Seating

Chopped and painted.
Bolted my bar in.

Shorten the belts, thats all setup and complete.
Comfy!

Crap-Fest 2

Stripped all this and cleaned it up. Good job too. Now ready for putting together "properly".Some of CanleyClassics truely AWFUL cast monkey junk hubs, these are the originals made by dumb and dumber, cast from the original steel unit with NO thought as to the fact ALLOY is WEAKER.

Cast from totally the wrong material, they split around the bearing race unless you drive like grandma, then bearing tracks fall out (they do that anyway as the material used is shat, it expands like buggery in harduse (big brakes) situations and the bearing tracks work loose), not suprising looking at them, they are shockingly bad.

I've seen splits on the original steel ones, I wouldn't fit these unless I had a DEATHWISH.
This one hasn't even been 1 mile on the road and it's already cracked.
SHOCKING. You buy this stuff, you must be NUTS! Those alloy wishbones for rotoflex that are now cast from some smelted down old pistons and not machined from billet are another example of the most dangerous clueless / shocking engineering.

This material is not at all suited to a "sheer" component.

Please ensure your life insurance is ok, they may cost £55 each but your life is surely worth more? Please if you have these parts fitted and my car is near yours on a trackday, please tell me first and I can avoid you when they snap and you spear off the track.

I have some of these shocking wishbones to consider fitting to this car, I don't like them AT ALL. Not on my car please.



These wishbones are the most stupid thing I have ever seen! The mould shinkage is a highly amusing, the outer bush hole has 6mm material around the eyelet on one wishbone, the other is the one that will snap, it's got massive shinkage, down to 3.8mm!!! I couldn't bring myself to sell such utter tatt.

I am sure the maker will bang on about how they are fine, when drive at 30mph around Donnington maybe? try a few days at Nurburgring or a few races, try smacking a few curbs on track and tell me you are convinced?

More money down the drain!
Who puts stuff together without removing the powdercoating from an interference fit joint or fitting surface?? Answer = silly person.
I pull the hubs off the stub axles and the grease seals come out with the bearing, why? Cause some prat fitted them backwards.
Same prat who greased these new uprights and trunnions. Dunno what this grease it but that's now gone. It's too thick it's like hardened bile.
Above shows how not to pack a hub, completely full? Filled by dumb and dumber brothers? Grease in hubs needs to be half packed to allow it to move, or it will all come out or never move and the bearings will fail. All this muck would be have been released out the back of the hubs and sprayed all over the discs and pads, ruining them.

Good job someone checked the disc to hub bolts, some were mega tight, some half done up?

As I said this car needs a REAL check total strip down, I tested two of "kevins" (appropriate name, his misses must be Sally) homemade braided brake lines at my mates the other day, one exploded at about 100psi!

WRONG!!!!
WRONG.

Marks = 0/10. FAIL!

Looks like a candidate for a hub and stub axle swap.

As you can see the powder coating on the uprights is useless, so I washed it off, exposing a lovely looking brand new set of uprights complete with silver plating on them with new OE trunnions. Better than the Caterham options with those horrible lower bearing carriers.


Just have to clean up this upright with a flap disc, press out the old stub axles then remove the lower wishbones from the chassis, remove them cause someone left masking tape on them and hammered them into the chassis, if you powdercoat stuff, make sure you remove the masking tape and excess coating before fitting the stuff to a car :) :) :) Duh.

Anyways, after this is done I can do what I can while I await some new hubs.

Even if those hubs weren't split I'd tell Matt to bin them anyway, THEY WILL BREAK. I even called the owner to confirm where they came from cause they looked like total junk.

Sorry nothing positive today :) :) :)

Maybe another day!

Crap-Fest

Starting with something good.

My belt bar. Perfect!
Last of OE trackrods to fit on the "infidel" on the other side of the garage.
After much much hassle with "work" ~ " muppet assembly" done by the previous idoit I got a working steering rack, the roll-bar on. God what hassle. Took 3x longer than it should, thats the story of this car.

You know I added up the labour on my car otherday...@ £25 per hour it's had £90,000 worth of labour on it.
Had to have the steering column in and out 3x to sort out the total mess he made of anything related to anything relating to everything thats on this car. Every time I unbolt something the bolts are welded in, there's stripped threads, threads full of paint, 20x layers of paint slapped all over tolerance surfaces...There really is ONLY one answer for this car, if it was mine anyway, crush it, or seriously, strip the thing down completely and rebuilt it properly.

Everything I touch is bodged...I go to remove the door striker plate earlier, guess what, metric screws in the holes and the threads are all manged.

I am sick of it! I only have to put a finger on it and I get depressed. Lucky only a few more days of pain and undoing "work" "destruction" by some other person and it'll be gone.

Things are taking longer than planned, which is good for bank balance, but bad for my will to live.
Few examples of what I mean. Why rewire the car but leave on the "melted and hardened" wires from the steering column switches? Red and blue one is smelted.

Below is another example of a "idoit" engineering.
Shot blasted, then powdercoated, great, left the bare metal bit dry and I had to heat it up to redheat to unstick it to actually fit the steering column joint or make the two piece column come apart! That was steering removal one.
Also the powdercoating hadn't been removed the column extension part was jammed on the powdercoating cause some twit has just "hammered" it into place cause it was tight...Tight cause it was full of powdercoating, so the column wasn't adjustable...Why fit this stuff to a car before you have done the basics? Tart up job, this car is a nightmare. Above shows this resolved and checked to work before fitment number two.
Above shows the column back out again after checking it all fitted...Above shows the "bare metal" that was brown with rust before, this has been "blued" to stop corrosion and heat sealed and lubed up. As it should be!

Blueing in progress above.

Also why on earth do you fit the steering column with the splines all full of muck and powdercoating, again above shows the end heated with a blow torch and wire brushed so it's actually in a fit state to mate to the column joint.

What an idoit. Everything on this car needs stripping down and redoing, the builder was a total and utter idoit.

I also had to "recut" or "reslot all the splines with a grooving tool as some idoit, probably the other bloke wacked it in and damaged the first 2mm of the splines last time the joint was fitted.
This is how it was, I assumed it was knackered as there was no way it was gonna fit the column joint.

Load's of "spaghetti" or mindless snake charming to do under here.....?

After roughly 6hrs of toil and trouble I did 2hrs of work, 3-4hrs sorting work of such a low standard, basically just fitting the rack and roll bar.

I'd rather work on a "wreck" than something thats so badly put together.

Also wasted more time rethreading some other messed up cross threaded bolts...

Some people SHOULDN'T be let near a car, the bloke who built this was a PERFECT EXAMPLE.

Tomorrow I will strip the uprights, wash out the "shat" used to fill the wheel bearings and assemble the front suspension. Also clean up the upright that was chopped, paint that and refit it. Then the front can sit on it's wheels again and I can busy on the back-end. Then it can roll out the garage and leave for a new life elsewhere, probably driving everyone who comes into contact with it total nuts.

I am determined to "debodge" atleast some of this car!

Last time I get involved with this type of car. It drove the last builder nuts, it's driven me nuts and it's time for it to drive someone else nuts.

I can't say a good word about ANYTHING on it, sorry Matt! We'll settle up when you collect it.

Llandow Trackday - Open to any vehicles

http://www.sideways-technologies.co.uk/forum/Blah.pl?m-1228517496/

You may wish to view this thread.

Nice relaxed open-pitlane day @ Llandow in April/May.

Taking deposits now, dates finalised in the next few weeks.

Daily Musing

First of 2 pairs of carbs for some 1500/1300 Triumphs left today.

Set of DHLA40E's for Toby. Comes with a lifetime quarantee, honestly....


Odd job, refacing some Ferrari 308 discs. Warped to buggery and grooved up.
I am just about at that stage I can devote a week to this Spitfire below. Then the owner can have it back for a period or perminantly. Trying to find a mobile TIG welder atm to come and do some jobs, pain the arse.

Once that is done I can clear out.

Had a manic couple of weeks sorting out all remaining stuff I need to do before I gut the garage and get ready for next week.

Had a nice 8hr chat with GT the other day which will lead to some interesting developements in the very near future. None of which involve dealing with massive brainchewing projects.

I am currently changing my business arrangements in light of next years plans, sticking loads of time into that.

Also I have been looking at some cars and trying to find another one in the next few weeks. Thats time consuming. No Poker for 3 weeks :)

Infact I been in bed at 4am and up at 9am for two weeks I am buggered. Bar last Sunday when I slept for 12hrs.

Aim this week is to find a mota, do some more business bits, packup everything related to that Spitfire and tidy up a bit and next week I hope bar one set of carbs (2days solid work) I have nothing on the boiler. I want this Spitfire gone ASAP but I don't want to be distracted once I get on it. I hope a week solid should get the back-end finished. Life would be alot easier if TLD sent more than a few parts he got from Canley.

Also it would be easier if Canley actually fitted the wheel studs not just poked them in the holes...I gotta take the bloody hubs apart to press the studs in, can't wind the bastard in cause they are tight as a nun's watsit, the whole idea of sending this stuff back there was to save hassle...I give up! I try hard not be too critical, but what can you do when your opinions are constantly compounded.

Poor Jony :)

Giving the kid a hand to build a stonker 2000cc 6cyl, he was here today and we inspected all the parts.

Bless his little heart he gave me a head, cam, valves, crank, valve springs. Witor valves which are not ideal, too penny on a stick and not enough shape off the stem towards the seat, exhaust valves look"better" though.

Head suffers from massive core shift, so is NOT suitable for any performance work, it's REALLY bad, it'll loose him 10-15HP I think, 2-2.5mm of shift!! instead of compremising his entire engine I told him to find another one, also crack between 1 cyl valves.

You need to start on a GOOD basis to get power! I don't wanna work with junk.

I also told him the cam was rubbish and he took that away, measured it and it's all over the place, Piper grind 300deg.

So the hunt begins for a NICE head, cam of less duration, crank was ok, but it maybe cheaper to buy a new one, nitride or turtride once material is assessed.

Engine will run Emerald ECU and fuel injection.

Also on the hunt for some decent pistons such at Toyota etc. Be nice to make a 2150cc engine etc.

I am honest about this, I won't work with scrap...You wanna a job done, do it once, and right!

Not very productive then, I gave him a lesson or two, so he can source some better parts...Education of people is important, informed people bring you decent stuff to work with?! Secrets help noone!

I really want to make a monster. I was hoping to get started on the head...so the bits are shelved for now.

Been a busy few weeks, I haven't sat down hardly.

Need to finish of the Spitfire in the garage and get it on it's wheels and get that away while it's owner sorts out the exhaust, maybe that could come back at some point.

Then I am clearing the garage out, sorting some new shelving and benches and getting it cleaner than a surgery room.

Hopefully I'll be free to kick off next years plans in mid Jan.

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And......

My welding is finally done. Picked up this morn.
Just a few hours cleaning it up.

Belt bar done.

TIG.

Shotblast that and the last stuff can finally go to the powdercoaters sometime soonish.

£40 for all the welding to the tunnel and the belt bar, bargain! Shame it's all over for now.