been supplied a dynamo pully by mistake. After hunting around a bit managed to source a very small fan that will fit under the suspension, LRA102 fitting it would appear. My approach was to be given the box of all the alternator bits and rummage until I found one that looked about right.
William has managed to fit his speedo sensor to the front wheel rather than the prop-shaft (he needless to say doesn't run out of steam at 55mph). Will have to do that myself soon. He's also managed to wire up a headlight flasher circuit with just one additional wire.
Current list of jobs is:
Fitted the second mirror, with the sidescreens on though visibility is impaired by them. They also get knocked out of place by the screens every time you get in and out. I think in the fullness of time I'll be getting some nice small ones to attach directly to the bodywork.
Moved the speedo sensor to the front wheel, after much adjustment to bring the clearance low enough (1-2mm) it works pretty well. For my car the magic calibration number seems to be 1150, Williams is 1180 so they're all likely to be much of a muchness so anything between 1100 and 1200 is about right for most cars.
Removed the indicator extensions, removing one source of rattles. Wired up the headlight flasher circuit, as posted on the tiger mailling list its just one 12v line to the spare connector on the headlight stalk, I ended up taking mine from the oil pressure guage. While doing that I took the opportunity to spiwrap most of the scuttle wiring, looks far neater and I'm less likely to knock something. On the downside fault tracing is far more difficult.
Fitted the final piece of carpet into the end of the footwells and then regretted it, those few mm clearance on my left foot I really need. Racing boots will be another thing to get at some point. Shuffled back and then fastened down the tunnel carpet/trim, second and forth are rather easier to get into and the carpet doesn't lift up either. That done fitted the seats and carpets back in again.
Took Catherine out for a couple of rides, now the sidescreens are on she's far happier. After a mile or two she really got into it and demanded to be driven further, she's even plucking up courage to try driving it herself! I've also been forbidden from selling it to buy a new project untill she's had a full summers enjoyment of it. The second outing was to a pub for lunch, (the car) getting complimented by the landlord was a plus point and I can't think of a nicer way to go out on a nice day.
Plans are afoot to up the performance of the car and to sort out a few niggling irritations. After investigating a number of engine options (Toyota, Zetec etc) the good old pinto looks the best bet. The Toyota and Zetec are both going to be pretty expensive and neither look as if they'll come in at much under 2 grand. On that basis I've decided to source a 2l pinto unit and work with that.
Engine-wise its going to be a 2l injection unit, apparently the injection head flows better and is garunteed to be unleaded. A pair of 40 DCOEs and a new cam will be the sum total of work planned. This should take it up to at least 130bhp and probably somewhat higher which would be a very noticeable improvement over the 80ish I'm getting at the moment. Add in the extra torque and it should be a real blast.
In order to help get the power down I'm also planning on some nice new alloys to replace the painted steel sierra items and some sticky rubber. Have got a pair of DCOEs off one of the mailing lists. They need a bit of an overhaul and one is missing a jet cover but they'll provide a good starting point.
The local breakers have an xr4x4 estate in! The gear is a bit rusty but apears to be superficial and should clean up nicely. Complete back end (lsd, trailing arms, disks, calipers etc) a couple of front lower arms and the front disks+calipers is going to be 200 quid which seems pretty fair. I'm getting the front disks to upgrade the current ones, the 1.6 donor had a pretty small, non-vented setup. The xr4x4 estate has about the beefiest brake setup you're likely to come across on a sierra so there shouldn't be too many problems stopping. They also have a "very nice" 2l injection engine which I'll have a look at when I pick up the bits which is going for 125 quid, which if I can get the clutch, flywheel etc in the deal will do me very nicely.
| G2 home | Chris' homepage | Tiger | Tiger Build Diary |