MadaboutKitcars

Not a problem, Steve if you can drop me a pm with address etc and I'll get them in the post. All I'd ask is a pint or two when we eventually meet in order to cover postage!

Excellent, thanks Dave, will send details.

Hopefully my car will be complete by summer, funds and wife permitting lol

Certainly get the pints in when we meet up

Dave - Good see you have another build thread up & running.

Enjoy the journey, Paul.

PS



Based on my time living in the valleys, I'd go for...

Kum (as in the hymn kum-ba-yah) - Roo.

But that is about as close as a Londoner is going to get!

Well I've just started addressing the to-do list.

So far I've:

• Lowered the rear suspension, as it was raised up for transport.
• Fuel leak fixed, after an ititial panic it turned out to just be a loose cable clamp
• Pop up headlights adjusted.
• Throttle cable tightened. that was.... entertaining and I had to remove the drivers seat and steering wheel just to get to the pedals! We're not in Sammio-land anymore Toto!
• Drivers seat moved back a smidge.
• Engine started! Carbs need adjusting, but I knew that
• Finally I tried to reverse it out of the garage for some photos, but it turns out but I have the same problem as l5000s has with his and I currently have 6 forward gears so I think the selector needs adjusting.

That's a shame, would love to see more pics.

Is the linkage rod or cable? Do you know if you have a un1 or 369 transaxle?

And book received today, thanks very much. We have decided on red with white interior now

Not sure yet, that is one of my next jobs! Although just to make sure it went into gear and was nothing more serious i quickly unscrewed the gear selector plate and with the extra room i was able to put it into reverse and move it about a bit

Although.... The Carbs were newly rebuilt before i had it and need setting up, so it's a bit temperamental atm. I wish i hadn't given my Stromberg manual and adjusting tool away with the Spyder now!

I'm also finding that I've got more room to work around it than i was fearing <phew>



And while I've had a an hr here and there in the daylight I've started stripping inspection panels off to check over the engine and assorted plumbing.



I do miss the Sammio luxury of opening the bonnet and just jumping in

Finally I've re-attached the headlining so i can sit in the car and not touch the roof. Just. But when i had the drivers seat out the other day i think i can get at least a cm or two by removing the slider and hard-fixing the seat. Not that it needs to move with the amount of legroom there is!

Can i see plumbing fittings? What are the stop cocks for, bottom left. Also the walls of your garage are they really that wide?

nice to see you have started on it Dave,
and today i've found reverse gear too, had it running for about ten minutes before it ran out of avgas (hee hee )

Man, I'm so jealous of you guys, can't wait to get mine home, hopefully before chrimbo!!

You can indeed, and I'm as intrigued as you are to find out what the hell they do!


And that is a superb optical illusion that is making my garage walls look bomb proof

As a fan of Heath-Robinson solutions to engineering challenges and recycling of everyday objects for use in car building (have you seen my clothes rail handbrake cable guide tube?) my guess for the stop-cock is that it probably leads to a heater matrix somewhere inside the body, which has been disconnected for some reason, maybe because it leaks.

I'm no expert on the (Rover V8?) fitted, but it looks to me like the inlet and outlet for the heater have been connected to each other with a couple of plumbing elbows. If there's another stop-cock somewhere in the engine bay that'd suggest that there is a heater hidden somewhere.

Nice to see something a bit more challenging than the simple Sammio builds we're used to over on that forum so keep up the good work DC. Edit - just noticed that there are two stop-cocks fitted.

I've been going through the build photos and there does seem to be an awful lot of copper pipe having been used, especially for linking the parallel radiators and i think that Toweds highly tuned powers of deduction are right and that those pipe ends in the engine bay are the ends of the pipes to the heater matrix which is mounted at the front. Top marks that man!

So atm i'm wondering about the suitability of household plumbing in a car where i'm sure the vibrations may cause unforseen issues especially if they've been soldered? I'm wondering if that is why the heater is bypassed?

But no worries... it's not the end of the world and it'll give me a good excuse to take some of the panels of to have a nosey


That aside, i have now taken the door cards off to replace the drivers side gas-ram (just ordered), and while i was at it i found a few more interesting bits and bobs that i'll change while its apart.

I shouldn't worry about the copper fittings. Quite normal on vintage vehicles. The heater is prob disconnected because of the difficulty of bleeding the bleeding air out of the extended cooling system. A few extra bleed points along the way may help, or look at the pipe runs to the heater, or you could use a small 12v circulation pump. Whatever happens, make sure those rover heads are happy and full of coolant with no air.
N

Italians really do have a sense of humour

Wot no aircon??

Nice replica...

the brits are worse Dave, mine don't even open

Are they elec or manual?

Manual. Passengers side one works fine but the drivers side one will need fettling while I've got the door card off to replace the gas ram.

But the biggie of the weekend is that I've had the engine started and I've begun setting up the carbs. Luckily they're Strombergs and are just bigger versions of what was fitted to the Sammio so i know what goes where and how to tune and balance them. I just need a Rover V8 book!

I've also removed the gear selector plate, stripped off the existing anti-reversal latch (a brass door lock! Towed would have approved, but it just looked odd) and I'm cleaning the plate, filling the extra holes and repainting it. I've also removed the leather surround which didn't look right but i can imagine was there for SVA purposes?

Finally for now, the chrome chav gear-knob is off and a nice period leather replica one is ready to go on (cheers fleabay!). I'll just need to engrave a top plate for it as i can't find a commercial one with the right gear pattern.

chav gear-knob!!! lol

come on, need more pics

I'm hoping to get mine back in a few weeks so will be update the site a lot

Drivers door gas ram now replaced so i no longer knock myself unconscious every time i get in/out! I didn't have these sort of problems with the Spyder!

I've also found a flaw in how the drivers door window winder is fixed, so i'll adjust that while the door card is off as it's nothing world-ending, just fiddly to do.

I've now also had the rear end apart to check plumbing etc. and I've found that the rads are fitted at a very shallow angle that i'm not at all comfortable with, so I've now removed them and I'm looking at alternative options.
i.e. refit them more upright, or replace with alternative rads, or get some custom rads made and completely re-plumb, or, or, or....

The other thing i've found is that the gear change is connected with rods rather than cables (i wish i'd kept the ones from the MR2 now!) and it seems to have acquired a bit of play over the years so that getting into reverse requires more room that the selector plate allows.
I'll give this a once over when I've got the new rads fitted.

At least when you work on the door, you can have it at eye level...

Good update.

I might be able to help out with the mr2 gear selector if you need it?

Hi Dave, what gas rams did you use?

Now my frames, glass and elec lift motors are in, they are not man enough, are they adjustable ones?

Might not be getting the car back until feb/mar now as I will be getting it painted by SMS in the new year and dc will be then doing the leather and carpets

I went to these people:
http://www.strutsdirect.co.uk/components/variable-force-gas-struts.php
and i ended up with an SD02-200.

I did try the SD01 first as i wasn't able to take my doors off to weigh them, but it wasn't up to the job. The SD02 when fitted is more than enough for me, so i'm happy!


Good luck with teh paint and trim, i intend of doing all of the paint rectification on mine myself. but i'll leave that until it warms up next year and after i've had change to get it on the road and enjoy it for a bit first!

Personally i don't care if it's got a few cracks or chips for the time being as that's all part of the fun/experience