Back to December 2004

This page is a cleaned up version of the live diary which I update regularly on http://www.astra-mk2.com/forum/showthread.php?t=614

03-Jan-2005

I did some unscheduled rust proofing . I was driving along giving it some. When I pulled in at the end there was quite a lot of smoke from under the bonnet. Took a look and the oil filler cap had fallen off. Shut bonnet so that smoke wouldn't turn to fire. Thought about ways to block the hole up. Decided to have another look under bonnet. Filler cap was found down back of engine.

06-Jan-05

Little steps: went round panel shop and ordered a new clear side repeater. Went to nut and bolt shop and bought two large bolts to use as bungs on the heater matrix pipe. The old spark plug is still in one as a temporary fix from 6 months ago.

Since I work from 11am-7pm at the moment then I'm going to go down to the workshop at 9.00am tomorrow and fit the bits and spray a minor rust spot under the bumper. Or lie in bed.

07-Jan-05

Bias pedal box arrived today. Thanks to Mig member Joekont for the speedy postage. Need to buy some fittings from Think Automotive before fitting it now.

08-Jan-05

I actually spent a day down the workshop today. Since the new bushes haven't arrived, nor all the bits for the pedal box, then I spent the day doing silly little jobs that have been avoided for months.

Took bumper off. Had tow loop welded back on properly. Sorted a very minor bit of surface rust on the front sub frame. Fixed mesh in properly - it had worked loose at the top. Needed to put washers under the small screws holding the mesh in.

Removed old spark plugs on the redundant heater matrix pipes. Replaced with stainless bolts.

Flushed coolant system.

Had fire extinguisher bracket nuts welded onto exhaust tunnel in car - the holes I'd tapped out previosuly had pulled through.

Sorted out manky wiring. Removed loads of redundant wires that had been for the ECU diagnostics etc. Taped up remaining wires and used spiral wrap.

On the way home I was doing a bit of a high rpm work out when there was a bang, followed by smoke. Smoke? Nah, steam. Hmm, I think I know what that might be.

Pulled over under a street light. One of the shiney new plug bolts had blown off! Replaced with a screwdriver handle, added more water and drove home. Lesson learnt - the threaded bit of the bolt is good at holding the bolts in.

So that's now an unplanned steam cleam as well as two unrequested rust proofings (two unplanned engine oil spray sessions in last month).

10-Jan-2005

Another busy day down the workshop.

Drove down with the screwdriver handle still blocking the water pipe.

Replaced the smooth bolts with the threaded section of the bolt on both the plugged pipes.

Then set to on a job that I'd been avoiding for weeks. I had decided that the cam belt tension was too high. There was also an issue with the cover rubbing the edge of the belt. Together this resulted in a slight whine that was quite noticeable when driving past walls or buildings. It took me about an hour and half to do the job properly. Made me feel better though.

In the afternoon I decided to sort the chequer plate out. The piece in the car looked like the A Team credits. I'd drilled loads of useless holes in one corner so it looked a mess. The piece was removed and a completely new part was cut up. It also extended further under the pedals. It took ages to bend the plate to about the right shape. It took a long time to bolt it down too. I had to start with long bolts, then once the plate was pulled down, I could move onto the correct bolts. I got there in the end. Better exercise than going to gym; kneel down, stretch, stand up, lie down on back, stand up, reach up, reach down, struggle.

Finally I took a power steering rack apart. The workings were very interesting. The main input shaft has a flexible section. This senses which way the wheel is being turned. Grooves in the shaft then direct the fluid into one or another port depending on which way it is being twisted. A complete intermediate assembly with seals then connects the left and right ports to the housing where the fluid is sent to the rack. Interesting but not needed. I used an angle grinder to remove the locking pin. Then I machined out the area near the flexi joint. I then had this all welded up. To convert the PAS rack into a manual rack.

I hope that this will provide a quickish rack that doesn't wear away like the Quickracks do. I'll be trying it out later this week.

10-Jan-2205

Ordered the Dash-3 fittings to allow the pedal bias box to be fitted.

Also I got my test driver to do a top speed run on his private test track. He reported back that the top speed had increased from 138 indicated to 144 indicated and there were maybe another 1-2 units of speed to go. This would suggest that the power at the wheels had increased from the original 120BHP to: 120 * (144/138)^3 = 136BHP. Sounds good. That's a 16BHP gain. That would suggest that flyhweel power had increased from 145BHP to around 160BHP, maybe a tad more. Good news indeed.

I've just run this data through the acceleration calculator. It reckons I can manage a 1/4 mile time of 14.8s@95mph, 0-60 in just over 6s and 0-100 in just under 17s. We'll see on that.

If I refitted the 3.9 final drive then it says 1/4 mile of 14.7s@95.5mph, 0-60 in 6.3s and 0-100 in 16.2s.

12-Jan-05

Pipe fittings for the brake pedal box arrived today. The M8 thread didn't fit into the master cylinders. I measured the bolts that came with it and they were about 9mm OD.

Phoned up Think automotive and they said the thread was probably 3/8" UNF. So I ordered another set of Banjo fittings and washers in 3/8" UNF.

Phoned up Autovaux to ask where the bushes were. They were waiting for one of them to arrive. Should arrive by Friday they said.

15-Jan-05

All the fittings for the pedal box arrived today.

16-Jan-05

Fitted the pedal box. Story.

I also assembled the welded up non-PAS PAS rack. I had to abandon this idea because the welding had distorted the shaft. Picture.

17-Jan-05

Essentially the master cylinder bores are too large in relation to the brake calliper bores. So I don't need to shift much fluid due to the small bore of the standard callipers, plus the small bore means a lot of pressure is needed to generate the braking force.

18-Jan-05

Next I looked the master cylinders. One is a larger diameter than the other. Aha! I'd got them the wrong way round. So I disconnected the pipes. Then I thought about it a bit more. They were the right way round to start with! The front brakes should get the smaller diameter because this will provide more pressure for the same force. This helps bias the front brakes more. 

So, having removed the pipes and then refitting them I had to bleed the system out again. Took a while and I wasn't best pleased because I hadn't managed to get the car fully into the workshop so I had to lie on a piece of wood on the wet muddy track when doing the back ones.

Anyway anyway. Trial time. I found that pedal travel had increased considerably. Maybe a bit of sponge in the fluid now. At first I wasn't convinced that brakes were acceptable. So on the way home I did a series of emergency stops to see if I could lock the wheels up. Yes I could. I set myself some challenges towards the end. Accelerate towards a marker and then cadence brake at the last minute and see if I could stop before I reached the marker. It worked time and time again.

Overall, I'm 50-50 about the pedal box. I don't see it as offering many advantages over the standard servo at the moment. However, I have faith that once it's set up how I want it then I'll like it.

Fail list! 

1. One side repeater has wrong colour bulb -easy fix. 
2. Exhaust manifold blowing. - New gasket needed. 
3. Braided brake pipes insecure at various points - need some brackets and cable ties. 
4. Too much pedal travel - Going to reengineer brake pivot back a bit and rebleed system. 
5. One ball joint knackered. - Aha! That will be the phantom steering wobble source that I've been looking for unsucessfully.

So, not too sad.

After a late breakfast at Safeburies I made it down to the workshop for 3pm.

First job was to fit a new exhaust manifold gasket. Once I had the manifold off I took the opportunity to file the gasket faces a bit flatter. The new gasket was fitted and the bolts were done up tight. Very tight. The whole job took about 1.5 hours.

Next I fitted the new ball joint. The old one was wrecked. It had about 3mm of slop in it. No wonder the steering had been wandering around. Funny really, I'd got used to the car wobbling around.

Then on to the brakes. I drilled a hole in the new reservoir lid and then connected the Easibleed up to it. In a short time I'd bled out the front circuit, then the rear circuit. I spilt quite a lot of brake fluid in this time. The paint on the pedal box was already coming off due to previous spillage. Oh well.

Then I took the pedal out and drilled another hole in it. This one was at about the 2/3 point. So compared with std it would increase pedal travel by about 1.5 times and reduce the force by about 2/3. This took me about 15 minutes total compared with 45 minutes last time. Just goes to show how much quicker a job is when you've done it before and also when you're in a dry workshop rather than half outside in the wet.

The pedal feel was encouraging. A good 2" of travel, but really firm too.

A major fail area on the MOT was to do with braided brake hoses not being fixed down. I'd bought a load of P clips from Maplin. I set to fixing the brake pipe down inside the car. I had to be really careful on the section over the fuel tank since there was only about 4mm of gap between the shell and the top of the tank. I had to cut the end off the self tapping screws.

I worked my way from rear to the front fixing the pipe down. It was a good fun job actually, I was very pleased with how it all looked. Should have done it ages ago.

Then I jacked the rear of the car up and fixed the braided brake pipes underneath the car. This involved drilling a small hole from underneath, tapping it, then threading a bolt down from above. The P clips was then fitted using a nut to hold it on, with a lock nut then wound on to hold it all together. Being on my own this could have been a difficult job. The first one was, I had to use Meole grips to hold the bolt steady whilst I was underneath. After that I sussed it so it became a proper one man job. Still, it took ages to fix all of the pipe down.

Because I was feeling pedantic I decided that the clips should be equally spaced on both sides. This meant one clips was right above the fuel pipes. Not that bad, but it took a good few goes to get the nut on from below.

I finished off by fixing the brake pipe down under the bonnet. I was going to drill some holes and add P clips, but in the end I just used cable ties. I'll see what the MOT tester says, but fixed is fixed as far as I'm concerned.

The reservoir bracket that was supplied is of no use at all. It's just a plate with two holes in it. There's nowhere I can fit is, so I'm going to have to make something myself. I reckon that we'll be able to weld a U section on and then use large Jubilee clips to do it. A job for Monday night.

All that remained after that was to get 2 new front tyres and have it tracked up.

On the drive home I tested the brakes. I really thought that they were a lot better now. To make them work you had to push a bit harder than a servoed system. But not scarily so. I did an 80-30 test and it managed it fine. You just have to push quite hard to stop hard. I think it's about right now.

This evening I went round to the workshop and made some brackets out of the angle iron. Hack sawed and filed them into shape. Very satisfying. Then Pete turned up and welded the brackets into place. A relaxed job. Makes a changes from the full on epics.

Then he said "only the emissions I'm worried about". We started it up and had a look at the output. Everything looked good except the HC levels. These kept on rising up. Things weren't looking too good. But the man didn't seem to worried about it, he said we could sort the emissions out.

Things were alright once we raised the idle revs up a bit higher. I assume that the HC's are essentially due to unburnt petrol and the carbs are probably not very well metered at low rpm. The CO and CO2 levels were fine.

When he started writing out the certificate then I knew we were on to a winner. He said to me "you've done a really tidy job on those brake fittings." Which was nice.

So I'm in a good mood now.

I need to spend a day cleaning and painting the metal round the pedal box where brake fluid has done some damage.

The brakes are working well now. You have to press quite hard, but it's manageable.