Sunday, February 19, 2012

Not a great afternoon

I returned to UNJ on a cold afternon up here in the Pennines but I was kept quite warm by events!

Plus side - fitted the Xenon bulbs I bought into the headlamp conversions and they certainly look brighter.
Mounted the relays quite cleverly I thought to where the two earthing points are behind the front panel either side of the radiator in the engine bay.
Started a service - drained the oil and replaced it and changed the filter.
Checked the gearbox oil level.
Fitted another speedo drive to see if I can rectify the speedo over-reading.
Fitted the tyre and wheel from the spare wheel well to the rear nearside, rear nearside to front nearside and so on until the rear offside wheel/tyre assembly was in the spare wheel well.

Down side - The frigging car won't start! Either the battery has been drained whilst fitting and testing the new bulbs or the earths have been disturbed by my removing and fitting the relays. Tried to resolve this by removing the relays and cleaning up the earthing points. No joy so the battery is now on a slow charge until next weekend.

Oil change OK as far I know but I can't run the engine to make sure all is well (no oil leaks around the oil filter for example).
Gearbox oil level seems OK but I need to buy some more ATF really so that I can really pump some in and make damned sure.
That speedo drive replacement - a 5 minute easy job once the car is in the air. Or at least that what I was assured by someone - you know who you are Burnerboy! Well, not on this one and I had to resort to gripping the end of the shaft with a pair of molegrips and then hitting those with a hammer. Thank you very much you git! Of course I can't see if it has made a difference as the car won't start so I can't take it out on the road - grrr! I don't think it will actually as the drive looks the same as the one that came out.
Rotating the tyres around the car is a good idea - why let a brand new tyre on a spare wheel sit unused for years. It did mean however that I found this.



What you see here is one of the bolts holding the front hub to the disc on the floor when it fell out as I removed the wheel! Followed by one of the other bolts being loose.

Doesn't bear thinking about really. This might be why I have sometimes felt a "pulsing" under braking through the brake pedal and a knocking from the front end recently too - so much so that I had done a spanner check of all suspension components to make sure nothing was amiss.

Of course I replaced the bolt and retightened everything but this is something I will be checking again for a while!

By now I had had enough for the day so all tools etc were put away and I managed to get in the house just in time to catch up with the FA Cup match between Sunderland and Arsenal before the goals had been scored. Some consolation then for a very frustrating afternoon.

This morning it's just been a little tidying and getting that battery on charge.

Looking forward to Stevenage v Tottenham on the TV this afternoon, again in the FA Cup. I used to live in Stevenage from 1996 to 1998 and remember the buzz in the town when they played 
 Newcastle in the cup so let's see if they can have a good game this afternoon.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Twitch ye not!

The week after the last post I did indeed return to the offside rear and, if anything, the bushes that side were even worse. By now of course I knew what was what so it didn't take too long to replace and I can report UNJ now behaves much more like it should.

This is all just as well because I have entered Club Triumph's Historic Counties Run with the car so I am focussing work on UNJ as much as I can. This weekend I fitted halogen headlamps which should have been easy enough apart from the nearside one refused to work on main beam.

I got my digital analyser out and there was power to the connection under the bonnet so I then suspected a dodgy brand new bulb. I reconneceted the old seal beam but that didn't work either. So, after a little thought I checked and there was power at the headlamp if  I used another earthing point. All I needed then was to do some work on the connections under the bonnet and all was well.

In addition I have now ordered some Ring Xenon bulbs so that should certainly make a huge difference over the original sealed beams whiich will be well worthwhile on an overnight event like the HCR as well as on the 2013 10CR I plan to take part in with the car.

I also intended to fit two fused relays but I seem to have lost one of them - grrr!

Leaving my cars aside for a moment though I also found time last week to help Bryce collect a new car he has bought. It seems driving my Toledo round Europe in 2007 left a deep impression so he has now bought an early 2 door white Toledo for himself. I have contributed a Sprint engine and overdrive gearbox, a pair of 2" SUs, 4 tyres and an exhaust manifold. He then went and bought a donor Dolomite Sprint too. The plan is to build a standard looking Toledo with Sprint running gear which he is planning to use on club events including the 2013 10CR - looks like a 2 car team then.

Finally, PMW has not been forgotten with more debate and advice sought on the engine rebuild. This week I also collected a heated front windscreen for the car and this is now safely stored on it's back seat. This will be installed in due course along with the brand new screen rubber I bought a couple of years ago. Ideally I would like PMW available for transporting me to my marshalling posts on the RBRR in October but we'll have to see if that deadline is made.