kws

Time ran out. The Diff went in on the Thursday, Sunday was the show. Since we were back together and running, all that was left was a final push to get the car looking as good as it should. The first thing I needed to do was wash the car. I'm ashamed to admit that for the six months I have owned the car, I've never cleaned it. Not once, so it was still covered in the muck from sitting around for a couple of years, and from the trip down on the back of a truck. Oops. So with that in mind, after work Friday I pulled the car out of the garage and into the steep driveway for a wash. The paint came up well, but I noticed the front end felt pretty rough (its the original paint, the rear was painted after but of a shunt years ago), so out came my CarPro clay towel to remove the contaminants on the paint. The clay towel worked great, the paint is nice and slick now. After a quick dry, I left the car overnight, ready to start with the machine polish. Saturday was machine polish day. The whole front of the car was cloudy and dull with almost no shine. The rear was better, but still needed some attention. This is what I was working with Flat as anything. A quick test spot using my favourite combo of a green Hexlogic pad and Ultimate Compound showed promise though It took a bit of work, but it was cutting through the oxidation and bringing the metallic silver paint back. Unfortunately, the paint isn't great (although it is 40 years old now!). There is this large patch in the bonnet where the paint is discoloured And a couple of similar spots on the sides behind the front wheels. Strangely I did find a shadow behind the front wheels of where a TVR sticker would have been on each side The paint isn't perfect but for a 40 year old car I think it's doing OK. It shined up well and is showing a lot more gloss and flake now. Oh, guess what showed up whilst I was polishing the car... the bloody braided lines. Only two days too late. The real test was on Sunday when she was unveiled at the British and Euro Car Day show. This is the third time I have brought a car to one of these shows. I like to try and bring someone special each year if I can. British Car Day doesn't often have many TVRs. At most there tends to be one lonely TVR sitting off to the side, or bundled in with another group (that's where I found the 350i wedge back in 2016). This year, the lone TVR found a friend. Sadly there was a (not so) Mini between us, but I parked up nearby this lovely looking Griffith. This thing makes the Wedge look massive! The Wedge looked great out in the sun, and a lot of people were showing an interest in it. Kids especially seem attracted to its sweet 80s style The TVR was in good company too. The turnout at the show was good, although I'm not so fussed on all the new euro stuff clogging up the field. There was another TVR with weird doors that seemed to get all the attention A Morgan with gorgeous paint This cute little Auto Union DKW An awesome looking Renault Alpine that was parked next to some garish red and yellow things Plenty of Fords were in attendance Including this sleeper with a Lotus twin cam engine Of course, the Porsche crowed had a decent turnout. Most of it was boring to me, except for these two which stood out And I was starting to get worried, but eventually, a lone SD1 arrived. This one has been at the show before, but good to see it again, out and about Anyway, enough of that, back to the Wedge. After we left the show we went for a bit of a hoon to see if there was anywhere nearby that was an interesting spot to take photos. We found this old Ministry of Defence building down a back road That wasn't the end of the car being out and about this week. It was a lovely evening the other day, so since I had a fully road legal TVR, we took it out for the longest run since I've had it. It was about a 60km round trip, which uncovered a few things about the car. Firstly, it's surprisingly comfortable and easy to drive. It loves taking sweeping curves at speed, and makes some great pops and bangs on deceleration. The brakes have a nice firm feel to them now with no shudder. Unfortunately its not all roses. There is an annoying misfire at low RPM cruise. I think it's possibly the ignition system playing up a bit, or it could be running a bit lean at cruise. The only other real issues are the steering being super heavy at low speeds, and the exhaust is excessively loud to the point of being annoying. Nothing too major. I did get some photos in the sunset though There is still work to be done, but in the meantime, I think I will just enjoy being able to jump into the car, fire up the V6, and take it for a drive. I have spent so much time working on the car that I haven't had a chance to enjoy and bond with the car, it gets tiresome sometimes.

With show day now only a couple of days away, the rush was on. I had a car on stands, with a diff on the ground. Not ideal. Having found the shims to be ruined in the last post I ordered a set with a few different sizes from SNG Barratt in the UK, which arrived in record time. At the same time, I also decided that since the diff was on the ground, and I didn't want to have to pull it out again I would (stupidly) replace the diff output oil seal as that was leaking a few drops every now and then, so ordered a set of new seals. You can see the aftermath of the seal leaking here. All down the side of the diff. Also note the sweet two battery method for supporting the diff. This thing weighs a ton, so making sure it's well supported and stable is important. I did a lot of research into disassembly and reassembly of the output shaft, but by far the best resource was this Youtube video. The output shaft takes a bit of work to remove. After draining the diff, remove the lock wire and then the bolts holding the flange to the housing. With them removed its a case of using a soft hammer and a pry bar to lever the output shaft assembly out of the housing. I found it easiest to rotate the assembly and lever off the ears with the bolt holes. Eventually it will pop out. Looking a bit gross It looks like oil was bypassing the O-Ring, and leaking from the shaft seal. Disassembly of the assembly isn't hard. If you want to reuse the bearings and crush tube you will need to mark the nut and shaft (the shaft is SUPER hard and instantly rounded off the end of all my punches) and count the turns as the nut is removed. This is so you can tighten the nut to the same preload. Next tap down the locking tab, and remove the nut. The nut is HUGE and will be tight. I used a massive adjustable spanner. The nut requires a 1-7/8" or 48mm spanner. I happened to end up with both. The ring spanner is a couple of foot long. With the nut removed, its time to tap the shaft out. Support the assembly upside down (studs pointing down) from the mounting flange. Now carefully tap the end of the shaft with a soft hammer. This should start by freeing up the inner bearing, which can be removed, and then, in theory, should push the shaft out through the outer bearing, taking the seal with it. In my case this didn't go as planned, and the outer bearing more or less exploded and all the rollers decided they didn't want to be part of this anymore. This ruins any plans of reusing the bearings and crush tube. So with that in mind, I shot off a quick order to my Jag parts suppliers (Rodney Jaguar Rover Spares) and ordered some new bearings and a couple of crush sleeves. It turns out this bastard is the reason the bearing came apart That old crusty thing is the dust shield over the oil seal. Both that shield, and the oil seal were thoroughly rusted in place, so of course couldn't be popped out with the bearing as it should have. You cant see the state of this with the shaft/flange in place. I used a chisel to remove both One warning, that dust shield is obsolete now and unable to be supplied. After much research I'm of the opinion it's not needed, hence why Jag stopped making them and no one remade them. Some other models that use the same diff, and some later cars, don't seem to use them either. I guess if you can reuse yours, use it, otherwise I went without. One last thing I needed to do was remove the outer races of the bearings. I used a punch to tap these out While I waited for parts everything got a good clean in the parts washer. I didn't bother to strip off the old paint, as I wasn't going to do the rest of the diff either. A couple of days later, with new bearings and seals in hand, I set about refitting the new bearings. As mentioned in the video, I too ground down the old outer race and used that to press the new race in. This took off just enough that the old race wouldn't stick in the housing. I taped the race to a big socket and used this in the vice to press it in place And the inner race Next I packed the new outer bearing and insert it into the housing Followed by the oil seal. This was a prick to get into the housing. And then the shaft gets dropped through the bearing and seal, and then it needs to be tapped through the bearing. This takes a bit of whacking. It pays to check against the other output shaft as to how far you need to tap it down. I found it needs to go further down than you would expect, but if you don't go far enough it will upset everything from the flange outwards (brake disk sitting central in the caliper, and camber). If you go too far I suspect you will get binding on the housing, so take care. Once the shaft is in, flip it over and drop the new crush tube down the shaft and then the grease packed inner bearing goes in, followed by the locking plate and nut. Now its time to crush that tube. This takes a hell of a lot of force to do. The spanner I had was too short to get the required leverage, so I used my jack handle instead by placing the nut in the vice and using the studs on the flange to turn it. I protected the studs with some tube offcuts. In terms of setting the preload I will recommend you watch the above video as he goes into how to correctly set it, using a spring scale. Its not rocket science, but easier to just watch him do it. Once the tube is crushed and the preload is set, lock down the nut, install the new O-Ring and you're done. Reinstall the assembly in the diff. This will take some force with a soft hammer to tap it back in, just make sure the splines line up first. Now it was time to look at the nice new shims. Mmm, clean. They come covered in oil, but I chose to also slather them in copper grease to help stop them rusting or sticking in future. I went with the same stack on the right side, which was perfect for disk placement (central in the caliper), but the left side ended up needing another 0.10 shim to align the disk. I'm not sure if maybe it wasn't centered before I pulled it apart, or if the new rotor is slightly different. I test fitted the disks with the new shims and still got great runout readings, so proceeded with installing the calipers for the final time. I'm pissed off I have to reuse the old rubber flexi hose. I have a set of nice braided lines en route, but they have gone missing somewhere between the UK and NZ. They'll probably show up tomorrow... And the handbrake calipers went on next. I had some nice new brass springs to fit but I just couldn't free the old ones up, so gave in and fitted as they were. I did replace the two pins that were fitted dry as they had pitting and scoring. New locking tabs were fitted also. Now it was time for one of the worst jobs I've had to do on a car for a long time. Reinstalling the diff. If the exhaust hadn't been designed by an idiot it would have been fine, but instead, it had been built in such a way that there isn't quite enough space to slip the diff with brakes fitted between the two pipes, and it has no flanges, and the two pipes are welded to a bracket.... but we had to try anyway. On the jack it went (for now) And into the boot went a bunch of weights (to try and hold the back of the car down since there was no weight in it anymore) And then the struggle began. First, we tried to just lift it into place. Nope. No go. Wouldnt even get under the car on the jack. After much pissing around (including taking the diff off the jack, and realising we couldn't get it back on the jack under the car) we eventually wiggled it in on an angle, from the side, on the jack. It got pretty hairy. Then I tried to lift just the front so I could get the front mount in and use that to pivot the rear into place. Nope. Started to lift the car off the axle stands. Not good. We had been at this for a couple of hours now and getting pretty tired of it. Everything was fighting us. Even the damn arms were getting in the way. This one ended up being held forward by an axle stand and steadied by a couple of bungee cords attached to the house. Finally, plan B came into play. I tried to resist, but it just wasn't going to happen otherwise. Out came the reciprocating saw. It was cutting time. With the exhaust now in two pieces, things were looking up Now we had ample space for the brake calipers to clear the exhaust, and without much more faffing about, the whole lot slid nicely into place. Unfortunately, we kinda ran out of interest here, so sorry for the lack of photos. We bolted everything back together, and I sent my awesome helper/wife out to get some exhaust sealing tape and cement. She's a keeper for sure, not only did she return with what I needed, but also brought back some much needed sustenance. The idea was to use a clamp I purchased earlier for this purpose (always have a plan B), and clamp over the exhaust tape. The tape was to seal the gap, and the clamp to support the pipe and hold it in place. This plan worked well, and it seems we have an exhaust that is in one piece again and doesn't leak. The longish term plan is to have the exhaust redone anyway as it sits way too low, its too loud, and doesn't link the two banks so sounds weird. So, with everything buttoned back up, diff full of oil, rear brakes bled, it was time for a test run. The brakes are a little spongy, I suspect there is air in the front (the master cylinder level got a bit low in the couple of weeks of sitting without brakes), so will bleed that tomorrow, but the shudder is completely gone. Just smooth (if vague) braking. Obviously the worst was in the rear brakes, but I still need to replace the front rotors as they have worn undersize and still have excessive runout. Plus, who doesn't want flash slotted rotors? Everything seems to be working as it should too, which is promising. At this rate, it will be a push to get the car ready for Sunday, but since we are rolling, and driving again, that's a big weight off my shoulders. We can do it, it's so close.

Just finished writing a trilogy on the K-Jetronic system. If anyone is interested in an obsolete fuel injection system, have a nosy. https://www.tasteslikepetrol.net/2020/02/bosch-k-jetronic-basics/ https://www.tasteslikepetrol.net/2020/02/bosch-k-jetronic-part-2-testing/ https://www.tasteslikepetrol.net/2020/02/bosch-k-jetronic-part-3-tuning-and-fixing/

Unfortunately not a hell of a lot of choice when it comes to re-registering a car

Keep hunter body loom and run engine off MX5 loom? Just strip out any MX5 wires you don't need.

Contacted the vtnz that did the compliance and they had no records of where it was affixed but thought it should be in the engine bay near chassis plate (which is on slam panel). They're going to contact the current owner and work through it with him, which may require a new plate to be fitted. So, when getting a car re-reg'd, double check they fitted a VIN plate!

Its a Mini, it doesnt have a chassis, and there isnt a lot of places to hide it...

Owner hasn't checked, but have told him to look.

Interesting. Being 1980 and nz new It didn't have a VIN originally as it used the chassis number but I note it had a new VIN number (different to the chassis number) allocated to it when reregistered, so I presume it should have a new plate somewhere too. Apparently it's not in the engine bay, boot, or on the B pillar like it should be. Have contacted nzta to see if they, or the agent (vtnz) might hold a record of where it was affixed when it was reregistered. It didn't occur to me at the time to check for the new plate when I did it.

Is there a standard to where a VIN plate is placed when its fitted to a car? The owner of the classic Mini i sold a while back has contacted me asking if I know where the VIN plate is, but i dont have any photos of it after I re-registered the car. The VIN was issued when i re-registered it, so i presume a new plate was affixed somewhere but i don't know where. It'd help if i knew where the plate could be fitted. E: Found it. https://vehicleinspection.nzta.govt.nz/virms/entry-certification/pre-reg-and-vin/vin-affixing/methods-for-affixing-a-vin

Cert needed.

Sounds like the BMW one I had. Solenoid wasn't throwing far enough so wouldn't engage. Replaced starter, was all good.

Its a disease, this constantly working on cars thing. Be wary of British cars, the oil got under my skin and now im infected. I love that table though, had a good laugh at that.

Well, it has been an interesting time on the TVR front. Most recently, I have been dealing with one of those "why did I start this" jobs on the car. One of the first things I did after failing the WOF inspection was to order some new tyres. The old tyres, although both a good brand (Dunlop) and near new tread, were as hard as rocks, slippery as anything, starting to crack, the wrong size, and were flat-spotted. Its no surprise really, they were about 10 years old. The spare was even worse, I suspect it may have been from 1986, as its a long-obsolete model (Good Year Eagle NCT 60, the original spec tyre for the TVR), the rubber felt like plastic, and the date stamp was 196 without an arrow (the arrow indicates it's from the 90s, and a three-digit number indicates its pre-2000). They got their monies worth out of this one! After much deliberation, I decided to revert back to the standard size all around, at a "low profile" 205/60R14. The old rears were 215/65R14, so not only wider but also a lot taller (about 16mm taller than standard). This always looked a bit wrong to me; too much sidewall. I don't know if the reason for the size change was just because of what was on hand, or if there was a deliberate choice to do it, but Its not my thing. I did have some issue getting the original size; there wasn't a lot of options for brands, but I chose to go with a tyre that's a decent economy tyre. No, it's not as good as a performance tyre, but options were limited, as was my budget, and at the price I got these for it was hard to say no. A decent new economy tyre is better than any old, hard, performance tyre. The tyre I chose was a Nexen CP672. It has good reviews, is a modern Korean made tyre, and Nexen is OEM fit on some Hyundai and Kia cars, so it can't be all bad. At least it's not a Chinese ditch-finder. Hover car, again The Saab came in handy for taking it all down to the tyre shop for fitting. The Honda probably could've managed, but the Saab just ate it all up with space to spare. With the new tyres fitted, it was time to tackle the reason I failed the WOF. The front lower ball joints. It turns out these are the original 40 year old ball joints, as they are riveted to the arms. The replacements all have bolts holding them in. Not great news, they're a prick to get out. I struggled around a bit on the first one, but worked out some tips that made the second a lot quicker and easier. First, this job sucks. It's messy, it's hard to access, and takes more than your usual spanner set to do. The split pin in the nut was my first issue. It was old and properly rusted into the hole. After a lot of faffing about trying to hammer it out with a punch, and then trying to smash it up with a chisel, the easiest way for me to remove it wasn't to remove it at all, but to chop the tails off, slip a spanner on the nut and swing off it until the nut cut through the split pin. You can see the split pin remains still in the hole, about halfway down the thread. Both the nut, and the joint are junk, so not an issue. Now, if you have a ball joint splitter, go ahead and use it to split the ball joint, otherwise use the BFH and hit the knuckle with a few sharp hits, and the taper should pop. I found jacking the hub up helps to put pressure on the taper and make it easier to pop. You can see in the above photo I have removed the two bolts from the tie bar. This wasn't smart, it was a real pain to line it back up again, what I did on the second one was to use a clamp and hold the bar into place on the arm, and leaving the nut-less bolts in the holes to align it Next, undo the nut off the tie rod end and release the taper. Move the tie rod out of the way. Now for the fun part, grab your grinder, and grind the top of the rivets down so they are as low as possible, and flat. Use a punch to mark the center of the rivet, and using plenty of cutting oil, starting with a small drill bit, drill through the rivet. Work your way up to a larger bit. After a couple of different sizes I changed to a step drill. Take care not to enlarge the hole in the arm. The goal is to cut the head off the rivet, so you can get a chisel in and split the parts Once you do both of the rivets, push the ball joint through the arm and that's part one done. The new ones should come with a pair of nuts and bolts to replace the rivets, as well as a grease nipple. Fit the nipple, and pump the joint full of grease Now refit the new joint from the underside of the arm. Make sure everything lines up, and leave all the bolts loose until everything is aligned and in place. Once all the bolts are in, tighten them all up. The two large nuts want to be 58-68NM, whilst the little ones don't have a torque setting, so just do them up tight. Now for another fun part, getting the hub back onto the taper. I found this to be too much of an arm-full, so used a jack between the two arms to lift the upper arm and lower the knuckle over the stud. Not a Ford/TVR approved method, I'm sure, but it worked well. And then you refit the nut. The Nylock was a pain to fit as until it cut through the nylon it kept trying to spin the balljoint, but I got there in the end. There is a torque setting, but I couldn't get a torque wrench in there, so settled for bloody tight with a spanner. With both sides done, on went the wheels with new tyres, and it was time for a shakedown. The front end feels a bit tighter, but the biggest difference are the new tyres, which don't try and kill you when you point the car at a corner, and the rear shocks (new damper adjustable replacements also went in as I felt the old ones were a bit soft) control the rear end better. The incorrectly high (40psi) tyre pressure resulted in a nice light steering, but a harsher ride and less grip than when the pressure was lowered to the correct 24psi. I think this car has the heaviest steering of any car I have driven. I could help but take some photos. It's a great looking little car, and such an experience to drive. So, with new bits in, it was time for the WOF recheck. Almost 4 years since the last one expired, a new WOF! Its a great feeling, knowing the car is finally good enough that its back on the road, when for the last few years it had been sitting at a workshop being ignored because the injection work was just "too hard". Sadly the injection work is just the tip of the iceberg of issues with this car, but I'm working through them. I do wish the seller, or (more importantly) the "specialist" were honest about the condition of the car. Some of these issues aren't new, and are hard to miss. So with a new WOF, what's the first thing I do? Go out and enjoy the car right? Nah, that's not how I work. It was time to take the car off the road again, and fix the brakes. I knew this job was going to be bad, but little did I know how bad it was about to get. As I previously mentioned, the brakes had a shudder. This was also noted at the WOF, but wasn't enough to fail on, yet. Unfortunately, I had had enough of the shudder. It was bad when braking from 100kph, and annoying coming to a stop, so had to be fixed. I purchased a set of new rotors, front and rear, but just needed to fit them. I was originally going to start with the fronts, as they are a lot easier to access, but decided to do the hard ones first, and get it over and done with; the rears. Of course because I have inboard rear brakes, nothing was going to be simple. I asked around and the general opinion was that it was easiest to drop the whole rear diff to get the calipers off, so the rotors could be removed. Yay. Dropping the diff on a Wedge isn't too bad of a job, especially with the trailing arm models like mine, as there aren't a whole lot of things holding the assembly in. Unfortunately, we found the job was made much harder on my car thanks to whoever designed the exhaust, as there isn't quite enough space between the two exhaust pipes to slip the calipers down and out. After a heck of a lot of levering, and much help from my lovely apprentice, this happened I'll tell you now, this thing is bloody heavy. We lowered it on the jack, and removed it from the jack to work on it. I'm not too sure how we will get it back on the jack to refit it, lots of brute force I guess. With everything on the ground it was time to remove the calipers to extract the rotors. The handbrake calipers on the top need to go first. These are held in by two pins each. One side had nice (barely) greased and free pins, the other had dry, stuck, pins. Not ideal at all. They did come out in the end. The hand brake pads looked OK. I have receipts for them being replaced a few years ago. The units need a good clean though. Next, the calipers came off. These were missing the lock wire on the bolts. and then the old rotors You can see the extent of the runout in the wear on the rotor. Above the two arrows in rough and rusty, below them is shiny and smooth. The shiny spot is the high point, where the pads have been contacting well, and the rough part where the pads haven't been working as well. I gave the shims a quick wire brush to get the obvious crud off them, and fit the new rotors. Here is an action shot; brushing so quick my arm is nothing but a blur This is where it went all a little pear-shaped. I didn't check the runout on the new rotors before fitting the calipers, and when I did, it was worse than before I pulled the lot out. Previously on the old rotors, I had about 0.35mm runout. Now I had over 0.60mm runout. Crap. At this point, I flipped tables and gave up for the day. Well, they looked nice anyway. Mmm Brembo. Today I forced myself to go into the garage and see what I could work out. I knew the shims looked a bit average, so let's start there. I pulled the shims off and had a look at what I had. It wasn't good. The shims are stuffed. Rusted, crusty, painted and missing bits. And the flange didn't do much better. It had baked on crusty rust, and paint on it I had to chip a few bits like this off with a chisel, and then I wire brushed thoroughly I can still see some room for improvement there too, but its a lot better. The first way to see where the runout is, is to remove all the shims and see if the rotor runs true when mounted directly to the flange. After cleaning the flange, I fit the rotor to it and checked runout. The old rotor makes a great mount for the dial indicator Much better at 0.08mm. I think I can get it a little lower with some strategic scraping, but the spec is up to 0.10mm That's a great success. I did the same to the other side too. The shims were worse here, and the flanges covered in old crusty rust I cleaned these up and tested them. Boom, awesome. 0.035mm So the take away from this is a few things. I need new shims. DONT paint faces of flanges or shims. ALWAYS use copper grease on shims to stop them sticking together and reduce corrosion. Oh, and the bolts that hold the diff to the cradle should be tight; someone previously missed that memo. Now I need to source some new shims, and we should be good to refit. I measured the old ones, and will try to replicate the original stack, but I may need to tweak it myself as I don't know if these are right or not.

The height is a bit deceptive with the dark sills, it's so low that I'm at risk of tearing the exhaust off going in and out of my driveway as it is. If I don't get a run up, it'll be beached as bro. It doesn't look dorky until the headlights are up, but fuck it, it has pop ups so it's a win.