| 1st May 2009 | ||
|
I had a conversation with my chums about my plans to feed the catch tank breather back into the airbox,
whereupon it was pointed out to me that it's not such a good idea. This is because oily fumes will not
burn in the engine at the same point as petrol, so will tend to produce carbon deposits. I should have
realised this before I chopped up the plastic elbow, but never mind. The new plan is to either uncap
the spare vent on the catch tank, or to vent it outside the engine bay. I'll think about it. Meantime, it is now May already, so I taxed the car today for 6 months. This means I need to get it back in action, particularly as I might want to take it out on a day trip next weekend. With this in mind, I need to get the work on the tell-tales sorted out, and so I finally summoned up the courage to take a drill to the dashboard. In order to ensure the holes line up properly, I drilled them quite small, then slowly work them out with a file. It's a bit tedious, but ensures they look right. After a short while, they are done. |
|
|
| 2nd May 2009 |
|
A bit more progress on getting car working again today. There are a couple of other things to do in the
engine bay, firstly I spent some time cleaning up the airbox. I've been doing some reading around working
with GRP, with the view to sorting out the scratches and holes in the bodywork of the car. This also gave
me some clues about polishing things up, which I decided to try out a little on the airbox. Its certainly
much shinier than it ever has been, though it is still a bit patchy, and not a deep shine. I'm not sure
whether this might be down to the gelcoat on the airbox, or whether it woulc come better with more work. After that, another little job before we are done is to cover over the oil cooler. Without doing this, the oil runs a bit too cool (on the road), so it is worth a bit of a blue peter effort to get it covered up. After this I went back onto the dash tell-tale reworking. Having finished the hole cutting yesterday, I tidied up today, and spent a little while covering the new brow dash to match the main dash panel, and test fitted some of the LEDs into the holes. I need to sort out the wiring for these now. |
|
| 3rd May 2009 | |
|
I didn't seem to make alot of time for working on the car today. All I got done was to final polish and refit of the airbox - that did somehow seem to take an hour though, mainly cos it is something of a pfaff to get it all fitting properly (especially when you forget to do one bit and have to take it all off again!). And now I just have to cover it all in horrible gaffer tape again to seal it up, what a shame. |
| 4th May 2009 |
|
Spent a bit more time in the garage today, as well as some helping Richard with getting his finished off - I'm
not sure how he's managed to beat me to being back on the road, general apathy on my part I suppose. One of the jobs left to sort out is the clutch fluid reservoir, as it seems to have started leaking. So I got a replacement piece of pipe and went about draining it, swapping it over, refitting the new one with pipe clips rather than tie-wraps, bleeding it all through for a while. Then as soon as I had finished and topped it back up, it started leaking worse than before. Annoying. I think it is because the hose clips I used were a little too big for the miniature bike fittings, so I drained it again, and have ordered some smaller clips, and will have to do it all over again (sigh). I also did a few other little jobs: greased the prop UJs and slider; replaced the grip tape in the footwell in front of the pedals as it was worn; checked the wiring behind the dash; removed some of the Autocom wiring (not touring this year). |
| 8th May 2009 |
|
Had a busy week of trying to get the car back into a functioning state, with the aim of using it to get to
Cadwell Park on Saturday for the RGB racing, so didn't have chance to update things here, also didn't really
take any photos along the way - not that there was anything particularly photogenic! So through the course of the week, I got some slightly smaller hose clips for the clutch pipe, got them fitted and and re-bled, and that seems to have solved the leak. I also spent some time getting all the wiring done for the updated tell-tales, and got this all fitted to the car. This seems to work ok, although I found that the neutral one doesn't seem to work which a little further investigation suggests that one of the legs has broken off the back of the LED. Unfortunately, I only found this after I had refitted the aeroscreen and secured all the cabling, so didn't have time to sort it out. The only other little job to resolve was to sort out the oil catch tank breathing. This is a temporary thing for now, so I just fitted a couple of hoses to the tank, which sit out under the car - which will hopefully prevent the fumes oiling up the engine bay. I'll have to revisit this to find a better solution. After that, it was just a matter of taping up the airbox, eyeballing everything to make sure I'd not missed anything, and putting the car back down on the ground. |
|
With that all done, I was able this evening to take it out for a test drive. I wanted to be sure it all got nice
and hot and didn't overheat or leak. I did about 30 miles around local roads, and was pleased to find everything
was ok, so just about ready for tomorrow. One thing I did while I was out, was drive past my local friendly
garage and get it booked in for an MOT next week, as the current one is set to expire imminently. Only thing I didn't get time to do, was to give it a quick clean, but it'll just get dirty anyway I guess. |
| 10th May 2009 |
|
Phew! So my day out at Cadwell Park went well, the car behaved itself impeccably as usual, and it's always a real
hoot to drive it on some fun roads. It's also quite entertaining to drive it after not using it for 6 months, it is
really quite quick! The nice thing about it is that on quick A-roads, you can cover the ground so effectively, and
it is usually pretty simple to get past any slower traffic, as you don't need a great big gap to overtake comfortably. As the first race didn't go quite so well for some people (see here), I actually ended up on a mission to collect some parts on my way home on Saturday, followed by another early morning blast up there again today to deliver them! So that's definitely a thorough test of the car, as I managed to do 500 miles in it over the course of the weekend, and gulped down about 18 gallons of fuel. It didn't miss a beat, and though I've not checked it yet, I don't expect to find anything wrong with it (famous last words perhaps?). All good fun, but I'm tired now... I'll let the car have a bit of a rest at the same time as me I think. (Photos to follow soon) |
| 18th May 2009 | ||
| Took the car for an MOT today, which it passed without any problems... even the sidelight which wasn't working the other day, now was working (hmmm, that's not so good really is it?). Anyway, got myself a ticket for another year, which is good. Also remembered to take some ropey photos on my phone. Oh and I'd treated it to a wash at the weekend, to get all the bugs from Cadwell off it, so I was kinda glad it didn't quite manage to rain today. |
|
|
| ©2002-2009 David Hackett |
|
|
|