Yeah, but the people at the side of the road see that side.
Also, next time, don't park up our track
Yeah, but the people at the side of the road see that side.
Also, next time, don't park up our track
That was me stumbling around the garage in the dark with my iPhone and Dan's LED keyringOriginally Posted by Chriscooke
Looks much better without the wrap on. Love the dash and that's a great effort at light painting also
never again I fearAlso, next time, don't park up our track
Had a brief moment of dread on friday, I drove home after taking the car to work and parked outside as there were some workmen just finishing off fitting our new garage door. (remote electric roller shutter, snazzy)
After the workmen had gone I went out to put the car in the garage. Turned it over and it turned really sluggishly as if the battery had drained, I thought it was weird but I persisted for about 10 seconds, until smoke started pouring out of the bonnet and the coolant light came on!
I turned it off and opened the bonnet, the smoke was burning plastic from the braided clutch line which had melted into a ball of goo.
After a frantic phone call, Chris at RE:Worx diagnosed it before I even finished telling him what happened (legend), I'd lost the engine earth and it had been earthing along the clutch line, which obviously got very hot and melted itself.
After a good search, I've pretty much concluded that since the engine bay tidy, there has been no earth on the engine, so god knows what it had been using until then, but I need to stick a new one in. Or maybe two to be safe.
The bad news is I need a new clutch line which is almost certainly custom and not cheap, the good news is the bad earth could well have been the source of my hesitation at high boost, so it would be nice if that problem goes away once I've got it running again.
Anyone got any clues as to how I figure out what type of fittings I have on my clutch line? I can post a picture if that helps but I can't see how to figure out if it's metric or UNC or whatever else it could be...
Take your current clutch line,or what you have left of it to your local pirteck (sp) branch and ask them?
i think taking it to someone who knows is a good plan, ill have a hunt for a pirtek branch, trouble is they almost all open weekdays only so getting there will cost me in lost working hours, kind of cranks the overall cost up
Here is the line I need to replace in case anyone can tell if it's stock size by any chance:
In the meantime, its back to the wheel refurb...
Although I wonder if I shouldn't be giving the garage a bit of a clean...
I'm sure my clutch line was a fair bit longer.
That's not a stock line I'm afraid dude
There's a Pirtek in Cov but like you say, crap hours. silly money too. People might suggest warwick hydraulics/castle hydraulics - don't bother, they've never been any use to me. I think that ThinkAuto may do a service where they can replicate old lines?
Also, photos of garage doors...
Oh yeah, garage doors! I'll get a little video of them in operation once the car is fixed.
Well I went to pirtek today and the quite helpful guy here said he can order me one tomorrow and its about half the price if i have it in zinc coated. Seems fine to me as the car never sees rain so stainless is a little overkill seeing as you can't see the line when it's fitted. I'll see how much he says it is tomorrow.
£37 quid for a new line, not exactly cheap but if it does the job i'm happy.
Have my photos turned into red X's for anyone else? Has photobucket exploded or something?
Sooo, clutch line fitted, no problems there, unfortunately the car has developed some more serious electrical problems whilst it was at Wills to have the wipers and PS pump sorted. Not directly due to anything he has done, just a combination of things meaning some of the long distant previous owners bodges have started to fail, i'll update that when there is some good news but it's pretty frustrating.
Anyway, when the car was not being a complete arse and refusing to work, I made a little video of my new garage door working, enjoy:
Bad. Ass.
Jealous.
Ok, interesting couple of weeks, but no pictures to show for it so apologies in advance, i'll try to make it brief.
Took the car to Will to get the wipers sorted and fire up the power steering, we pretty much sorted both of those things but for some reason my car doesn't like going to Will's place and it threw a massive electrical strop and wouldn't start.
I had to beg borrow and steal to get myself home, and later that week I got the car trailered to RE:Worx.
Chris rang me up 10 minutes after getting the car; "what did you want me to do to this car?"
Me: "err, make it work?"
Chris: "Oh, right, done that."
Legend.
The wiring has always been a bit iffy, and it seems the bit of wire bridging across the main fuse
So with a nice strong connection again, it's back up and running and boosting like a champ, after the earth issues meaning I was getting hesitation above 0.9 bar. There is still the occasional slight flutter right at the top end but I might be imagining it, could just be the boost controller kicking in, but I'm going to put a couple of extra earths on just to be safe.
The power steering is weeping in a couple of places so i've not had it running on the road yet, next job is to sort that, possibly by flaring the connections, so I can stop having to hang off the steering wheel to get it round corners!
In other news, we have just had an offer accepted on a house so progress might be a bit slow while we throw all our money at solicitors and mortgage advisors, but I do have a few jobs to do that won't cost anything (refurb one more wheel, plastidip my suspension, paint more engine parts black, strip rear interior, replace diff hanger, actually there's shed loads I can do!)
Oh, and I found out a Toyota MR-S right on my ass at the start of a motorway slip road becomes a teeny tiny dot barely visible in the mirror incredibly quickly, who knew?
I took advantage of the fantastic weather this weekend to get the car outside and clean all the cack off the underside that has built up this month. Some bright spark (this may have been me) convinced me to have the entire underside of the car done in white. Stonechip, powdercoating, the lot.
Whilst this looks great when it is clean, it looks terrible if it gets just a little bit dirty, (I know, it's under the car, but I know it's there!) and due to some poor planning I twice had to drive it in the rain recently to get it to and from the bodyshop.
So up she goes, off with the wheels and out with the scrubbing brush:
I think a newer (read:cleaner) exhaust might be on the cards:
Now she is back in the garage, ready to be jacked up again so I can take the coilovers out to give them a long overdue refurb. I'm going to try and plastidip them as a way to seal against surface corrosion without having to disassemble them for painting/anodising/powdercoating, wish me luck.
Oh, here's a full colour photo of the engine bay using the awesome dusk light that we are getting at the moment.
never get enough of rx7s! such a lovely looking car
Thanks K3T, couldn't agree more.
Ok, since I seem to have somehow become an OCD clean freak perfectionist with this car, it was time to do something with those dirty, dirty coilovers.
Despite being less than 2 years old, the Gaz Gold coilovers have corroded terribly on the surface, so whilst they work perfectly, they look pretty manky.
Even though you can barely see them on the car, I had to clean them up. I just did a quick wire brush to remove the worst of the corrosion and some degreaser to get them nice and clean, then I cracked open a tin of plastidip I bought a couple of months ago and started painting. The plan was to dip the coilovers, but a combinatioin of not enough paint, no suitable container to dip them in and the fact if you dip them it clumps up in a layer about 3mm thick and dribbles for ten minutes meant that I ended up brushing it on.
It's not a great finish up close but should be fine inside the wheelarch and as it is a complete, sealed coat, it should keep the corrosion at bay for a good while.
Yep, you guessed it, they're white.
I got a nice chunk of work done today, finishing off some bits and bobs so I can get the car back together!
I finally got the last wheel refurbed so I have a full set of shiny hoops at last:
Also I finished off refurbing the coilovers and got them back on the car, I was quite pleased with how they came out and the overall appearance of them refitted. They went back on the car considerably more smoothly than last time I fitted them, practice makes perfect I suppose!
Lol fronts can be a bit of a ball ache can't they!
Tell me about it, I have to admit I resorted to a file in the end (i'm not proud of myself), it seemed no amount of grease, force, leverage, swearing or bleeding would convince the bushes to slot in otherwise!
This time they went in really nicely, tight but smooth, maybe the hotter ambient temp helped, it had to be 15 degrees warmer than last time I fitted them...
In other news, despite adding 3 earths to the engine and gearbox, i'm still getting hesitation at high boost. Very annoying.
Si has kindly offered to swap out the leading coil with his so I can see if that is the problem, and we will check some voltages at the same time to try and narrow it down, but I hope it's a simple fix as I don't really want to spend any more money on the car at the mo if I can help it!
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