Right hopefully a slightly better crossflow post this time, hopefully with some more reasonable photos which I took this morning during a break in the rain. Sorry there are no work in progress shots as the work over the weekend was all a bit rushed.
Following on from the last decent post the MOT shortlist was as follows:
Fibreglass repairs to floor,
Fibreglass repairs to sill / wheelarch,
Replace outriggers on passenger side,
Secure a battery and the wiring loom.
Fit a drivers door handle,
Fix a blowing exhaust downpipe,
Dave and I had a few days to spare last week and began by starting with the fiberglass repair work, the cracks to the floor were easily ground back and prepared from the inside, but the sill / passenger wheelarch repair quickly became a pain consuming lots of time... The damaged section was mainly reattached with filler at a slightly wonky angle. Picking at it soon made the whole section fall off. leaving a section from sill to wheelarch which needed to be repaired properly. Its this bit here if anyone's wondering what I'm on about:
With the badly repaired section missing it was much easier to repair the floor which had distorted out of aligment and was no longer flat. Rebel floors and Coupe floors seem to be very prone to distortion around the outriggers which can result in cracks or deformation to the fibreglass as the floor is stretched by the weight of bodyshell over the years. I can only imagine that accident damage makes this problem worse.
The decision was taken to prioritise the structural interior work and worry about the outside at a later date.
These photos show the completed repair work to the floor:
The outer sill-rear arch section was reattached, it was held in place with steel strips which will be removed when the outside repair work is completed, with an mot in mind the part completed outer repairs were covered in tape to prevent any sharp edges being a problem.
Dave fabricated some slimline passenger side outriggers which actually to allow the exhaust to clear, (sortof)
Rear outrigger / seatbelt mount
A standard outrigger on the drivers side:
The wiring loom was bound up in new tape, the fuse box was secured with cable ties...
There was also a bit of time spent improving the brake line security and bolting the servo down properly.
The battery was borrowed from the blue rebel and bolted down properly (i don't have a photo of that but I do have a picture of the old setup used during testing which is a good example of how not to secure a battery:
The pedals were also de-mateyed a previous owner had welded a steel section into the clutch to improve the mechanical advantage and lighten the clutch this had in turn made the pedals very skewed. His modification was removed and the clutch was returned to standard restoring it to pretty much its factory positioning:
The exhaust was bodged up to stop the blow, it was too thin to weld, hence this awful mess which has at least stopped the blow:
it will likely be replaced with a decent replacement downpipe in the near future.
At this point there will doubtless be someone wondering why I'm doing only doing the bare minimum to get this on the road rather than going for a red rebel / scimitar spec proper repair, the short version is I don't know if this rebel is one to keep yet and with that in mind I've not wanted to tie up too much time and money in it until I know what its like on the road...
Its first long distance run was on Tuesday when Dave took it to the local test station for an initial test where it duly failed on:
Headlights not working (though they worked before leaving home)
Handbrake balance,
brake lines insufficiently secured (even though these were unchanged from how reliant had done it)
Nylock nuts on ball joints only having 1 turn of thread showing!
A Trunnion bolt missing a nut!
It was a pretty short fail sheet which Dave took care of that afternoon while i rushed of to work. I took it back for a retest on Thursday and it passed ok,
The mot flagged up a few issues we'd not been aware of; most importantly the rear wheel bearings are well past their best and need replacing as a matter of priory.
So how did it drive?
Well not that well but with potential... The biggest issue seems to be the carb which is a twin choke weber 36dgmv it currently only seems to fuel to half throttle. It probably has a blocked secondary jet or a fault with an acceleration diaphragm which will hopefully be cured by a service kit. It also has a tendency to stall at junctions probably caused by an excessively rich idle mixture. It wants a decent overhaul which will hopefully cure the fueling issues, Even at half throttle it seems to take of rapidly enough to throw you back in your seat, lurching forward with unexpected eagerness. The regal rear wheels are hopelessly narrow to apply the power and it seems to wheel spin very easily with a back end very prone to step out... which is entertaining but not especially useful on the road. Mid term wider banded steel wheels should help in this respect. Through the corners the extra up front weight of the crossflow is noticeable though fitting an anti roll bar will probably go a long way towards bringing this under control. The current positioning of the engine is not as far back as it could be so that's something else that might be up for adjustment in the future.
The following photos show that there is further room to move the engine back...
Engine mount which has been modified to fit could be replaced with a standard item if the engine was mounted further back.
I'll end this post with a couple of overview photos taken this morning:
So next steps? sort out the tax category with the DVLA and fix the carb then we'll see how it develops from there
