:: Diary - May 2006 ::

:: Monday, May 1, 2006 ::

Spring Bank Holiday!

It's raining.

I need to do a little bit more fettling, for the car's MOT test on Friday. Main thing I can see is that the nearside headlamp is aimed a little too high - I don't want it failing and costing me £44 for a re-test, for the cost of a few turns of an adjuster!

Fortunately, because the garage has no windows, I don't have to wait until it's dark!

First I line up the wheels using string just touching the tyres. A tiny bit of masking tape on the wall marks the outer edge of each tyre. Then I measure between the bits of tape and check that is the same measurement as the distance between the outer edges of the front tyres. Surprisingly, it is!

Then I measure between the centres of the headlights - exactly 400 mm less than the outer edges of the tyres. I measure 200 mm in from each of the previous marks and make another masking tape mark "headlamp centre lines".

The headlamp centres are 55 cm from the ground. Another two bits of tape to make little crosses in line with the headlamp centres.

Remove headlamp chrome trim rings, and shut garage door. OOh it's dark in here. Open door again, switch on headlights and shut garage door again. Ah that's better, much less scary.

Then it's just a simple matter to align the centre of the dipped beam pattern with each cross, and then lower it by an inch or so so that they are pointing slightly down. That should be ok! Chrome trims back on, and recheck alignment. Sorted!

That took longer to type than it did to do!

Ah... maybe if I'd put the garage light back on first that might have helped...

Everything else seems OK. Famous last words.

I'd also like to get the newly-painted rocker covers on, but I need to get a couple of gaskets. I get as far as buying the gaskets but I really can't be bothered today. Besides, I tell myself, I might as well clean the alternator and its bracket while it's off, and I don't have time to do that, and I won't be back before MOT day on Friday so it's not worth starting now, is it?

Instead I come home, and tidy up the website menus a bit - they've been getting a bit messy as the site has grown so I have simplified them a bit.

:: Friday, May 5, 2006 ::

MOT. Pass. Of course!

Celebratory hoon ensues.

:: Saturday, May 6, 2006 ::

First, for some strange reason, I lift the front wheelarch as I'm walking past. I've never done that before, it's a strange thing to want to do, I mean why should you eh? Anyway I do and am a bit alarmed when the bonnet lifts by an inch and a half at the front... Closer examination shows that the hinge on that side is loose and the main bolt has almost unwound itself from the chassis, hanging on by only 2 threads so that the whole thing wobbles up and down. The locknut is a good 5 or 6 turns from the chassis. I assume that it must have mysteriously wound itself loose since the bonnet was realigned and repainted. Odd that - locknuts, as their name suggests, are supposed to lock things in place, and don't usually come loose. If the garage were a less reputable bunch of useless fucking cowboys, I would have supposed that the locknut was never tightened in the first place, but obviously it can't be that. No that would be completely the wrong assumption. Allegedly.

It's not as if it's important - I mean it's not as if the bonnet will fly up backwards if the hinge falls off, and smash into the windscreen and then, in a shower of plastic flakes, into the car behind you. I mean, it's not as if it could be dangerous or expensive or anything. Naaah, the locknut is yet another example of TVR over-engineering. I expect all garages know that, although I didn't.

Anyway, in a display of complete over-nannyism, I tighten it back up so it's all right now. I'll even keep an eye on it in case it does come loose again. As they do. Apparently.

Then on to the TVR Car Club meeting, this month at Knockhill race circuit (because our usual hotel is fully occupied by a wedding type function). Lots of people there, more than usual (the summer months are always busier) so the two-person cafe team are kept busy cooking burgers and stuff. Good though!

Of course, being Knockhill, it rains - it rains there even if there isn't a cloud in the sky.

A good day out though.

I can still hear the exhaust blowing slightly. I am reaching the conclusion that trying to seal this exhaust is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic - I'm going to have to give up and replace the lot soon, I think. Anyway, careful inspection when I get home shows that it's the two joints between the downpipes and the main system (the ones where the clamps used to keep getting scraped off on bumps etc). A bit of bandage on each, should do the trick.

I get round to buying the bandage but not to doing anything about it.

:: Monday, May 8, 2006 ::

Along to the garage after work.

First I remove the exhaust downpipe clamps, clean up the two joints and wrap them with foil exhaust bandage, then replace the clamps. A quick try shows no leaks - at last!

Then I remove the alternator and replace the rocker covers, with the ones I painted last month (these are the ones that were on the car when I got it). And very nice they look, too! I need to paint the cylinder heads and exhauist manifolds now though!

I don't put the alternator back because I want to clean it up, so I take it home.

When I get home, I separate the alternator from its bracket. The bleeding adjustment bolt snaps off, with the thread stuck in the alternator flange. This is something of a bugger - I'm not sure whether to try drilling it out and then using an extractor, or get an engineering shop to do it, with a bit more precision.

My dilemna is foreshortened because it gets dark, so whatever I decide to do, I won't be doing it tonight.

:: Wednesday, May 10, 2006 ::

Found a friendly local engineers who drilled out the broken stud.

Painted the mounting bracket, which has the same flaking plastic coating as the chassis. Looks a lot better.

Then I decide to remove the alternator pulley and fan, so that I can clean and paint it all up - seeing as it sits on the top of the engine it sticks out like a sore thumb if it looks tacky. Didn't get it finished before it got dark though.

:: Thursday, May 11, 2006 ::

Last night I lost the little woodruff key which locks the pulley onto the alternator spindle. It pinged out when I pulled the fan off, and it was getting dark so I didn't see where it went. I spent ages may hands and knees on the patio with a torch, but didn't find it.

At 6:30 am this morning I am out again, but still can't see it. I want to find it so that I know for sure that it's not inside the alternator, but I'm sure it pinged away. I manage to have a good look inside by angleing the light of the sun down between the stators and there's no sign of wee bits of metal.

When I get home from work, first job is to make a new woodruff key. I find a washer the right diameter and thickness, and cut along one edge with a handsaw and then finish it with a hand file so that everything fits together.

Then I polish up the alternator, the fan and the pulley to a bright finish, then spray the fan and pulley with a coloured lacquer that (if you squint and half close your eyes) looks a bit like the original gold anodised finish.

Then I reassemble it all back together again on to the red engine bracket, and it looks not too bad at all!

All ready for refitting to the car!

I should have taken a photo before I started but I forgot. Just for a laugh, this is the same part on the car a few months ago (it had deteriorated meantine). Those are the same parts as above - nothing has been replaced.

No small furry things were harmed in the making of this transformation.

:: Saturday, May 13, 2006 ::

Refit the alternator and fan belt and reconnect the battery.

I then decide to take the car out for a wee blatt for an hour or so, just because the weather is nice. The wee exhaust blow seems to be completely gone now. Without wishing to tempt fate, everything seems to be working as it should, except for the fuel gauge. Major disaster expected!

:: Saturday, May 20, 2006 ::

Today is TVRAndy's annual borders run, an event to be looked forward to for weeks... so of course when I jump out of bed and open the curtains to allow the blazing sunshine to spill into the house to start this sports-car orientated day, I am overjoyed to see that it's pishing rain.

Undeterred, I drive along to the garage and bring the car back to the house.

I meet the others in the pishing rain and then stand in the pishing rain waiting for others to arrive, driving through the pishing rain. It stops pishing rain and buckets down momentarily, then returns to steady pishing. We set off on time and then, after about 30 minutes, the rain stops!

After much blootering and stopping to bunch up again then more blootering and bunching, we pass through the middle of nowhere and the back of beyond on our way to a wee hill pub, for a lunch and a blether.

While standing about outside we are discussing slight misfires and other woes, when a Merc estate comes out of the adjacent junction and accelerates past us - it sounds like a diesel running on a fuel mixture of Windolene and spanners. As it clatters off into the distance (still clattering even in the very far distance!) we exchange looks and decide that maybe our troubles aren't so bad after all.

Another blooter home, car back in garage, 150 miles and nothing broke (I only added that last bit for anybody who's been directed here from a certain link that might suggest that the car breaks every time it's driven - well it doesn't, see? Sometimes it breaks just when it's standing in the garage.)

A brilliant day out again.

I forgot my camera though, so I didn't take any photos.

Thanks to Steve for these pics of the day.

:: Sunday, May 21, 2006 ::

A couple of weeks ago (on MOT day to be exact) I tapped the car forwards into a wall - just touched it, but enough to break the front indicator lens.

"No problem" I thought, "one indicator off a 1986 sherpa, cost about 8 quid, problem sorted."

Except (as is usual) it's not as easy as that. Sherpas are not available in scrap yards - they started returning to their original component molecules (rust and shite) as soon as they came off the production line, so there are none left. Leyland don't have any left. The TVR club supplier says they're discontinued and he can't order any more. Some guy in England bought out the stock from somebody else to sell at some club meeting - in England. Gits.

So that leaves me one option - the superglue option.

Before and after, ready for refitting to the car. It's looks ok if you don't look too closely and better than the broken one!