I have at last sorted out
my rear suspension brackets, use the Sierra seat belt spacers
between the box section and the body and bolt through to a large
washer. Stops the flexing completely, and the side benefit of
the box section is that I can route the loom through it providing
a secure route past the suspension.
Start to fit the Sierra
heater - what a miserable bit of engineering it is too when you
look at it -primitive isn't the word. I have to cut the back
bar off the opening eventually after wasting much time trying
to use it as a support. The angle the heater sits at appears
to be quite critical - if I let it sit in the natural position,
there is no clearance for the hose on the bottom hole, so the
back needs to raised 2 cms. Not a problem as such, until I realised
that the side is hard up against the pedal box cover, which doesn't
let the cover sit properly, or give me room for a bracket on that
side. Initial thinking is to cut a bit off the side of the heater,
and fit a bracket to the pedal box cover, but on further inspection
find there are two nice lugs I can use to fit brackets at the
bottom. Even in the right position the hose will difficult to
fit as it is so close to the engine. While looking at this I
realise that despite labelling all the hoses when I took them
off, I can't find where they go back on - need to investigate
in daylight, it is just impossible by artificial light.
Decide that I will have
to cut some off both sides of heater to clear the pedal box and
make room for the battery. Hose position is not good - it is
well nigh impossible to get the hoses on because they are up against
the rocker cover. Solution seems to be to fit the hoses with
the heater out, and mount it with them on. Begin to see the advantages
of building the car yourself rather than buying one ready built,
you could spend hours trying to refit these hoses in the future
if you didn't know the trick!
Before I buy a new battery
I am going to see if I can find one with the same electrical properties
but a better shape (i.e. longer and thinner). It is hard to get
away from thinking that I need Sierra things when in reality the
Sierra battery is designed to fit under the Sierra bonnet, and
anything will do.
Having finished the steering,
I opened the garage door and tried it. loud graunching sounds
and stiffness eventually traced to the back of the rubber joint
touching the outside of the front panel. I can only see 2 solutions
at the moment, both of them bad. one is to open out the bottom
of the hole in the front panel, which would mean taking about
an inch off. I don't like taking this much out of a structural
area, and anyway I can't see how to get at it with the mini grinder.
Second option is to grind off the ends of the metal bar that
are catching. More practical to do, but I am worried about damaging
the joint. Only other desperate solution is to bash the cross
member and try to bend it back far enough to clear (it only needs
to go a little way - the wheels will actually turn, it just rubs)
Annoying thing is another 2 mm and I would never have known it
was even near. Second problem is that the UJ fouls the front
brake pipe junction which I have predrilled. Much more of an
issue here as I will be left with a redundant hole in the body.
After much messing about, I find that if I lower the intermediate
joint I clear the front bulkhead and have room for the brake pipe.
Great jubilation until I realise that now I don't have room to
move the alternator back far enough to tighten the fan belt.
I am becoming more ruthless now and conclude that a shorter fan
belt will solve this. I think I would have finished by now if
there was some absolute order to do things in!
It is starting to look
like a car now, so time to think about registering it. Speak
to the VRO (Manchester). They say that they will send me the
forms, but won't do anything else until the car is MOTed, taxed
and insured (don't even want the forms until then.) They will
inspect it then and decide if it qualifies to keep the existing
plate. They point out that if it does, and the legislation doesn't
change, then it wouldn't need an SVA, but they won't confirm whether
it does in advance, so it looks like I have got to get it finished
this year - don't want to have all that and an SVA as well.
Start to look at the loom
and put it roughly in place - what a monster! Decide not to drill
through the back panel for the loom, but run it down the side
and across between the back panel and the petrol tank. Can't
see any reason for it to go inside the back, other than for the
tank sender, which goes down the gap between tank and back panel.
I assumed that the colour coding for the cables to be piggy backed
would be the same (some people never learn do they), but it looks
like I'll be spending happy hours with the Haynes manual sorting
out what is what.
Start labelling up the
fuse box wires. Discovered that I don't have a relay 4, and neither
do any of the Sierras I could find at the scrappers. Don't have
one of the fuses either (no connector in the fuse box), so will
have to use another one. Can't see where the flasher relay connects
at the moment either (unless this is relay 4?). Just to add
to the confusion I have found a few places where generations of
past owners have savaged the loom to add accessories - think I
will try to get decent sub-looms for these from the scrapyard
rather than have to cope with fault finding in the Ford wires
as well as the RH! Sudden breakthrough when I realised that the
ever thoughtful Richard had based the new loom around the automatic
gearbox wiring, rather than catering for the minority that might
fit a manual box. The mysterious relay 4 is the start inhibitor,
so all I need to do is link the 2 large wires directly and ignore
the other. It also seems to be based on a model with a centre
push horn - God knows what this is (P100?), I've never seen one.
This accounts for fuse 6 and relay 5 connections. All I have
to do now is figure out what the odd gray wire going to the Wiper
fuse is for, and I will have it sussed. It may be pointless in
reality, but it makes me feel better knowing what is going on!
I also discovered that my fusebox has the dip beam relay fitted(relay
6), so I have modified the wiring to use it.
Make up a plate for the
rear number plate and light. I am thinking of fastening this
to the rear hoop by cutting slots and putting Jubilee clips through.
This will make it easy to adjust to the vertical, and allow it
to move a bit without breaking if something hits it - it seems
a bit exposed as the farthest thing back.
Make up the front indicators
- shame you don't get a spare because the second is much better
than the first. Easy when you know how!
Cut the centre console
off the dash in order to move it further back (Dave Wilson's idea).
Bolt down the bottom about 50mm further back than the dash, and
reverse the gear lever knob (i.e. screwed it on 1/2 a turn and
turned the gear pattern insert round - really technical stuff!),
I now have about one and a half to two inches clearance when the
lever is right forward which is excellent. While I was messing
about I discovered that if I turn the Sierra clock on its side,
it fits exactly in the heater control cutout which I am not going
to use (another DW idea to use 2 choke control cables instead).
This will make the central panel less bare.
Got a mini wiper motor
on Ged Clarkson's recommendation, it was a doddle to fit. The
motor fastens to the inside front of the scuttle over the passenger
footwell, and is out of the way of everything. The drive to the
spindles is a thin (~8mm) rigid metal tube with a flexible drive
inside. All I have to do is bend the rigid tube to position the
motor, cut down the rigid tube between the spindles to the correct
length and swage a bell on the cut end (very soft so you can do
it by hand by rotating the end of a drill at an angle in it).
Cut off the excess flexible drive and open out the holes in the
scuttle a bit. Less than 2 hours start to finish, and with the
angled plastic mounts looks really good.
Trial fit nosecone, and start bonnet fitting (all bonnet catches, rear body catches). Don't understand RS comments about leaving the edging strip off while fitting the catches because you won't be able to get it tight enough - I think I might have to move mine up to get it to lock! Have to rethink the order of jobs at this point as the car is on stands and I can't close the door with the nosecone on. Decide to concentrate on getting it off the stands, so I finish off the back suspension/subframe, and fit the rear brake pipes. Do the seat belt inners, and box in the subframe. Modify the infill panel by bending back about 30mm of the return so I can then bolt through this to the back panel to gives additional rigidity, and less intrusion in the passenger compartment. With this arrangement, I am been able to fit the outer seatbelt mounting through the subframe reinforcing plate (and the bottom of the infill panel).
Had a bright idea for the
seat back support - bought some steel tube and cut it to exactly
the distance between the nuts on the two back side fixing bolts,
undid one bolt, slid one end over the other and bolted back into
the other end -voila a seat support bar and a way of concealing
2 ugly bolts all at once.
After a week of constant
ringing I finally get through to the Manchester VRO to chase the
forms they were supposed to have sent, and get a different story
about the sequence of events. I am now told they will inspect
the car before the MOT, providing it is in a state where the MOT
is possible even if it wouldn't pass, i.e. driveable. They will
then hold the registration until they get the stuff for road tax,
i.e. MOT, insurance and money. Seems to depend who you talk to,
which is worrying.
Should be able to take it off the stands at the weekend - then refit nosecone, finish bonnet, front brakes, rear wings and wiring.
Next month's installment - aiming for Mid December
