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Yeh, even got a photo. There's a TT in Leamington running them as well -it's like they're following us around! Lauren is very taken with them in the flesh as, and think I've found a second hand staggered set for ok money as well....

So having got a pretty good bargain today, I wondered what everyone else's best bargains have been?

And because a thread is nothing without photos, here's the one that got me thinking



Hydrovane compressor with a big tank and filters, far more capable than I'll ever need - £50!

So what's you're best bargain?

So not a massive update, but does change the look a surprising amount

Lauren has always thought the grill didn't quite work, needed something more/less and others have said similar.

So here's the new look



Instead of doing the grill letters in red, we got another set of Ford letters and painted them up as the ones on the rear. Was a lot easier this way than trying to get into the letter on the grill.

We rather like it - but sure more tweets will happen at some point

In other news it's driving great, really nice cruiser - Lauren should be putting it into daily use this week

Finally, a shot from the butty run this morning with one of it's kin

After a torrential rain earlier this morning, it looked like this might be a bit of a wash out, but in the end it was lovely.

It's a slightly odd show in some ways, in that it's kind of classic car rally that is based in Stratford, has a drive out, a bit of a tour around the town, and then everyone parks up and you wander round. But you have to pre-register and be on the drive, so no just turning up and parking in town apparently, which if you ask me is a missed oppertunity since this works so well at shows like RetroWarwick.

Enough talk, have a few photos of some of our favorites



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My car of the day was this Jag 420G - so cool

Looking good, may have to get a set of those TCAs for Lauren's Capri, as it's got something odd about it, no vibration though just feels a bit vague

The google-fu is strong in this one

Cheers for the link bud ;D

Keep the great shots coming!

Ha no, I had a quick browse myself. Looked at those, but being a preset, I took that as having 22 set resistance settings, and what I need is something fully variable. If in fact that's what a preset pot is, then I'll keep it in mind if I struggle to tune - seemed to ok just sensitive last night, so will see how it goes. Thanks for the link - may well come in handy.

Right, fixing the mixture adjustment issue.

So here is the standard CO adjustment pot - basically it takes 5V in, and gives and output voltage between 0 and 5V to set the ECU calibration gain based on idle CO reading (should be 1 to 1.5%):



Between the outer pins this measures at 6.25k ohms, but critically there was an open circuit to the middle pin - the output to the ECU to tell it the gain to set the calibration by - no wonder I couldn't get it to tune.

Now fixing this would be easy in the 90's, could just pop to the Ford dealer, buy one and change it over in under a minute. Sadly they're no longer available and the only one I can find (new old stock) is £70!

So instead I popped to Maplin, and £1.30 later I have this



A 4.7k ohm potentiometer, just a bit cheaper than the Ford one!

So simply wire it in:



And it's fixed - nice to have an easy fix for a change. Sadly it's only one turn for it's full range, meaning it's pretty damn sensitive, but it tunes fine. Handy tip, tune it to 2.5V output before fitting it in place, this seems to be a good starting point to tune from. Then it's just like setting up a carb, simples.

To tidy it up I popped it in a little box (£2 from maplin) and it looks right at home:



After this went for a test drive, and well it wasn't good - thought I'd messed something up with the pot change, but turned out to be fuel starvation. After messing around with the tank and pump for a while, I found a blockage and now it drives great.

MOT tomorrow, wish us luck

One minute you're trying to get the CO tuned, the next there's an almighty rattling coming from the timing chain and the to do list just got longer again!

I should have replaced the timing chain etc. before I put the engine in, as they are a weak point on these engines, but I took a risk and given how well it was running, I thought I'd got away with it. To tune these you have to run the engine at 3000rpm for 15s and then have 30s to adjust then repeat. Seems this accelerated the failure, yay.

At least there's a lot of room once the rad is out



all done now, and wasn't that hard either.

Anyway, got back to trying to tune it, and seems the adjusting pot is dead - no wonder I couldn't seem to get it to tune up!

Always something else to do ;D