Tunnel done!

Another god knows how long into this job, it's done!

Just have to sound proof it.

Stuck some oil in the box and bolted down the rear gearbox mount.

I'll use 3M windscreen sealer to seal the box. It stays supple and is easy to clean off.

Have all the hardware needed.
Painted in cellulose and buffed with G3, two coats of carnuba wax, collonite 476S. This stuff is the daddy. I gave my spit 2coats about 6months ago, the surface is STILL like silk and the dust of the garage just blows off. Great wax! You use TripleWAX or TurtleWAX, some tatt from Halfards its feeling rough and just disappears a few weeks later. This stuff is like concrete!
Etched Primed, 4 coats of top coat.

I am relieved this job is done. I must have put 80-90hrs into it! Plus driving about to get materials and welding. It couldn't really be any better.

Tunnel

Bit more work on it tonite.

Almost ready for some paint or powdercoating.

Few last bits of sanding and grinding to do.

Bleedin Heck, must be up to a weeks work by now!
Have to pickup some gearbox oil and sound/heat proofing stuff.

Need to seal a few holes and smooth a few bits with some JB weld.

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.