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Sunbeam

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Everything posted by Sunbeam

  1. Just looked it up and it seems Digger’s brakes and cables still operate on Halswell Junction Road..
  2. Today was a trillion degrees out, so I decided to do some more work in the shed where it was 7 trillion degrees. I dug the 125 out of its corner and I have placed it on the hoist for a big push… I need to remove the springs so that I can eventually drop them off in town to have the leves reset, and have a new pair of fronts made up according to the 125T recipe. First I had to remove the hand brake cables so I could pull them out of their brackets on the top leaf. Disappointingly this led to the discovery of more brokenness. Weird because it’s not rusty or chafed, just broken. It almost looks like fatigue damage. Pressing on, the bolts all undid easily and there is no corrosion evident on the bolts or in the bush sleeves at all. The rubber is quite perished however, and not surprisingly since they’re probably the original bushes. I got the transmission jack in there just to take the load but it wasn’t really needed. The bolts were under minimal tension. The way the leaves are mounted is slightly unconventional. They don’t use U bolts around the axle housing, instead there’s a bracket which also locates the bottom of the shock. Next, the front springs. If you’ve perused @azzurro‘s excellent 125 build thread you may know the front coils are looong. It’s a bit of a palaver to get them out because you have to feed the individual parts of the spring compressor into the spring through the hole in the shock tower recently vacated by the shock absorber, and then assemble it inside the spring and with your 3rd and 4th arms keep the hooks from popping off until you have cranked sufficient pressure on the thing to hold it all in place. You absolutely have to have the hooks as far apart as you can physically manage because even when the compressor tool bottomed out, I still needed a pry bar to pop it out of place. The difference between the free length and the captive length is around 200mm!! There’s the little bundle of energy.. Job done! On the shopping list now is spring eye and shackle bushes, new nyloc nuts for reassembly and a new handbrake cable or get the cable remade by the cable barries… I forget the name. Someone?
  3. Also, leaning towards the leatherbound Momo California, soz @azzurro. I love the look of the mahogany one but it’s quite a bit more $$$ and I just don’t love gripping wood as much as I like leather… just sayin.
  4. More Visa thrashing today. New balljoints, shocks, spigot bearing, timing tensioner bearing, spindle nuts and a couple of oil filters to pad out the shipping are on the way. KYB shocks from Rock Auto $32 nzd a corner! I ordered shocks for a 124 coupe as these should help when some low is installed. Pretty sure they’re the same fit but a smidge shorter than 125 shocks…fingers crossed. Also, I got the head back from the machine shop the day before Christmas eve. There was a last minute drama as some of the valve stems were under spec/had massive wear grooves (CHANGE YOUR OIL, FOLKS!) so a quick pillage of my spare engine and a trip to town ensued. I didn’t have high hopes as the spare engine is even grungier than the one I’m rebuilding, but we managed to make a full engine set..whew! Apparently other than that my head is mint and has had the lightest of skims.
  5. Time for retail therapy. A Poll: A: B: C: D: Opinions Here
  6. Next, I was fizzing to drop the pistons in, so I unpacked the big end shells and….OH NO…. they’re for the wrong engine! I’ve emailed the supplier and he’s looking into it. This won’t be a quick fix because Christmas and they came from Western Australia. 2mm too small: There’s not much I can do except wrap the engine up and try to keep dust out. As an outlet for my anger I decided to remove the cooked-on sump gasket. Twist knot cup wire brush 1, old sump gasket 0.
  7. I cannot however, wait a week and twiddle my thumbs so let’s put some bits back in the inside. Time to open some decades old packaging. Check out the Fiat and Lancia engraving on the shells. I love NOS. It’s quite satisfying to pop in the shells, smear on the lube and finally nestle the crank in place being careful not to knock the thrust bearings out of place. Caps torqued and crank still turns smoothly, yay!
  8. Then I masked the block. And finally I get to apply the Ford Grey engine paint which is very close to the original Fiat grey. EXCEPT….. IT’S NOT FORD GREY!! Crap crap crap! It looks stupid. I did the full coat to prevent rusting. Not sure what I’ll do about it. I might let it cure and then go over it with something else. I’m not sure how this error occurred.
  9. I’ve cleaned up the front and rear crank seal housings and fitted new seals, also the oil filter housing. Then outside with the block for a hot soapy wash. Of course, the bores started to flash rust immediately despite me working as fast as I could to dry everything. I soaked them in CRC as quickly as possible and wiped it away as well as I could.
  10. Sunbeam

    PAINT THREAD

    I have the 16cfm toolshed one. GHFWII and hard to look past for the money. Edit: just looked and it’s on special for 899
  11. Tis the season to pull finger. I’m eagerly anticipating the return of my head from the engine shop, so therefore I feel it is time to start prepping the bits and pieces for engine assembly. Most minor components were put in plastic bins upon disassembly and left, and thus are caked in baked oil filth. The first job I gave myself was to strip and clean the oil pump. Job 1 was to carefully prise the pickup screen off the pump, as there were several bits of hard carbon lodged in the holes of the mesh. CHANGE YOUR OIL PEOPLE!! There are just 3 M6 bolts holding the two halves of the pump body together, and it pays to have a good hold of both halves as you remove them or else the relief spring might try and launch parts across the workshop. I don’t have a parts washer, so a container with some liquid gold (petrol) has to suffice. The petrol soon starts to look like the crude from whence it came. There is some light scratching on the mating parts and inside the housing. The flat parts got a tickle up on a sheet of 800 and then 1200. You can’t feel the scratches in the housing so I left them… the car had mint oil pressure before. All reassembled with a lashing of 20w50 and a new drive gear. The old drive gear looked fine, but they are considered a consumable in Fiat World, as they have a very important job. You see, the gear also drives the distributor (via the auxiliary shaft off the timing belt) and if the internal splines shear (a known occurrence on old engines) the motor will continue to run but the oil pump will suddenly stop! Now wrapped in my Sunday shirt ready for fitting later.
  12. Sunbeam

    diesel spam

    4M41 is a fabulous engine and will go forever if looked after. But yes, they do gunk up something fierce. interesting (to me) aside, I just pulled the manifold off my BMW M57 diesel motor to replace an injector and by diesel standards it was clean a f. Running full egr/dpf etc and 356,000 on the clock.
  13. Also, I came to ask a question. My trailer has LED lights and I never had an issue with them. My latest tow rig, a beeeemer X5 has a conniption fit when I plug the trailer in with fast flashing blinkers and bulb failure warnings for Africa. I suspect the trailer light module was not intended for use with LEDs and thus the low current draw is causing the strange behaviour and failure messages. I don’t want to change the lights, so is there anything else I could do? Fit resistors? I’m a numpty with electrickery….
  14. I spanned 3.6m for my mezzanine with a double 240x45, and used 190x45 joists with 21mm strand board flooring. It’s slightly springy, but like you I balked at the price of 300x50.
  15. 205/60 is bad enough with either Chyna specials or semi slicks available and not much in between.
  16. Can’t happen. Those wheels are only reproduced in 7 inch, and it wasn’t straight forward or cheap to source them either.
  17. Stock size was 175/82/13 so I’m already under geared and 205/60 will be even worse. Yes, I’m confident 205/60 will fit, but it’s a lot of tyre on a car that weighs less than a Suzuki Swift. The rim width and offset also increases the scrub radius, and wider tyres will do so to an even larger extent. EDIT: 205/60 vs stock is 7% smaller circumference so 100km/h goes from 3520rpm to 3766rpm
  18. What do you do when you’re not making progress but want to play with your car? Rims! Local good guys at Tyre General in Rangoon offered to pop one of my old tyres onto the new rim to assess the fit (technically I’m not allowed to run a 185 on a 7 inch rim) at no charge. The idea was to see if it looked too stretched and/or stupid. Head on view: Close up: Side profile: yes,yes, more slam required but there’s no engine in there! There is a spring compressor installed but still only got it down an inch. The stock springs are looooong and getting them out will be fun. Not. Please comment on the stupidity factor or otherwise in the Discussion thread
  19. Is that a momo prototipo you’re running? Do you know the diameter?
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