kws

Sometimes when working on cars, things just don't do what you want them to do. Today was one of those days. I have had a tow bar sitting around since pillaging the Whanganui cars, and originally had the intention of it going on Effie, but when I tried to fit it to her I quickly found the tow bar will not fit without cutting the underside of the bumper for the tongue, and I didn't want to do that to her pristine bumper. Tess on the other hand, has had a tow bar in the past, and already has a cutout on the underside of her bumper, so hey, lets whack the tow bar on her eh? This job is made a lot easier now that the tailgate doesn't try to mash my head in, since the four bumper retaining nuts are in the rear panel, inside the boot. Undo those and the bumper simply just slides off the car. There are two side retainers that slide into rubber bushings, but they should slide out easy enough. So the bumper came off easy enough, but that was about it. Unfortunately the bumper cutout didn't match the tow bar. Not such an issue, I can cut it larger, but that wasn't the worst part of it The worst part was that the towbar isn't going to fit at all, because the bumper is all kinds of messed up. I noticed it didn't sit right when I got the car, and the RH sliding retainer is no longer attached to the bumper, what I didn't realise was that the RH bumper bracket is messed up and the bumper cracked. The red arrow is pointing at a large crack in the bumper. The orange arrow points at someones attempt to stick the bumper mount back on with some snotty looking glue, and the purple arrow points at a very bent mounting plate. It's hard to tell, but the mounting plate should only have a slight curve in it, like the one on the other side Well that will explain why the bumper doesn't sit right. The impact obviously tore off the side retainer too, because someone tried to gloop that back into place too (which didn't work) The tow bar doesn't fit onto the mounts (it has to slide over the studs on both mounts), so there's no hope of it fitting this bumper. I'll need to reassess once I track down another bumper and mounts. So that was a fail. Since I was already out in the garage I decided to have a look at the hand brake system too, as it wasn't holding the car (and will fail the next WOF). Up on the Quickjacks again. Super quick and easy to do, especially now that the frames live under Tess all the time, so just need to slide them out, plug them into the hoses, plug the hoses into the power unit, connect the jump pack and away I go. No photos of this, because I detailed it when I replaced Effies hand brake cable, and its a fairly basic system. My compensator wasn't at 30 degrees like it should be, so obviously it needed adjusting. I disconnected the cable from both drums, and backed off the adjuster at the lever. I proceeded to adjust it correctly, and went to test. The handle still moves about 6 clicks, which is WAY too many. I readjusted it three or four more times, and the issue remained. I checked the workshop manual to make sure I was doing it right, and yup, I was. Obviously the cable is stretched and I can't dial out the slack. Damn. I just cant get enough tension on the cable to lock the wheels, so I guess my next Rimmers order will have a new cable in it too. Thankfully replacing it on the Quickjacks will be better than when I did Effies one on the ground under just a pair of stands. Another fail. Speaking of Quickjacks, I can now confirm that even despite my oversized belly, I can roll front to back under the car comfortably on my creeper. It's a much nicer height to work at than I'm used to. The only issue I have is that my axle hangs down a lot, so I have to slide to either side of the diff head, instead of under it or I'll get stuck. While under the car I noticed that I had a fairly bad exhaust leak from the rear section join. Obviously this wouldn't be helping the fume ingress situation Tess has. I quickly undid the join, found it missing its olive (a round, metal seal), so just proceeded to smother it in exhaust paste and bolt it back together. I'll be replacing the rear section eventually anyway, so not a big deal. The other cause of fumes would have been from the four large holes I found drilled in the rear panel, behind the bumper. I don't know what they were for, but they were sleeved (so you can tighten a bolt down without crushing the two sections of metal the hole was through) and just went into the boot, behind the trim. I have taped them up for now, just to block them off. A decent drive this afternoon shows that the exhaust sounds the same, but the fumes in the cabin are significantly reduced. I didn't realise how bad it was before, but now there is almost no exhaust smell with the windows shut. With the drivers window open a crack there can be wafts, but it's about 5% of what it was before. My wife wanted to put the CO meter in the car beforehand, to see how bad it was, but I was scared to know. So you win some, and lose some. I still have a lot of things to do to Tess, but I'm just going to order parts and wait for the WOF to run out in July. Once that's run out, I'll use that as a chance to take her off the road for a bit to do some work, like stripping the interior and fixing the sump gasket leak.

As someone that is new to welding, I want to buy a welder. I can get both of these at a similar price, does anyone have an opinion of which one would be the better option? I have heard inverter is a good thing? https://www.cigweld.com.au/product/weldskill-135-multi-process-welding-inverter/ https://www.cigweld.com.au/product/weldskill-135-mig-portable-welding-machine/ Alternatively, anyone have any better option under the $500 mark?

I also used a sheet of paper lol. Would be keen to know if there is anything decent out there

My Vitesse has a factory fitted skid plate under the steel tank that hangs under the car, you know, because race car.

These brakes have been the bane of my existence, but finally, I may have them sorted. So I left off last time with testing the replacement servo, and finding out for sure that my old one was as leaky as a leaky thing. Obviously that was no good, so it was time to swap them over. To remove the old servo and master, first you suck all the fluid out with your handy dandy vacuum pump. Of course being a spit res, half of it is still full of fluid with no way to drain. Its OK, you can tip this out later. Then a small container and some rags were placed under the master, and the two brake pipes were cracked off. The larger nut was a little tight so needed some persuasion. With the pipes removed from the master, it was only a matter of removing the two nuts that hold the master to the servo. Then with some percussive persuasion, off came the master, revealing how much it had been leaking and stripping the paint off the servo. To remove the servo, first you must remove the four nuts that hold it to the firewall. These are accessed via the drivers footwell area, and access is a heck of a lot better if you remove the glovebox first, but it's still a nasty task to do. You also need to remove the split pin, washer and pin holding the clevis to the pedal. But that's not the really nasty part of this job. That goes to removal and refitting of the actual servo. The only tip I can give, is to protect your paint on the guard, and use some brute force. Eventually it will come free. Thankfully no signs of rust on the firewall, but there was some missing paint and scuffs, so I gave it a quick shot of Zinc paint to protect it. Since I had the Zinc paint out, I also touched up a couple other spots that have caused me some bother. The strut tower and inner guard near the battery were covered in these little rust spots under the paint. No idea whats happened there, maybe a battery exploded in the past? Anyway, it needed to be treated and tidied up. A wire brushed it all back, treated the rust spots and sprayed Zinc paint on it. It's not an ideal match, and it's not gloss, but it will protect it and make it look black again until I can one day paint the whole bay properly. The replacement servo had some missing paint, so that also got a shot of Zinc paint to tidy it up It didn't have as much missing paint as the old servo did! And the old master had a layer of black goop in the bottom of the reservoir. The replacement master came up well with a degrease and clean The next day, when the paint was dry, I transferred the firewall-servo gasket to the replacement servo, and refitted. This was a pig of a job, but once again, protect the paint on the guard, and persuade it into place. Refit the washers, nuts and clevis pin/washer/split pin I smothered the mating face of the master cylinder, and the studs with copper grease, and fit the master. I filled it up to the MAX line with new fluid. It's a rather different colour to what was in the old reservoir, despite having changed that not too long ago. Interestingly, there are two different caps. The original res had a cap with removable center with the fluid level sensor, and a little red cup that sat in the neck of the res to presumably, smooth out ant fluctuations in fluid level. The replacement master came with a cap with a black electrical connector, and the sensor is encased in what would be the red part of the above cap, but it's now part of the cap. Because I could easily clean out the original cap, I chose to run with that one instead of the replacement. So with everything buttoned up and no obvious signs of leaks, I started the engine up to check the booster operation. Obvious without bleeding the system I didn't have any pressure in the pedal, but I wanted to check for any hissing. After a couple of minutes running, no obvious issues, and no hissing. I did notice one thing though.... Since our garage is under the house I decided to get a Carbon Monoxide monitor and alarm for the garage, to make sure we don't end up with CO silently killing us (we also have a smoke alarm in the hallway above that also monitors CO levels). After running Tess for a couple of minutes with the door behind her half open, we went from 0ppm (parts per million in the air), to about 85ppm. This isn't enough to trigger the alarm instantly, but will after an hour or so of that level. Higher levels have shorter trigger times, but the effects can be felt from about 50ppm, and 100ppm is enough to give you a decent headache. 200ppm is a loss of judgement, and 800ppm will kill you in 2 hours. Its serious stuff. I opened the doors fully and the levels started to drop Until we hit zero again (I also wall mounted the alarm above my work bench for visibility) These alarms with the monitor on them are cheap insurance, just to make sure you aren't working in a hazardous environment. Moving along, since everything was together and not leaking, I needed to bleed the system. This is where my new toy, the QuickJack, came into it. I got the car in the air, with the lovely wife in the drivers seat, and set about bleeding the brakes. I started at the rear, and got nothing. No fluid at all. I hadn't drained the lines, so I knew there was fluid in there, but the master wasn't pushing it through. We had an air lock. I had read horror stories about people having to bench bleed master cylinders, so I was hoping to not have that issue. I cracked off both of the lines at the master cylinder, and had my helper slowly pump the pedal. Eventually out came some air, followed by fluid, but only from the smaller line. I bled this until fluid came out freely, and then tightened the smaller line up. This then allowed the bigger line to bleed, so out came air followed by fluid. Thankfully this restored normal service, and fluid (albeit full of air) flowed from the bleed valves on the brakes. I started at the rear and worked my way forward, getting all the old fluid, and air out. I had to bleed the rear a few times to get all the air out, and get good pedal feel. The old fluid in the rear was also cloudy for some reason. Once the air was out, and the pedal was solid I dropped the car down, and cleaned up. The next step was a test drive. So how do the new, completely overhauled brakes work? Amazing. Better than they ever have since I got Tess. The pedal is firm, but progressive with good feel. The brakes bite hard when told to, and no sinking or softness in the pedal. The pedal feel is much more like Effie, who had a very nice pedal. Hopefully I finally have the brakes sorted. I took Tess out for a nice hard run to meet up with some friends tonight, and Tess is running better than ever. Obviously the servo was leaking vacuum and causing a lack of response and smoothness. Sadly the fancy (but old) Optima Redtop battery chose to give up tonight though (before I went out), so I swapped that for a spare I had around, but will need to buy a new battery soon as I removed that spare from Effie as it wasn't starting easily. In the mean time it's finally time to get some road time with her.

Surely it would need some sort of metal shield under the plastic tank to protect it from the road?

ding ding ding, early rotary of some sort. This is an RX-5/121 gearbox Now, what sort of saddo whacks a Vitesse V8 LT77 box behind a rotary?!

Looks similar to some rotary/13b ones?

Can do. The adaptor plates are very home made.

I know its a shitty pic, but would anyone have a clue what the bellhousing on my spare LT77 gearbox is? Looks to have an adaptor plate and no obvious markings. The biggest give away for me would be the hole in the top, and the two studs which i presume are for the slave cylinder. Its not RV8 or 2600/2300. My google-foo isnt working on this one.

After rebuilding the calipers an issue that was slightly noticeable before, was very pronounced now. The brake pedal was sinking. This was not ideal. The pedal had been soft and a little sink-y before I rebuilt the calipers, and I was hoping that the calipers may have been the cause of it, but clearly not. If anything, having all the pistons working properly had made the issue more evident, and holding pressure on the pedal would now cause it to gradually sink to the floor. Unfortunately having just reassembled the calipers days before the car had to be moved into storage due to losing our house, there was nothing I could do at the time, and I had to drive her to storage. Needless to say driving down the hill from home was interesting; having to keep pumping the pedal to build pressure back up. I got there OK, and I got her to her new home again later. A sinking pedal, with no fluid loss, means the master cylinder for the braking system was leaking fluid internally, passed the seals. Whether this was from the car sitting for so many years, or if it had just worn out, I'm not sure. The other issue I had noticed, was that when shutting off the car there was a hissing noise coming from under the bonnet. I tracked this down to coming from the brake servo (or brake booster as its otherwise known as). This would indicate it was leaking vacuum, so that wouldn't be helping at all. I was initially going to just rebuild the master cylinder, but once I narrowed down the noise to the servo I knew it was going to be a bigger job than just the master and started looking for other options. I would need to at the least, replace the servo (as rebuild kits are NLA) and rebuild the master. Rimmers has both, and even do them as a pair for a discount, but the freight made the parts rather unattractive. I was wary about getting an old used one that had been sitting on a shelf somewhere for years, so wasn't too keen on getting something locally from a wrecker (if there was even anything still around). I did end up going for a secondhand pair of servo and master, from a car that had been driven at speed into a tree, and came worse off. The seller claimed the servo was only two years old, and the master worked well (maybe too well...) and wasn't leaking. It was cheap enough to take a punt and hope it worked. The replacement parts arrived the other day but I haven't had a chance to unbox and inspect them until today. It's a bit dirty and covered in polystyrene from the packing, but there are no signs of fluid leaks or peeling paint on the servo under the master (like my current one does). There aren't may ways to test if the servo is OK or not, but one of them is to see if it will hold a vacuum. I happen to have a small vacuum hand pump, so I plugged it into the vacuum line and drew a vacuum. Being such a big unit it took a while, but eventually I drew a decent vacuum, and sure enough to held it for a few minutes without dropping. Great success. Of course I did the same test to the one on the car.... the results were uh... different. I checked and double checked all the connections, but no matter how much I squeezed, I could not draw any vacuum at all. I guess that confirms that then, the servo is poked. I can't really test much of the master, but I did split it from the servo to see if there were any signs of leaks. Plenty of grease, but no brake fluid. Excellent. It will be interesting to strip down the failed servo and master and see how it compares to this one. I'll tidy up the mating faces, and then use some copper grease before reassembly as they were a little seized together this time. I still need to drain the brake fluid res, and removed the failed parts and fit these replacements, and then bleed the whole system. First though, I need a new, very expensive addition to my workshop tools, just to make my life easier.

A month later; Its been a long month; without Tess, internet or for the most part, a home. But now all of that is over. We purchased, and finally moved into our house just over a week ago. We are still surrounded by an ever shrinking pile of boxes (where does all this crap come from, and where does it go now?!) but at least everything is with us again. Our two goldfish were being babysat whilst we had no home, as we didn't want to try to move them each week to a different AirBNB. Sadly, after over 6 years of him being around, our little guy Stan "High Fin" Lee passed away the day before we were to pick them up. He was an old chap, so it wasn't totally unexpected, but its a shame he's gone, and he couldn't wait a day and not make the babysitter feel bad. His little bro, Dwight, has taken up residence in our lounge now, and is doing well. RIP in the big tank in the sky Stan. Dwight doing Dwight things. Anyway, Tess also came home the other day. She had also been babysat which was a great help, as she was able to be stored away in a dry garage and I didn't have to try to move her around. A huge thanks to our babysitters for their help. Tess seems happy in her new home, although she takes up an awful lot of it In order to help reduce what we put into storage, I filled the boot and back seat with spare parts. There was a lot of weight in there but the new suspension handled it OK. One thing I did change as soon as I got her into the garage, was to replace the tailgate struts, so that I didn't end up being decapitated by the stupidly heavy tailgate. I went to Supercheap with a spare strut and matched it up against the ones they had on the shelf, and tried to get the highest force they had, which was 450N. These are a little longer than the original struts, so you do have to take care when fitting them as the top edge of the tailgate might contact the body, but in normal use they work perfect, even with the Vitesse spoiler. The other small thing I did was to add my trickle charge hard wire connector to the battery. As Tess sits around a bit, it'll be good to keep her battery topped up, without having to have clips on the battery and the bonnet open. So that's where we are today. A good second-hand brake booster and master cylinder arrived this morning, so that will be fitted shortly, and then we should be back on the road. I have big plans to get this car in better shape, including stripping out the interior for cleaning (and fixing the heater box issues). More on that later.

Well, all good things come to an end I guess. I'll get back to that in a moment, but first, a couple of updates. First, the Mini has been sold tonight. Although I will miss it, it was a great little car to drive, it needed to be sold. Owning it made me realise that the even without the supercharger the Cooper is actually a really great little car. Built like a BMW, but small, nimble and like a modern version of an old Mini (unsurprisingly). A+ would own again (with boost though). Next up, Tess had a wheel alignment the other day. Thanks to Hutt Valley Tyres for aligning it. They treated Tess with enthusiasm and respect, which I really appreciate. The guy was stoked to work on her, and was full of compliments. A stark contrast to a call I made to another workshop the day before who, when I asked for an alignment, proceeded to rubbish my car over the phone when I said it was an SD1 I needed an alignment on. Pro-Tip, if you want customers, do NOT rubbish their car. You never know when that "piece of junk" is actually their baby, no matter what you think of it. Here she is up on the alignment hoist. I was impressed though, although the steering needed straightening (the wheel was on the wonky by 1/4 turn), I actually managed to get the toe pretty damn close just by eye when I reassembled it. Only needed tweaking by about a mm. Now the car tracks straight, and the wheel isn't on the piss. Lovely. Unfortunately, now that the front brake calipers work properly, the damn master cylinder and servo/brake booster have packed a sad. The servo has started hissing when shutting off the engine (indicating a vacuum leak), and the brake pedal now sinks slowly to the floor if you keep pressure on it. I tried bleeding the brakes again, but although the pedal feels nice with the engine off straight after bleeding, with the booster helping the pedal sinks. I suspect fluid is bypassing the piston seal, and leaking internally (as im not losing fluid). There are signs that the master has been leaking down the servo in the past, its stripped the paint off the front under the master. I'm working on options now, it's either get the master rebuilt locally and i'll re-kit the servo, or buy a new master and servo from Rimmers. But for now, that will have to wait as there are more pressing matters... After five years, I have to move house. Unfortunately the landlord has come into some serious financial issues and the only way out is to sell the rental we are in. We came to an agreement that instead of running open homes and selling it whilst we are still here, we have three weeks to move out. There is good and bad news to go with that. The good news is that we are going to buy a house of our own; the new Tastes Like Petrol HQ. The bad thing is that we are still about a month away from having anywhere to move to. This leaves us with a sticky situation of a crossover period without a home. Tess will hopefully be going to the same storage lockup that Nicks Vitesse is at, so that will keep her out of trouble, and off the street. All our other belongings are going into storage. I have a buyer for Effie, so hopefully (and sadly) she will be sold next weekend. I'll likely shed a tear when she drives off, it's like selling your first child. The buyer sounds like a great owner for her, and he is super excited. Moving is also why it was important to sell the Mini, I'm losing my parking spaces, and don't want to have to try to find parking for that car too. So that's where we are; it's all chaos and mess. Due to this, I'll have to take a hiatus from posting as there just won't be anything happening, and I won't have a home and possibly no internet access. Of course I'll still be on Twitter and Instagram. I will be back, and hopefully, bigger and better. As always, if you have it, drive it... or fix it.

Oh gosh that tub is bloody horrifying. Im amazed there is anything left of his legs looking at that! Dude made some cool stuff though, that little single seater looked great.

Seems to be bit of a grey area then. Note 8 seems to indicate that fitting an HID bulb to a standard light with no modification is illegal, which we already know, but it doesn't seem to imply it would be legal if the lights were modified to accept the HID correctly, only if the whole light is replaced. The projector units I have use a very defined cut off so would perform well, and wouldn't have the issues HID bulbs usually have. Maybe I just do it and see how I go.

On the topic of fitting HID bulbs to lights. What about retrofit projectors in old glass headlights? I want to fit retrofit projectors into the standard SD1 housings, so it wouldn't be using the reflector anymore and then use HID bulbs in the projectors. Would that be legal? The lenses have some faint lines cast into them but I can't see it breaking up the beam pattern.

@Roman when you say wet layup, you literally mean soaking the matting in resin and then just letting it rest for 5-10 minutes in the tub? I would’ve thought the resin would go off in that time? havent done FG yet but really keen to start soon.

But it also sounds like your VTNZ is being an asshole, so i would abandon that and go elsewhere. You might not win that battle. Bugger that rigmarole for a joke.

This is kinda what i did with my first single turbo converted legacy. Went to Subaru and had them write a letter that said that a 1996 Legacy GTB and a 1996 WRX STI had the same power output (as i had a full STI engine), and VTNZ were happy with that. That was years ago though, well before they updated the VIRM to stop people doing that with turbos.

They still use part of the big warehouse building as the nationwide distribution center for Mitsubishi new and used parts. Looks like a good turnout, some really nice stuff there.

The time has come, Effie has been sold. With all that's been happening recently, and trying to get my fleet of cars from 4 down to 2, after selling the Mini it was inevitable that eventually Effie would also find a new owner. I was contacted by the buyer, Nick, a couple of weeks ago regarding potentially buying Effie. He was a long time fan of SD1s and had been pining to buy a Vitesse for years. Back many years ago he planned to buy one in the UK and bring it back to NZ, but unfortunately life got in the way and it never came to fruition. He has tried to buy a Vitesse in the past and it just didn't manage to happen, so when he saw Effie for sale, at a reasonable price (especially compared to the Vitesse that have been for sale recently) he gave me a call and we went from there. Of course when selling a classic British car, not everything goes smoothly. The agreement was that since I was selling for less than the asking price the car would come without the headunit (my flash $200+ JVC unit) and would have the standard steering wheel fitted instead of the wooden Momo wheel. Swapping these over was a piece of cake... The issue came the next day, the evening before Nick was flying in from Nelson for pick the car up, after I had washed the car, when I noticed that the interior lights aren't working. Hmm, that's odd I thought.... must be a fuse. Sure enough, I found a popped fuse. Figuring I had popped it removing the radio, I removed it and went to replace it. The original spec for the car calls for a 25A fuse, but I noted there was a 20A fuse fitted. Knowing I had a spare 25A, I popped that into place and immediately noted that it was warm to the touch. Odd. The interior lights were now on again though which was a start, but the left hand one was dim. Weird. And then I smelt it. Melting plastic. Shit. And then I saw it, the massive plume of white smoke pouring out of the engine bay. Double shit. I quickly sprinted to the driver's side, flung open the glovebox and ripped on the bonnet release. Throwing open the bonnet I quickly spun off the nut for the negative battery terminal to kill the power (damn glad I have a wing nut for quick release) and went to see what damage had been done. Thankfully an inspection of the area the smoke came from showed only one wire was melted; the power feed for the bonnet lights. I have taped the end up, but all of the insulation has been melted off the bonnet side of the wire, and the car side of the wire started to melt towards the loom bundle (thankfully stopping short of melting through the bundle). It turns out that some time in the cars past someone had pinched the power feed for the lights in the bonnet hinge, so obviously years of movement in the metal had worn through the insulation, and yesterday it chose to create a dead short. Annoyingly the 25A fuse I fitted didn't blow. So once I had tested and checked it wasn't all going to try to melt down again, I removed the 25A fuse and refitted a new 20A. Everything still works, except the bonnet lights obviously, which is a relief. I'm lucky it happened in the driveway, and in my driveway at that (not the new owners), so damage could be caught quickly and minimised. WIth that crisis averted, Effie was looking nice and clean and ready to go. Today was the day, and after a quick check over that all the fluids were good, and that she hadn't tried to burn herself to the ground again we were good to go. Since it was the first time since picking the car up in 2016 that I had driven with the standard steering wheel, I was pleasantly surprised by it. Sure, it was huge, and weird shaped, and rubbed on my thighs when I turned, but it was comfortable and easy to drive with. It also lightened the steering due to the increased diameter over the Momo. Not a bad wheel over all, but not as nice in the hand as the Momo. We were picking Nick up from the Airport, so after a nice half hour cruise into town I met up with Nick and we had a good chat and look over the car. He seemed very happy with her, and I could tell straight away he was the right buyer for her. I couldn't be too picky as there aren't a huge amount of SD1 weirdos out there like us, but I could never risk selling her to someone who would disrespect her, or worse still, wreck/strip her for parts. Nicks plans are to tidy her up, and make somewhat of a Vitesse replica by fitting the Vitesse spoilers and suspension. It's a good plan and he should be rewarded with years of happy motoring as long as he keeps up with the maintenance. Being a panel beater by trade, I feel he is in the right industry to take Effie to that next step and make her really shine. It also helps he looks right at home in the driver's seat. It's a bittersweet day. I'm glad she is sold as I just wasn't doing her justice anymore. I couldn't drive her as much as I wanted, and being homeless soon I wouldn't even have anywhere to store her. It is sad though, I put so much blood, sweat and swears into this car to save her and make her what she is today. From a dilapidated old bucket that ran badly and was (once again) trying to burn herself to the ground, to a car that im genuinely proud of, and could just jump into, drive and enjoy. She will be missed greatly, but times change, and now she can be enjoyed more and get out and do what she does best; cruising. Bye my lovely.

Man that leather looks lush as. Thats such a tidy looking example

Alignment done, steering wheel no longer 1/4 turn out. Despite that, I got the toe within a mm of correct by eye when it put it all together. Notbad.jpeg I suspect the reason the steering was out is that the previous steering rack wasn't setup with the center finder like I did on the new rack, so when I counted turns on the rod ends and spin them on the same the toe was visually way out. I adjusted it by eye but this threw the center out of whack. all good now though.

With the brakes rebuilt, it was time to get it all together and back on the ground. It's finally time to finish the work I started a month ago. The calipers are now rebuilt, and ready to fit. Before I got all excited and fitted the calipers, I wanted to get the rest of the car ready, so it needed the front under tray and spoiler refitted. When I removed the old undertray I noted it was completely buggered, and cracked in multiple places. It was held together with hopes and dreams (and engine oil). Thankfully smart me kept the spare under tray I got with my bulk lot of parts ages ago, so I pulled that down out of the ceiling and fitted it to the car. It's not perfect, it has a couple of broken spots but its way better than the old one. I refitted the front spoiler too, making it a bit more secure than it was previously. I still need to fix the cracks, but it looks OK from a distance. Another thing I needed to fix, since my parts came in, is why there was always a bad fuel smell from the rear of the car. When taking the LH rear shock out I noticed the fuel tank vent hose looked pretty average. Upon removal, this is what I noted Yes, they go right through the hose Well that will do it. Everyone should check this hose, as when the tank is full fuel could potentially leak out of this hose. Rimmers have the hose available, so on went a new one of those and a new clamp. Now, back to the main task. Brakes. Refitting is easy, it's just the two bolts per caliper. The perfectly aligned genuine pipe on the LH side. I had a bit of a fight on my hands with the braided hose nut that clamps to the strut, but a rattle gun freed that up. Doesn't look bad The RH side, as I mentioned in my previous brake post, doesn't have a genuine pipe available. The fittings are the same as the LH side, but as I suspected, the kink in the pipe is slightly out of place. It lines up nicely with that lower slot, but needs to come to the right a bit. Some gentle pressure, and it all came together. It's not perfect, but a lot easier than making a new pipe. In went the pads, with new retainer plates and reused pins And then it was a matter of bleeding the brakes. I started with the two front ones just to get fluid into them, and then bled as per the book, starting at the rear. The fluid from the rear lines was pretty gross. Dark and it appeared to have some floating matter in it. Thankfully with all the work I have done, all of the fluid in the master cylinder had been replaced, so I flushed the lines and it all came through nice. It took a bit of work to get all the air out of the front, but the pedal now feels pretty good. I think it will get better again as the pads bed in a bit better. Oh wait, so does that mean she is on the road again?! Yes. Oh yes she is. She has lost of a bit of her aggressive low stance, but still sits lower than Effie, and the improvements in ride quality and not smashing the front spoiler on everything make up for it. The springs should settle a bit too over time. Before After Ignore the massive difference in gloss...! So, how does she drive? Gearbox is much quieter, although a little more notchy. Hopefully this wears in a bit as I drive her more. The brakes? Well they were a bit pants initially, but even that was better than it was. Now with some hard braking to bed the pads in, she pulls up pretty well. Pulls up straight, and can lock the brakes if needed. The pedal has a little mush to it, so I'll need to bleed the brakes again, obviously there is still some air in there, but it's so much better than it was. Oh, and the suspension? Bloody awesome. Instead of being all crashy and thumpy like it was, the ride is firm, but she floats over bumps like she should. The rear that used to bottom out harshly, regularly, now dampens nicely. I tested it on a couple of bumps that I used to dodge because it literally hurt to go over them, and it was almost a pleasure now. I haven't driven her hard yet because I need to get an alignment, but already I can tell the cornering is flatter and more controlled. Oh, and I can get in and out of the garage without blocks now. Its cost a lot, and taken a bit of time, but it was all well worth it.

Well finally, the parts from Rimmers arrived! We left Part 1 with the calipers off, and the pistons removed from one of the calipers. Because of the corrosion on the pistons I did remove, I chose to order a full set of pistons, instead of reusing some of them as planned. In the meantime I tried some paint stripper to remove the paint from the calipers. It was a bad idea. Who ever would have thought caliper paint was pretty resistant to chemicals? The whole lot kinda turned to a sticky mush, without doing a lot. So I said bugger it, washed the calipers off, and hit them with the grinder and wire brush again. They came up pretty well really. Before the next step, I had to completely strip the calipers of their seals and pistons. I popped the calipers out with compressed air, and used a small pick to gently remove the piston seal. The dust seal at the top of the bore was a bit harder because its held in with a metal retainer, which had rusted in place. To remove this I used a small pick to tear a gap in the seal, and then a narrow flat blade screwdriver to pop the retainer and seal out. This is the top seal and retainer With all those ripped out, the calipers went into 10L of Evapo-Rust for two days to clean any corrosion off them. The calipers responded very well to the rust treatment, with no more corrosion hiding around the bolts on the back, and the seal retainer areas are spotless now. Since the calipers were now just bare metal, I didn't have much time from rinsing them off to get paint on them otherwise corrosion will set in again. I smeared a ton of red rubber grease over the bores, just to make sure they wouldn't corrode. Rubber grease plays nice with brake fluid, and wont swell seals. And then on went the masking tape. I completely masked the flat areas around the bores And the mounting tabs. I left these unpainted because the lower one is sandwiched between the hub and steering bracket. I didn't want paint to cause issues there. After a wipe down with wax and grease remover, on went the paint. For some reason Mrs Petrol didn't think it was a good idea to bake the calipers in the oven, so I made do with cooking them with a heat gun to set the paint. The true baking will happen on the car anyway. Yesterday the parts I ordered from Rimmers arrived, so I set about rebuilding the calipers and preparing them to go on the car. Off came the masking tape A quick wipe out of the grease in the bores, and in went the piston seals. They slip easily into place. Just make sure they don't get twisted during fitting and use lots of red grease. MMM, new piston and seals And with an old piston. This isn't even the worst piston, but has a lot of pitting. With the piston seal smothered in red grease and inserted in the bore, in goes the piston, also smothered in red grease. I assembled the dust seal into the retainer, and slipped it over the piston. Now, you can't just push this retainer into place by hand, it needs to be pressed into place. I have seen many ways to do this, but the simplest was posted in a YouTube video by an Alan Phillips. Big thanks to him for posting the details on it. My version of it involves metric fittings, so it's a 75mm long M10 bolt and a couple of nuts, two 2" OD washers (minimum), and a handful of small M10 washers. I got these from Bunnings. Because of the bolt I used, I had a lot of unthreaded shank to cover before I could use a nut to clamp all the washers together, hence the massive lump of washers. Push the piston down by hand until it sits just above the seal retainer. Slip the tool into the caliper, being careful to not scrape the bore opposite the piston and unwind the lower nut to push the washer against the piston. Using a spanner, gently wind the nut down, this pushes against the top of the caliper, and will push both the piston and the seal retainer down into the bore. This pushes them in completely straight, and wont bend the retainer like it can using other methods. Does a pretty good job Rinse and repeat, another 7 times. Love the nice clean metal. I ordered a pair of new brake pipes. Only part number CRC3238 is available. This is the LH pipe for the single pipe caliper. The RH side is no longer available. I originally ordered two as I was going to cut one up to use the fittings with a new pipe that would be made up for the RH side. More on that later.... So with all the pistons and seals fitted, the only thing to do next was to fit them to the car.