Well, this update's a bit late, a certain amount of things have been happening here. The main problem has been that our central heating boiler had failed for the 859th time. (I've mentioned this here before.) This time we decided that enough was enough and even though the Baxi product that we had installed seemed to work OK for most of the time the fact that it's stunningly unreliable is too much to bear. So, we've just chucked it away and installed a different one. The installer told us that we in quite good company and lots of people have been throwing these boilers away in frustration. So, if you're currently in the market for a new one and thinking about a Baxi/Potterton product, just don't. At least that's my opinion.
You might wonder why this is relevant. The problem is that the new boiler needs a sodding gigantic gas supply and the size of the main gas pipe needed to be enlarged. The is relevant because the aforesaid gas pipe goes all the way around the garage, behind all the storage sheves. Consequently, I had to cut short my skiing trip so as to move everything in the garage out. This was by no means a simple task, as you can probably guess. I suppose I could send Baxi a bill for my time? Hmm, thought not.
In the meantime I have been making intermittent progress. This has all be made a bit rushed now as I've booked a track day at Snetterton on the 24th. This should allow me to shake the car down, assuming I've got it back together. I've also booked for the season's racing now that my licence has finally arrived.
I've
at last finished the dash wiring and installed the dash. I had to modify a certain amount of the car's wiring as
well so as to connect up new sensors to the DL1. Hopefully that's all done now, although the chance of there not
being some error is rather low. In the meantime I actually plucked up the courage to power up the dash and it does
indeed seem to work. At least the lights come on, as in the photo. The photo's a rather odd colour because it was
taken without the flash so that you can see the lights on! That big space in the middle if for velcroing the Palm
down.
As part of the same set of modifications I drilled and tapped the sump to take an electrical oil temperature
sender and plugged up the existing mechanical sender connection. It'd be just my luck if both of these leak of
course... Thinking about it, I may well unscrew them and jam them back in with some Hylomar just to give them something
to think about in the meantime.
Finally,
for this update, I've finally managed to refit the engine. Of course, in the process I bent the connection for
the new oil temperature sender. Inevitable, I guess...
In the photo here you can just about see the wiring on the back of the new dash.
I've had to abandon some of my more glorious notions and now I'll just be concentrating on getting the car back together. I doubt that I'll even have time to fit the snazzy new airbox that I bought from Andy Bates. Still, at least I ought to be able to get the car going again...
I managed to snatch an hour or so in the garage this evening and put it to good use! First of all I
remade the brake hoses for the front brakes as I thought they were too long really. The fittings are supposed
to be reusable but I realy don't fancy doing so, to be honest so I'd bought some new ones.
Secondly, I started to put the rear suspension back together. The first step here was to put the lower wishbones on. I did this with quite a lot of careful measuring and lining up, adjust the inner rosejoints so that everything's all, I think, in the right place.
I'm also wondering what to do about the brakes. A while ago I bought a kit of parts to convert the rear end to discs. Not really because I think the drums are bad, but because I'm sick to death of struggling with the sodding springs when I take the shoes off.
The
problem with rear discs is the handbrake mechanism and I've bought theses snazzy Wilwood calipers that include
a sort of lever mechanism for engaging the handbrake, you can see the levers sticking up in the middle of the photo.
The problem I've got is handbrake cable. Rally Design, from whom I bought these, do see a handbrake cable kit.
However, it's a thing of quite stunning heaviness. It might be alright on the road car but on a race car, which
doesn't really need a handbrake, it's quite out of line. However, I've got a couple of ideas here. I might
even try and make the handbrake lever itself a bit simpler at the same time. Not sure how yet though.
It's quite likely that I won't actually fit these rear brakes yet so as to get the car going in the shortest possible time. We'll see though.
