| 1st May 2004 |
| Bit of a different day today. Dan from cam7 was seeking some garage space in which to fettle one of his cars in readiness for the tour in a few weeks. So I volunteered half of ours for a day - which snowballed into having an open garage for cam7ers, with numerous visiting, helping, and fettling through the course of the day. |
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| Whilst this was all good fun, the downside was that I didn't really much time to work on my car, as I seemed to be quite busy finding tools, helping fettle, and making tea! All I managed to get done was to cut (from the new spiral bound oil pipe I got from Westfield) and fit the two pipes to the scavenge side. I've cut them as long as I can which made them tricky to fit, but would also mean they cannot come off without considerable force. I've doubled up on the jubilee clips to help grip and seal the pipes. | ||
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| 2nd May 2004 | ||
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Right, I'm determined to get the car working again today, I've got all the bits I need
to make it so. So the first thing to do is to fit the oil feed fittings - I got a lovely
threaded flanged fitting from Pace for the sump, which fits a treat. I've also got a
nice threaded connector which I will push fit into the spiral bound oil pipe, which is
push fitted to oil tank at the other end. In order to fit the connector I have to chop
a notch into the floor pan, which also gives room to get a spanner onto it. It takes some time and effort to heave the connector onto the pipe, it's a very tight fit, and I also clamp it up with a couple of jubilee clips - it's going nowhere! The other end is push fit onto the oil tank outlet, and again double jubilee clipped. As the pipe is new it's very reluctant to bend the tight radius, and it's a bit of a battle. However I also need to fit the oil pressure sender. Due to a problem with my ordering, I don't have the right bits for the remote sender fitting I got, but I just want to get the car working now, that can easily be changed again later (without having to drop the oil). At this point disaster strikes. In a bid to improve clearance between the sender and the pipe, I was using a nut on the signal connector. As I was pinching this up, the connector fitting sheared. At this point, I threw my toys out of the pram, and had to walk away... |
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| 5th May 2004 | |
| Having gathered my toys back up, salvation was found in the form of cam7er Steve. I went round to have a rummage in his big-box-o-senders for a replacement, but he came up with what has turned out to be a better solution (until I do the remote one) in that he was able to solder a small flylead onto where the connector sheared. |
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With the sender fitted, I am able to finish fitting the oil tank. Next I have a sanity
check around the whole system to make sure everything is correct, and tightened up.
I actually primed the oil cooler with some oil to help get things circulating quicker,
and the fill the tank with oil. At this point I connect up the battery and am able to
crank the engine over on the starter to check for oil pressure. After a couple of short
bursts, the needle on the gauge is just lifting, but watch in the tank, there is still
air coming through. A further couple of bursts and there's about 1bar of pressure and
oil just starting to feed back into the tank, so I reset the ignition and this time
allow the immobiliser to start the fuel pump. A quick crank and the engine fires into
life! With full pressure on the gauge, and oil flowing back into the tank, I check around all the connections for leaks. All seems well, so I allow everything to warm up for a while. |
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| 14th May 2004 | |
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I've both been busy and had a weekend away, so not much progress on the car. There are
still just a few jobs I want to get done before I can drive the car. The first of these
I tackle is to bleed the clutch. The clutch fluid has had some sort of contamination in
the fluid, although it has still been working ok. I think this may have come from the
pipe between the reservoir and master cylinder, but not sure. Anyway, I get on with manually bleeding the clutch, there's not alot of fluid in it, so it's not too hard to do by hand. I start by using a syringe to remove the fluid from the reservoir, and remove and clean up the feed pipe. With it re-assembled, I spend some time bleeding a four or five reservoirs worth of fluid through. Job done. The pedals feels ok, but the real test will be driving it. |
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I'd ordered a new filter for the airbox from Greg, which fortunately arrived very promptly today. After some advice and research, it's a Golf GTi Mk1 replacement panel filter from ITG, which should be an improvement over the old paper filter, which is due for a change. |
| 15th May 2004 | |
| Onwards and upwards, todays main task (apart from the make the damn car work!) is to bleed the brakes. First task however is to nip into town and buy some grip tape from a skateboard shop. This is required to fit onto the new pads I made for the pedals to stop my feet slipping around on them. It's hugely self adhesive and nicely grippy, so a simple job to get that fitted. And with that done I can finally refit the pedals to the car - using new clevis and split pins. I'm quite pleased with the result, it looks pretty neat, and will hopefully be effective when I drive the car (in allowing me to be able to heel and toe). |
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Brake bleeding comes next. In preparation for this job, I have borrowed an easi-bleed
from Craig, which basically fits the master cylinder reservoir and pressurises the
system with air (from one of the car tyres). Some people don't really like these
tools, and I was probably one of them but Craig has used it with much success on his
old car, which rather conveniently had the same master cylinder as mine, so I'm
fairly confident it will work. Another thing I have done was to temporarily refit the brake pedal during the week, and wedged it fully on as hard as I could. The theory here is that this will encourage any air bubbles to migrate towards the bleed nipples on the calipers.
I start by lowering the car back down onto the floor, so I can undo the wheel nuts.
Then its back up with the rear end, wheels off, and easi-bleed kit on. Also at this
point I remove the tunnel cover panel and slacken the adjuster on the handbrake right
off. Then it is a very simple job of just releasing the bleed nipple(s) on the calipers
in turn, allowing the old fluid to flow into a container, and ensuring that the new
fluid doesn't run down too far before topping up. |
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So then it's just a few simple finishing up jobs. In order to get the car out for
a short test run today, I just refitted the original air filter - I'll swap over
to the new one tomorrow if everything works ok. With a harness fitted, the nosecone
back on, front indicators connected, bonnet, we're just about ready to go! I take it out for a little blast around, about 20 miles, taking it pretty easy at first to allow the brakes to clean the discs, and try to get used to the clutch. It all goes well. The brakes feel better, firmer pedal. The clutch however feels a bit odd, the bite point has moved a bit I think, and it's pretty sharp, but I'll see how it goes over time - I've got to get used to driving it again. But hurrah, it's roadworthy again at last :-) |
| 16th May 2004 | ||
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Time for some minor fettling again this morning, before going out for a longer local
drive this afternoon - the weathers great, it'd be rude not to! So first job is to fit the new air filter to the airbox. It's the right size, but it needs a little adjustment to fit better. Primarily this is that there is a lip around the foam rubber seal on the filter which doesn't quite sit into the hole in the airbox. So a quick buzz with the dremel, and tidy up with the file, to enlarge the hole a bit to make things fit ok. Also I just nick the corners off the filter to give a bit of clearance for the bolts to fit into the rivnuts cleaner, where the two parts of the airbox join. |
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From there it's a simple, if fiddly, job to refit the lower part of the airbox. Previously
I've fitted it all in one piece from the top end, but I was given this idea from someone
who emailed me, and I figure it's not a bad one, as it saves having to remove the whole
thing every time - just makes it a bit more awkward to fit. I've also sealed up the
upper and lower parts of the airbox, as there was potential for leakage, and let's face
it an airbox _should_ be mostly air tight! Then it's a couple of quick jobs, fit some grip tape to the floor on the drivers side just in front of the pedals, and refit the pedal cover panel. Ready to play again... |
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Went out for a goodly blat with a couple of others, but whilst we were on our way back
we encountered some slow traffic. I noticed that the water temperature was rising (it's
a warm day), which is not unusual, but what was unusual was that it kept on going! I
could hear the fan running, but couldn't think why it wasn't bringing the temperature
down like it normally would. Fortunately we got out of traffic before it got much over
100c, and then the temp dropped off again. When we got back I let the car idle until
the fan came on, and then all became clear - the fan was actually blowing from behind
the rad, which was never really going to be very effective! I've obviously just got
the polarity mixed up when I was tidying the wiring. Also I noticed whilst I had the bonnet off that the small L-shaped bracket which fuel pressure regulator mounts on had sheared, leaving the regulator bimbling around on it's pipework... I'll have to get that fixed. |
| 18th May 2004 |
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The weather is still really nice, so a quick hour in the garage this evening will
mean that I can use the car for work tomorrow. So first job is to whip the nosecone
off and check the wiring. Sure enough, I've got back to front in the chassis loom
side of the connector, so it's a simple swap round, then short the connections in
fan switch, and test it. Second job is to temporarily secure the fuel pressure regulator. I'll sort out a proper bracket for it later once I've decided the best way to do it. So a few tie wraps in a few directions sees it secured sufficiently. |
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| 31st May 2004 | |
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Haven't been doing anything with the car otherr than driving it, and not been doing
that very much given that the weather seems to be either really hot or wet. But I took advantage of a bit of dry weather between showers to get the cars cleaned. OK so it wasn't particularly dirty, but it's even less so now! |
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| ©2002-2009 David Hackett |
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