Adoom

54 minutes ago, Tender Raisin said:

Can you tow a car with no WOF or registration behind a car? Or does this come into a trailer category and you need WOF & registration?

Scenario. Work is having a track day at Ruapuna Raceway, 10min from my house. To Hire a trailer for the day is $250. Just looking for other options.

Reckon it will be fine.

Have done this before, possibly 15 years ago, and cop pulled us over thinking car at front was just slow and holding up traffic. Was real apologetic when he realised we were towing. He stopped the traffic so we could pull back out.

I have, 3 years ago, A-framed starlet with no wof or rego, but it did have plates. Pretty sure I called the police and asked if it was okay beforehand. Guy was totally not fussed and told me to just do it. I did hook up a cable to the trailer plug so the towed cars rear lights worked.   

What is acceptable to make a brake caliper out of? 

Does it have to be mild steel? Or can I use aluminium? I already have some aluminium bar stock that might do....

I made a scribble of what it might look like.

The thin section will be as thick as the original Triumph caliper lugs. At least 12.5mm I suspect.

Can I weld it? IE: make a flat one with spacers welded to it.

Hub and caliper look like this.

Buzzed the engine mounts on.

Wandering pick a part and measuring discs and calipers I decided that Subaru calipers would probably work. Also I had already decided on 26mm X 280mm discs from a peugeot and the Subaru discs were the same diameter and thickness.

It was a turbo Impreza of some kind. The chassis number started with "GGA....", but the rego and chassis plate where missing. I think it would be 2001+.

I still need to redrill the disc and make a sandwich plate to bolt it to the hub. Unfortunately this hub is scrap because I turned the location diameter for the disc ~0.5mm undersize. My lathe is small and I didn't want to risk misalignment by removing the hub from the chuck to test fit the disc so I just used the vernier caliper to check the size. Thinking about this now, next time I will leave the hub in the chuck, and remove the whole chuck from the lathe to test fit it to the disc. I have three more hubs, so I can only fuck up one more.

It looks like it will be straightforward to make the caliper adapter bracket.

1 hour ago, NickJ said:

I had an error between chassis number in the system and actual chassis number, something like a 1 and 7 mix up, man at the testing station was being a dick about it, but his boss took the papers, walked into the office and came back job done.

I have no idea what the actual process is other than it is possible.

Same here. Cert plate and chassis plate matched, but number in system was wrong. Obviously a transcription error. I'd noticed it at one point, then forgot about it for ages. VTNZ guy also noticed and said it had to be fixed. He sorted it out. I think he took some photos and filled out a form for me. I don't think it cost anything. 

I've got the SC400 1992 ecu diagram. I got it two years ago, so memory is hazy. I think I might have got it off the links provided by Nigel on an ancient forum post. Most links were broken, but with lots of digging and guess work using some of the still working links, I downloaded everything I could find.

PM me your email address and I'll send the diagram, I don't think I can post PDFs on the forum. 

Since the engine and box has mounts now, I suppose I should take the engine back out to look at modifying the sump and properly welding the engine mounts.

Bonus, the oil pickup pipe doesn't start bending at that step so I can cut this much out with no problem. This means I can lift the rack about 10-15mm, which means I can also shorten my spacers on the steering arms/tie rod ends. I do have an AC tig welder, but I haven't attempted any aluminium welding. I will need to find something to practice on. I plan on bolting the sump to to something flat and stiff to try keep it from warping. 

I also cleaned, prepped and zinc primed to weld the engine mounts on. I didn't grind down the original tack welds so I can use them to align the mounts.

So for my engine mounts and gearbox mounting plates...

Do I stitch weld them, or fully weld along all the edges?

10 minutes ago, SOHC said:

On the GX 200 look on top of the carb and you will see the plastic throttle stop screw, remove the screw and flick out that plastic thing underneath it, that is the pilot jet, and clean it, it’s plastic, I 100% garentee that’s the problem, you don’t even need to remove the carb.

I already did. I could not tell if it was blocked because it has a corner, but I did stick a bit of wire in there and sprayed carb cleaner through it. The spray pattern was uniform, so appears to be flowing properly.

I sprayed carb cleaner into the pilot... gallery, and it sprayed out of those tiny holes near the butterfly, so assume that's clean too.

The carb actually looked fairly clean before I cleaned it.

Made no difference though.

18 minutes ago, kseries.rookie said:

If you bang the choke off and give the throttle a twist are you able to maintain life in the motor or does it die completely?

It dies completely. If I wind the pilot screw out so far it feels like it's going to fall out, it will stay alive with the choke off. But twisting the throttle fast or slow will kill it.

17 minutes ago, Mof said:

Air leak?

Have you refitted the air filter? 

There is a tear in the gasket on the engine side, but as far as I can tell it closes up when the carb is installed. 

It has the factory filter. I have tried with and without, it makes no difference.

Hey guys. The honda clone GX200 in my minibike is not running properly.

It was stored for over a year. It wouldn't start after I dug it out.

I took out the main jet, it was blocked. I cleared it and now it starts easy as. I can rev it while the choke is on. It doesn't sound happy, it's farting and popping. But if I reduce the choke, or turn it off, it will die. I can kind of get it to idle(badly) off choke if I wind the pilot screw right out. But it will die if I try rev the engine at all.

Then I found this video. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAHdhuDpeKw

I did all the things in the video. The pilot jet might have been blocked, was hard to see. It's definitely clear now. The long tube thing was clean as.

But the problem is still there, it will die unless the choke is on. 

I'm a bit stuck, not sure what to do next...

Decided to lie under the car and stare at the floor where the gearbox cross member needs to exist.

It's a W57 box, so it has a weird angled 'V' shape where the mount bolts on. The previous owner of the box cut up that mount to make it into a flat plate so a different rubber mount could be used. It's the mount on the left, I don't know what it's from.

If I use that mount, then add a cross member to it, it will hang much too low under the car.

After looking at a photo of the factory  Supra/W57 mount, that will also be too low.

So I had a look under the Starlet, which has a CA nissan gearbox, and thought "hmmmmmm".

So I borrowed the mount off the Starlet. The one on the right.

If I use the modified 'V' bracket thing and the nissan mount with some 40mm box as the cross member, it will hang about as low as the factory Triumph mount.

Speed up the process eleventeen billion percent by strapping it to a car wheel instead!

I'll just let myself out.--->

Welds look good. You know the trick of putting a bit of copper behind the weld? It really helps with blow through and doesn't stick to the weld. I just use a bit of flattened copper pipe.

47 minutes ago, cletus said:

steel or alloy, the plastic ones would not be acceptable with a spacer, unless the hub spigot sticks out far enough to locate the wheel properly

I just went and had a measure. It would need to be super skinny, with a step in it. Could I machine down the diameter of the hub spigot and press on a steel sleeve to make the spigot taller, and a more better diameter? Maybe 70mm and extend it right into the wheel, so I could just stack two spacers?

Here are the measurements I took.

Note: the taper on the hub spigot is part of the casting, so it's not uniform.

I need to make some wheel location rings. What materials are acceptable.

The diameter on the hub is too small for the wheel spacers and for the wheel center hole.

So I fitted my modified cross member to the yellow one to use as a reference to work out what's going on with the rear alignment.

With the rack in the center of its movement, and both tie rods bottomed out on the rod end, the right wheel toed out and the left wheel toed in.

After much fucking around I found that the centerline I had marked on the cross member, which I aligned the rack with, was 4mm too far the the right. So I moved the rack mount jig thing over by 4mm. Now I could align the front wheels more or less straight and the adjustment on each side(exposed thread) was within 1mm of each other.

Then I used a plumb bob to mark the center of each wheel on the floor. Both sides were the same 2713mm!

And took some other measurements to draw on the car...

The front and rear track, measured from the outside of the wheels, is pretty close. The front has 3mm spacers(washers) for clearance. I've got some 5mm spacers coming. I'm undecided if I will also put spacers at the rear.  

I also ran a string line between the front and rear wheels. Left side has as close to zero toe as I can measure. Right side had a bunch of toe out... Not sure why. I dialled it out with the factory eccentric bolt, but it used up almost all the adjustment. I supposed I could get some adjustable track arms if it needs them. 

1 hour ago, Nominal said:

When you get a wheel alignment done they only measure the wheels, not the body.

When I did the Mercury rear suspension the alignment system checked the thrust angle (i.e is the rear in line with the front) and it was all good.

Hmmmm, I guess I'd have to reinstall the front suspension and steering to the yellow shell and drag it to a wheel alignment place.... Extracting it from the garage will be a mission. Unless there is such a thing as a mobile wheel alignment, or is all the gubbins tethered to some doodah?

6 minutes ago, tortron said:

That sounds like triumph factory tolerances in all honesty.

That was the conclusion I came to as well, but I'm befuddled as to how the fuck I should know when it's straight and the car is not going to drive in circles when it should go straight.

AAAAAARGH!!

So with my two triangles connected to the subframe mounts, lined up with the centerline of the car and using the factory body reference points, I thought the subframe must be pretty straight.

Now I have reinstalled the suspension and wheels(no tyres).

I don't know what measurements to trust. According to my triangles the subframe is straight.

But with the wheels on I have measurements that disagree.

The factory adjustments are set to max toe out and max neg camber. Both sides are at the same height.

If I put a straight edge vertically against the wheel, both sides sit 20mm in from the top of the wheel arch. So You would think "it's in the middle".

I used a plumb bob to see where on the wheel arch the wheel center was and marked it on the wheel arch. I was having trouble getting an accurate measure using just the rear guard, so I measured from the mark to the A pillar (2030 both sides) and the B pillar (right side 1128, left side 1122) and the leading edge of the rear guard(right 365, left 364). So both wheels are the same distance front/back, right?

I've measured from the centerline of the car to the flat bit on the lower part of the sill, along the whole length, on both side of the car, the measurement is the same within about 5mm. So I thought I could use it to measure the toe angle.

So I got some 1800mm lengths of aluminium angle and attached it horizontally to both wheels. Then measured the distance between that and the sill(over a distance of 1300mm). According to that, the right wheel sticks ~10mm further out than the left wheel?!

The right wheel toes out by 0.8 degrees and the left wheel 0.2 degrees. Sure I could adjust that out, but I shouldn't need to and AFAIK it's a large percentage of the available adjustment. Or I could rotate the subframe anticlockwise(looking from above), but that would move the right wheel forward and the left wheel back and put my triangles off by heaps. 

So what's right and whats wrong?

A wonky subframe could cause it, but I would be surprised if my narrowed subframe was wonky, the jig I used to narrow it was/is substantial.

1 hour ago, AllTorque said:

“if I had removed the plug, I expect it will be oily again.“

You haven’t even confirmed your fault. Put a new set of plugs in and see what happens. How did you clean the plug? 

Shhhhhhh!

I cleaned it real half arsed with a brass wire brush. It was late in the evening and it had started raining on me, so I threw my hands in the air like I just don't care and posted about it on OS.

I'm going to clean the plug properly, with solvent, if it stops raining on the weekend. If it deteriorates again I'll try swapping plugs around. If the problem moves with the plug, I'll replace the plug.