Garage Preparation

I painted the rest of the floor with the epoxy paint, in the process i moved the workbenches out of the rear corner, and am considering leaving them more in the middle as this might give me better workspace where i need it. It also means i don't need to walk passed the fury every time i need a spanner for the seven.

Chassis ready

The chassis is now ready for collection from the builder, BGH will collect it once the weather improves, extend the pedal box, and get it powder coated. Hopefully ready in a week or two.

Nitrons

Look like they will be ready the end of next week, fingers crossed.

Sort of progress

The engine has arrived a BGH in one piece, which is good to know. The chassis hasn't though which is a pain, I guess the snow isn't helping things. The baffle plate has also arrived, and I've just given Nitron Shocks a prod and hopefully they will be ready for when I'm over in the UK to collect the car. Which would be nice.

Something about the Sierra column is confusing me, I can't see anyway to keep pressure on the spring at the bottom of the column except by tightening up the steering wheel which a) seems dodgy and incorrect, and b) would require a steering wheel that screws down, as opposed to a weld-on boss. I need to have a look at a properly assembled one.

Wing Mirror

Last year, before I'd fitted the aerocatches, the 'SVA Compliant' rubber clips that held the bonnet on let go at about 70 miles an hour.  This resulted in the bonnet flying up, clipping the rear view mirror, catching on the off-side mirror, then twatting me in the head before landing on the verge. 

As a result of that I also decided a one piece bonnet was a better idea and bonded it to the nose cone, and secured it with aerocatches, so even if they fail, it wont fly off, just wobble around a lot.  The center mirror is just a bit scratched, which with some back to black was sorted out, however the side mirror broke the adjustment balljoint such as it would no longer remain in one place.  I added copious amounts of epoxy glue, and set it in the position I needed it in with some tape.  Yesterday it stayed exactly where it should, so hopefully I wont need to get a replacement from racetech.

Feckery Washers

Took Paul out for a drive in the car today for pancakes nearby, had a nice drive out there, flat spot i'm sure was getting worse, but could have been my paranoia, had a nice walk and a snack before heading home, got abotu 10KM from Utrecht when funny noises and a lack of power started to become apparent.  The noise sounded like something rubbing on a cambelt, as the XFlow doesn't have a cambelt it was slightly worrying.

A bit further out and I joked that it felt like it was running on two cylinders, when it got to about 6000rpm i got all 4, but things were definitly going badly wrong.  Limped back to the garage in one piece, and imagine my surprise when I took the bonnet off to find that the front fecking carb had fallen off. So much for thackery washers absorbing the vibrations.   How I laughed that I was glad to have the redundancy of 

twin Webber's, I guess that explains why the idle kept going funky.

I'll reassemble them this time a bit tighter and with a few gallons of thread-lock.  At least I don't need to worry about bore-wash this time.

On a happier note, the oil cooler is making a big difference to how quickly things cool down, the temperature rises to 100, the fan kicks in and brings it right down to 90 before clicking off, when moving its stays bang on 80C, and if I turn the fan on manually, it keeps it at 80. 

Took some videos with the garage-cam, hopefully they will turn out ok.

Colortune

Tried using the colourtune to tune individual idle mixtures, waste of time, couldn't see any difference between no flame (Idle fully closed) and about ten turns out, so decided best to reset to 2.5 turns out and aim for highest RPM, balanced carbs again and messed with Idle, still couldn't get it how I want it, carburation is a black art.

Drive

Got a nice drive in the seven, three things are apparent - quite a lot of bump steer on really bumpy roads, its fine most of the time, but when there's tree roots protruding from the tarmac, and potholes I had to keep the speed down a bit just-in-case; a flat sport around 2500RPM - annoyingly around cruising speed on dual carriage-ways; and a lot of popping on the overrun.

Went to Laag Vuurche which is pretty nearby, drove around in the country for a while before stopping for some refreshments and heading home, got followed by some dude in a VW corrodo with a noisy turbo, as a matter of principle I (relatively) quietly left him standing at a set of lights after he was revving the nuts off his dump valve, but he kept following me around, so i drove like a granny aimlessly for 15 minutes until he got bored and went off to look for some citroen saxo's to abuse.  I can't be arsed racing.

Made it back to the garage and adjusted the idle as it was way too high.  Met Wim, a retired dentist who has a Rosso with a honda VTEC Type R shoehorned into the back, and a VTEC powered mini, and a very very nice workshop.

He is currently undergoing airlock hell bleeding the brakes in the GTM, so I lent him my eezibleed which I swear by as I apparently don't have the ineptitude nor patience for the pump-and-hope bleeding method.

Mezzanine

I built a mezzanine today, i'd toyed around with a few designs, the one that seemed the most foolproof and fairly cost effective was to use rivet nuts to fasten a block of wood to each side of the garage, then joists going across the workspace at 2.20M high.  This meant that the minimum height underneath was quite high, above head height by quite some way, and that maximum width was still obtained.

At first I was quite worried about the strength of the steel sheet on the side, but it was quite solid (1.6MM on the outside walls, and 1MM on the inside)   I used 44*69MM wood although on hindsight, the width was perfect, but I think 90-100mm would have been better for the depth.   On top was 18MM board with tongue and groove edges.  With me standing on it in the middle it sags just under an inch which is acceptable although not ideal, thicker lintels would have eliminated this. 

This provides a great storage area, and now has everything I rarely need from old toolboxes to trolleys stacked on it, as well as some of the larger parts of the fury build - wheels etc.  It was a bit of an effort getting things up there, but its made a lot more space.  I'll also put the compressors and possibly the engine crane if I can lift the bits up there too.

The only issue was that it made the work area dark so 2 18W strip lamps were installed underneath, and these light up the area pretty well, in addition is the infrared heater, and a conventional fan+hot bars heater which is primarily there to heat the floor when I get around to painting it.