ThePog

I did a thing.

First I went to visit @yoeddynz who kindly welded the crack up.

I also got a preview of exciting Imp developments....

When I got home I had a look to see what that plug thread was. Interestingly it appeared to be an M22x1.5 parallel thread, which meant a tapered plug made very little sense.

And it just so happened that I had an M22x1.5 tap and some threaded rod. So I messed around for a while to get this;

I put some pretty mega threadlocker on the insert, so it shouldn't go anywhere.

Now the fucked shaft. It was pretty obvious that the broken bit wasnt a new development, and that the box had basically been working ok like that, so I did the obvious thing and just put it back together with the broken bit back in place, retained by the gear and the retaining nut. It feels fine.

I figure that worst case I lose 5th at some point, by which time I will have a new box to go in. I will lift an optimistic pint to that notion tonight....

The bits I need for that Wof have arrived, the wheel bearing might be a mission, but we will see.

In the meantime I have been hoovering/relearning what I need to know about DCNF carbs and have had some useful and enlightening conversations, some of which can be found in my DCNF thread..

I also decided to replace the expensive oil in the tranny with fresh expensive oil. Mostly cos I drained it all out to put a bit of sealant on the drain plug as it was dripping a tad. When it came out it was kindof murky which I guess is the new oil washing out and interacting with the old. So I did that and it resulted in a pretty significant drip from the drain plug regardless of my sealing efforts.

I did a wee bit of investigation, which has had this slightly annoying result;

I have a spare box which I stripped enough to get that housing off, pretty much for practice but to see if I could just use that. But unfortunately they are different.

This might mean enlisting @yoeddynz in some dirty welding duties if I cant find someone slightly closer.

If it welds ok I will tap it out with a parallel thread rather than taper and machine a flat face so it can use a washer for sealing.

Took it for a WOF, WOF not achieved.

However there was nothing show stoppy in there.

A wheel bearing with too much play, a steering tie rod end, and the right rear brake had a lot of fluid around. This one was a little weird when we first bled it, it wasnt passing fluid initially but then it came free. It might be the handbrake adjustment playing up. It might just be all the fluid used during bleeding, anyway I'll have a looksee.

And the low beams were not working, but I am pretty sure its the switch playing up.

So overall nothing bad or even unexpected.

And just look at that awesome wedgyness;

Yea the brakes.

I ordered the whole shebang, good old Brian at The Italian Job hasnt invoiced me yet so no idea what the damage is, but fuck it it needed to happen really.

I pulled all the calipers and gave them a cursory clean up;

The rears had a bit of pitting but not so much that I thought it worth replacing, I may order some pistons anyway for just in case. This is the worst of it;

Then the bits didnt arrive til Saturday morning, but it was exciting when they did;

I had already decided to spend some time giving the truck some new oil and filters, so I cracked on with that.

After I drained the oil I did get distracted by that Honda S800, which ended up being a bad plan as when I got back I missed the quite important service stage where you put the sump plug back in before washing out the engine with 10 liters of pristine Delo 400MGX and dumping it onto the garage floor

Fuckety fuck fuck. And fuck.

Anyway after I had flagellated myself for a while I cleaned things up then went back to the X, at each corner replacing the seals and discs etc and bolting it all back together;

Then today I enlisted the wife to help bleed the brakes, which I had to do many times as a lot of quite ugly fluid kept coming out. After that I took it for a gentle test drive which was pretty meh, then I bled them again and they came up mint.

So hopefully a wof this week maybe....

This was pretty cool, 10k redline apparently.

The wof this week is off the cards. I thought I had better check why the handbrake was so pathetic and discovered that both rear calipers were basically seized. I thought the brakes were not as good, now I know why. 

I may as well rebuild all the calipers and if my visa can take the punishment I might get new discs and pads as well, I might have to sell some shit

So I to feel like I had achieved something I messed with wiring of the fuel sensing relay to try to make it work. @h4nd had given me a dose of RTFM so I reworked the wiring to suit, but now it doesn't work at all. I checked many things but no go. There is a good chance I toasted it when I wired it up wrong. I might just wire a normal relay up to and use the alternator as the signal wire.

I also poo'd up the washer tank some more as it was still leaking, tomorrow morning may tell me some things;

Then I decided to move the afr meter to somewhere where I could actually see it when driving.

Basically lots of tinkering with shit and avoiding jobs around the house that I should be doing.

Oh and yesterday I tuned/balanced  the carbs a bit, hopefully it will run a little better.

And also I noticed the gearbox drain plug was leaking....

Cool cool 

Yea so today I fixed a couple of issues with the windscreen washer, firstly trying to get the aftermarket nozzles to actually fire at the screen, then fixing the washer tank which for some reason is about 8 litres, most of which got dumped into the frunk overnight due to a crack. This I filled up with poo and hoped for the best. Then I addressed the extreme force needed to make the washer run, which meant pulling the stalks off and doing an excellent bodge which you dont need to know about in case my good name as an engineer is ruined, suffice to say they work perfectly now.

Then with the few hours still left in the day I made a rear valance thing, although the mesh looks pretty sparse irl so I might smash something slightly denser on there;

And I think thats pretty much it, I'll book a wof for next and see how that goes....

Fixed the rust hole, no pics cos boring.

Made a heatshield for the alternator, first drilling and tapping some brass hex to stand it off, then some CAD, then some shiny so it reflects heat;

Then I grabbed the pretty non functional catch can that I made for the truck, modified it so the wire wool was less in quantity and right before the outlet rather than at the inlet, which is why I suspected it didnt work well, then gave it some chode so it would fit in the engine bay;

Went and filled it with some 95 as it was pretty low and it definitely needs some time spent on tuning, the low throttle popping and banging sounds good but the afr tells me its not right.

Man it feels good to drive tho, the combo of the gogo and the noise is pretty great. If anything it sounds better now the air filter is on, a really purposeful growl.

I spent some time dicking round with the airbox as I didn't like the long studs coming up off the carbs, plus the carbs themselves seem to be mounted in a slightly different position and the airbox really didnt like sitting down in place.

So I made a new baseplate that fitted nice and put some 16mm tube in there so the screws could clamp it directly through the baseplate.

Its a bit cleaner looking too...

Then I glued the windshield trim on with some extra and probably non standard fixing methodologies;

I am missing the joiner bits but I might just poo the gap up for now once its cured in place.

A new and marginally sexier fuel pump arrived and got placed;

Ooh and here is my sexy top link what I made in place;

So just the rear valance to make, plus probably a heat shield for the alternator as its still close regardless of the wrap.

And the alternator light doesnt work for some reason.

And I found another sneaky little rust hole in the drivers floor. I should have noticed it as there was a 20mm stalactite of bog hanging down underneath, but obviously I didnt up til now. There is an argument for step drilling it out to 25mm and calling it a drain hole, but I will make a closer investigation.

Oh and I bolted most of the rest of the bits back on;