Lotus Elan, range rover, TR7, Streetka, mx5, minor,

Finished the hood this evening,

Firstly marked the centre and punched the holes for the rear retainong strip, fortunately noting the centre hole is not in the centre before I made any holes!




Cleaned up the hood frame.




Then bolted the back on loosley, and marked the centre of the windscreen and hood at the front.




Marked where the glue was needed and glued the header and hood.




Once it had dried I covered all but the centre with clean cloths.



Then pulled it forward glued the centre, the slowly pulled the cloths out while stretching and gluing the sides.

The hood was not latched at this point, pulling it into the latches will tighten it further.

Opened it up glued the underside and trimmed it back.





Then riveted the header seal, 2 little straps at the front corners and press studs in, job done.







The cloth is nice and wrinkle free, the windows are not as bad as the picture makes them look, hopefully they will flatten out a bit more with time.

Nice tidy finish on the hood of the TR looks good.

TR windscreen has a bit of an issue.






Started off as a small crack at the bottom, in 30 miles it's extended top to bottom, body around it seems in good condition so its a call to the insurance company to relieve me of £100 tomorrow.

Pretty neat. It'll be interesting to hear what effect this has on NVH...

I used 2 lengths of pvc coated copper pipe as used in LPG conversions, they run down the inside of the chassis leg held in with p clips and through 2 holes drilled in the front.




From here they and similar clutch pipe run up to a fiat reservoir with 3 outlets and level switch. Which can just about be seen in this picture





On the car front i'm on holiday for a couple of weeks but before we left we gabe the minor a service and adjusted tappets and handbrake, only issue we coud find was leaking from one of the rear brake bleed nipples, nipped it up which seems to have stopped it, wonder if it may be the repro ones are too short as it seems to bottom out against the nut rather than the taper.

Only other issues are it uses oil, it smokes whenever it's been idling or slowing down but is fine when driving along, normaly this would point to valve guides but it has new A+ guides and seals, only thing I wonder is if the cam having a higher lift is causing the spring cap to hit the seal and force oil past it..




Not the end of the world, it drives really well but I would like to get to the bottom of it.

Other issue is the gearbox is sounding pretty rough, I'm pretty sure it just needs new bearings so we have bought another one for £60 which is supposed to be OK to strip and re-build.

I changed the reservoir fittings in the master cylinder for 90 degree ones, I think it was these.

www.google.co.uk/search?q=montecarlo+brake+reservoir&client=ms-android-samsung-ss&sxsrf=ALiCzsbrmqBwe-uaSzo6aa_iTgBE8SArdg%3A1657041326462&ei=rnHEYvnmG8jOgQb76ZzgAg&oq=montecarlo+brake+reservoir&gs_lcp=ChNtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1zZXJwEAMyBwghEAoQoAEyBwghEAoQoAEyBwghEAoQoAE6CwgAEB4QsAMQDRAFOg0IABAeEA8QsAMQDRAFOgQIIxAnOgYIABAeEBY6CAgAEB4QDxAWOgQIABANOggIABAeEAgQDToKCAAQHhAPEAgQDToECCEQFUoECEEYAVD1BVjCOGCPRWgAcAB4AIABwgOIAbEWkgEKMi4xMS4xLjAuMpgBAKABAcgBA8ABAQ&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-serp#imgrc=LTsJj3p26Fe3lM&scso=_uHHEYqKBJZaMgQaSh7HQDg3:0

Been away for a couple of weeks, went to Nothumberland, lovely part of the country, I could easily move up there.

First thing I did when we got back was look at the minor, fuel delivery at the carb seems fine, only thing we could find was the dashpot was bone dry and the piston seems a bit loose, put some oil in it and it seems to drive fine, not sure this would explain a top speed of 20mph though, Andrew's driven it for an hour with no problem though and it played up after only 20 minutes before so we will have to see, he knows what to check for now anyway. The noise he was worried about was an easy one, the exhaust rubs on the body when accelerating.

Today I had a few hours on the cars, firstly not a car, I got our chainsaw to run properly, its an almost new Stihl but after the first time it was used in anger it started playing up, I found a fault with the carb, a plate behind the diaphragm had a sharp edge which had cut through the rubber. Fitting a new one solved the starting and idling problems but it wouldn't rev or produce any power, looking at a few online videos about how to set them up I followed their advice and removed the emissions stops from the adjustment screws with these off it was obvious what the problem was, the high load one must have turned within it's plastic sleeve meaning it's adjustment range was 1.5 to 2.25 turns out, it's supposed to be around 3/4 of a turn, with this fixed it runs perfectly, it's soon to be used to remove large plum tree which has overgrown it's place.






on the car front I started looking at the A/C on the range rover, last year I tried to get it working but nothing doing so I fitted a new expansion valve and some O rings that were missing on the evaporator pipes.  Today I decided to put some gas in it, a bit of research showed that a R290 / R600 mix is a good drop in gas for R12 that has a low impact on the environment if it leaks out, that is propane and Iso Butane which you can conveniently buy is small containers from any camping shop, I know it's not refrigerant grade but for a test I am prepared to take the risk.




evacuated it, left it for 30 minutes no loss of vacuum so put some gas in, did IT based on pressure and kept it pretty conservative so around 130psi on the high side and 30psi on the low, seems to work and no obvious leaks lets see how long it lasts.

I did the same with the KA aircon, I've been filling it with small cylinders on R134a from ebay but it only lasts a month or so, I've put some dye in it this time and bought a black light, at only £20 I've also bought a new condenser, once it arrives I'll take the bumper off see if I can find a leak i'll replace the condenser and all the seals in the front whatever while it's apart .

Finally it was time to go over the mx5 before it's MOT, With being my wife's car and her recovering from Cancer it wasn't driven much last year, but it did get an advisory on cracks in the lower ball joint boots last year and I like to fix these before the next year, went over it all and apart from a lot of cobwebs it all seems fine so it was onto the ball joints.






Managed to get them apart without too much trouble, despite looking like it had been dragged out of the sea the rust only seems to be light and on the surface. Joint seemed fine and all nice and clean inside, added some new grease, then cut a piece of scaffold tube down to give me something to push it on with.





using a G clamp the boot pushed on easily enough, then it was a matter of putting it back together.







Might try to paint the back wheels to match the fronts this weekend as well.

Other thing I did was unbolt the bottom of the wings at the back, clean all the debris out from behind them and splash some dynax around. The structure on it is pretty good but the wings are getting a bit rough there are a few holes around the very bottom and they have been dinged and straightened out several times, at some point may treat it to a new pair.

Good luck with the emissions and test Kevin.

Rezin Rockit will be interesting when the time comes.

It passed and sailed through the emissions 16ppm hc (200 limit) and 11%co (20% limit), no idea why, perhaps because it's done fewer short journies, perhaps they never got it properly warm in the past or perhaps the added baffle in the exhaust has improved distribution through the cat. Whatever it's ok for another year!

Streetka next.