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2/10/2002
Finished shaping the rhs boot catch plate to avoid the exhaust as much
as possible, then sanded down the back with wet and dry. This didn't
make it quite shiny enough, so it will need polishing.
Started working out the position of the oil catch tank. This will go on the driver's footwell panel, with the pipe going over the top of the engine and then down the left side of the master cylinder to the tank.
3/10/2002
Marked and drilled the bolt holes for the catch tank holder, and then
started modifying the cap to take the breather pipe by drilling and
filing out a hole for it.
4/10/2002
Finished chopping out the hole in the top of the catch tank, and
hacked off the lid. Just need to sort out some breathable foam to act
as a filter.
Made a start on making a clip to support the lhs windscreen support, the same as the one that the rhs wing mirror bolts to. Found a suitable bit of thin galvanised steel plate which was cut to shape and cleaned up.
5/10/2002
Finished off the windscreen support clip - bent to shape, drilled all
mounting holes, and riveted to the support tube. It was made to
exactly the same dimensions as the rhs one, so that if I decide that I
need a 2nd wing mirror, it can just be bolted straight in place.
The polystyrene sheet was cut up to go on the floors. Luckily the 2 sheets I'd got were just big enough, as there were only a few tiny offcuts left. Even though its 25mm thick, and the seat rails are 20mm tall, doesn't stick up as much as I thought so it won't need trimming as just squashing it in the required places should be good enough. A couple of holes were drilled and chopped out so that the rear seat bolts can be accessed from under the car.
Made a start on working out what needs to be fitted to the rocker box to hold the throttle cable, breather pipe and expansion tank overflow hose in place. The main problem is that the throttle cable needs to be fixed in place so that it doesn't move at all, due to the angle it has to go into the throttle linkage from above to avoid it catching on anything.
7/10/2002
Double checked the fit of the black carpet templates for the seat
back, floors under the seats, and the ends of the footwells. Don't
want to start cutting the carpet and then find out that I've got them
wrong...
Spent more time trying to work out how to sort out the routing over the rocker box.
8/10/2002
Decided how to sort out the rocker box routing, made the clip for the
expansion tank hose (from another bit of the old dead video), and
started making the crankcase breather hose clip.
9/10/2002
Finished off the top crankcase breather hose clip, and got most of a
second one done which attaches to the right rear rocker box bolt and
keeps the hose away from the master cylinder and brake lines.
11/10/2002
Decided on the final positions of the seat back, floors and footwells
on the black carpet, then marked them out.
12/10/2002
Cut out all of the black carpet sections.
Finished off the lower crankcase breather pipe clip, and made a clamp for the throttle cable. Ended up with a bit of steel strip with one inch at the end bent over at about 60 degrees towards the carbs, with a one inch square alloy plate used to clamp the cable in position. Both bits have a groove filed into them for the cable to locate in. This allows the outer to be held so that on full throttle the carb linkage doesn't touch the outer. The only possible problem was going to be clearance to the bonnet on zero throttle, as the outer sticks up quite a lot, but with the bonnet in place there is well over an inch of clearance to it. The whole bonnet seems to be much higher than it needs, as there is an inch or two clearance to the oil filler cap as well.
13/10/2002
Chucked it onto axle stands yet again, and whipped the wheels off. I'd
decided last week that as its over a year since the engine has been
run, that it'd probably be best to turn the engine over to check that
it was all still free. With access to the crank pully, I couldn't turn
it at all, so took the plugs out to make life easier for myself and
get rid of any compression. Plugs 1 and 4 looked like they normally
did from running rich, very black and sooty. Plug 3 seemed almost
perfect, very clean with no soot and a slight grey deposit on it. But,
plug 2 was rusty with some strange crytalline growth on it. Shining a
light into the cylinder through the plug hole showed that there was
more white crytalline stuff on the top of the cylinder. I tried
turning the engine again, and it wouldn't move clockwise but would go
about half a turn backwards (when cylinder 2 was moving back up,
suggesting that there was something above the piston causing it to
stop. I squirted a bit of oil into it, left it for a few minutes while
cleaning up the plugs, and then it was fine after that so I turned it
over a few times. I cleaned as much of the 2nd piston as I could,
sticking a cloth through the plug hole and using a blunt screwdriver
to move it around.
Trimmed the bit that aren't needed off the top mounting tab on the lhs petrol tank, and the bottom of the left tank mounting bracket.
Measured up the insides of the 4 wings to work out how much thick rubber sheet will fit on them, as this seems a better solution than using the expensive rubbercoat or something similar. The 2nd roll of rubber it just enough, so the areas were marked and the paint scrubbed off using a wire brush in the drill. Hard work, and very messy, but much easier than rubbing it all down with sandpaper. It would have been much easier to leave painting the bodywork until everything had been fitted, as I've had to remove quite a bit of the paint...
14/10/2002
Cut up the sections of rubber for the wheelarches, and cut a hole for
the lhs filler neck. Started sorting out the wiring extensions for the
fuel sender, as the loom isn't long enough.
16/10/2002
Extended the wiring for the fuel sender including fitting the correct
connectors, and also extended the front indicators which are about
half as long as they need to be.
19/10/2002
While at a scrappy helping my brother get some bits for his car, I
picked up some minor things (for free) that I needed. Found a Uno door
bolt which is the right size so I can use that on the boot catch.
Removed some seatbelt bolts as well to get the T shaped washers which
allow the bolt to be fully tightened but without clamping the
seatbelt. It was surprising, but while removing the seatbelt bolts
from an early 205, I noticed that the dash push switches were
identical to the ones that I'd swiped from a Maserati, so I took the 2
that weren't broken to use as spares. I checked the other 205s that
were there, but apart from the first one that I got the switches from,
all of them had grey dashboards and therefore grey switches in them
which don't match the black ones I currently have. Later 205s use a
different type of switch.
21/10/2002
Sanded the back of the rhs boot catch alloy plate again, with normal
sandpaper and then various grades of wet and dry. Once it was smooth,
a bit of metal polish (Autosol Solvol) was used to get it nice and
shiny. Hopefully this will reflect some of the heat coming off the
exhaust.
22/10/2002
Checked the fit of the seatbelt bolts I'd picked up at the scrappy,
and the ones from a 205 and Montego fit, but the ones from a Granada
are totally wrong - smaller diameter and larger pitch thread, so
totally non-standard it seems.
Chopped the bit of plastic off the Uno door pin, and with that removed its exactly the right diameter, and the same as the other one I already have.
Taped up the extensions to the front indicator and fuel sender wires.
Made a start on sorting out some alloy and rubber covers for the lower radiator hoses where they sit against the front of the chassis.
24/10/2002
Double-checked the fit of the green carpet templates in the car. The
outer lhs one needed a bit of adjustment, but they were all pretty
much right.
25/10/2002
Made and fitted 2 alloy plates to the lower small radiator hose, to
protect it where it passes over the front chassis rails.
26/10/2002
Removed the flange from the end of the new Uno door bolt so that it
will work with the boot lock, and then shortened the threaded end of
both bolts as they are much longer than required.
Connected the battery, and then turned the engine over a few times with the plugs out and coil supply disconnected, which will hopefully move some oil around and scrape any more rust off that has built up inside. Testetd the home-made immobiliser and battery isolation switch, and it all seems to be working fine.
Fitted the top part of the radiator shroud, which just bolts though the front bit of bodywork under the bonnet. Decided that the current method of attaching the side shroud panels isn't very good, which is just the edge of the panel snipped into a row of tabs, so I chopped them all off and made some new tabs which rivet onto the panel. This way, the shroud can be stuck in place, and the tabs can be fitted afterwards and angled so that they puch on the main panel which wasn't possible with the original. An extra clip was added to the front lower corner of the panel which rivets through the lip around the front air hole. All the clips were made for the lhs panel after trimming it to make it a better fit than it was originally when I made them in April last year.
27/10/2002
Polished the alloy top of the throttle cable clamp, and then re-did
the rhs boot catch plate as I didn't get it quite shiny enough the
first time. Painted the 4 rocker box chips, and then started shaping
and making clips for the rhs rad shroud panel. During this time, the
power went off 3 times for a few seconds. The 4th time was just a bit
longer - 29 hours! As it was blowing a gale outside, I had to keep the
garage door shut and didn't fancy trying to work by candle light, so
packed it in for the day.
29/10/2002
Finished off the rhs rad shroud clips and trimming it to shape. Rubbed
off the paint for the rad shroud and side bulkhead panels. With the
help of my dad, some slight mods to improve the fit were made to the
bulkhead panels before whey were fitted, using rivets along the front
and lower edges, and silicone sealant along the top next to the
bodywork.
We then made a cardboard template for an alternator heat shield. This fixes to each end of the top mounting bolt, and then rests on the outer mounting bolt, protecting it from the first exhaust pipe which is directly underneath it, and the 2nd which is close to the plastic end cap. Without the shield there is approx a 2cm gap between the 1st pipe and the alternator, but with the number of Six owners who have toasted their alternators, its best to try and protect it from the heat.
The template was then marked out on a bit of alloy, which was then polished on both sides using a polishing wheel, before being cut to shape.
30/10/2002
I finally found something that my mother could help with (other than
painting the inside of the bodyshell when I first got it) - the
carpeting. While my dad finished off shaping the alternator heat
shield, we got the bits of green carpet cut for the outer sides,
tunnel sides and the lhs trailing arm cover, based on the newspaper
templates. These were then quickly trimmed to fit in the car, along
with the black back panel carpet.
My dad also got an alloy plate made and fitted to protect the large lower radiator hose where it passes a chassis rail, then we all tried to figure out how to get the carpet to fit over the tunnel. This proved to be quite tricky, as with all the compound curves, the carpet doesn't simply sit on top. We tried 3 vertical sections going up and over it, but this didn't really work. The best method will probably be to have a few strips running the length of the tunnel, but I'll have a play around with this some time later as it will take a while to get right.
Total hours this month -
50.5
Total build hours -
1428.0
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