Today was never going to be the world's most productive day.... terrible hangover and 33 degree temperatures in the garage (according to the engine management system). Arrived at the garage feeling awful about 1pm and got to work.
First we needed to sort out why the engine was ticking over so badly, so using an air balance gauge, we made a few adjustments. This is now running much better.
The tacho was reading nonsense figures, approx double the true figure. I went into the ECU software and found a pulse setting, halved it from 4 to 2, and that was sorted. Amazing to make software changes like that with the engine running!
I wired in the shift light system to the back of the tacho, and this works great. Just need to find somewhere to mount it - i'm thinking under the aeroscreen.
Next is the speedo - with the car in gear and the rear hubs spinning, we get nothing. I bent the pickup down a bit, and we started to get a reading. A bit of calculation based on wheel diameter, and we have a reading that seems pretty realistic.
For some reason we're getting no reading on the water temp gauge, i looked into it and found its mounted to a pipe connected by rubber at each end - so no earth. A jubilee clip and earth wire and that's working great. We then ran the engine for a few minutes until the temperature was in the 90s... the fan kicked in, so thats working well too.
I connected the oil pressure switch to the light on the dashboard, and this is on initially and goes off when the engine is running, so i guess its working.
I found the wire from the gearbox for the neutral light, but i can't find the green bulb anywhere - hopefully this will turn up and i can have a neutral light! I can't get the gear indicator to work at all.
We then fitted the wheels and reduced all the pressures to 20psi. The jacks came out and we slowly lowered the car, step by step, onto its wheels. This was a bit hairy and i hope we don't need the car that high again!
It's a proper car now... amazing!
We set about increasing the preload on the shocks to adjust the ride height - its sitting 15mm too low currently, and thats without the weight of the body & driver. Oddly we're almost running out of thread ... so i'm not sure we can get it high enough. Its incredibly low at 15cm... not good for speed bumps!
Andy had some fun with the tap & die set and modified the gear nob to be our reverse nob - would be a shame for it to go to waste, its nice!
We covered the central tunnel panels in vinyl (pleather!) and screwed them into place. The handbrake gaiter is a bit too big, so might need to take it back off and adjust it.
We fitted the start button and wired it into the ignition barrel. Bit of a problem though.... it works with the key out, so you can turn the engine over without ignition! I decided to use a relay to fix this, wiring a switched 12v through the switch and relay - this works like a dream, so job done.
Trying to run the engine again, it was going haywire, probably caused by a loose wire vibrating and shorting. Then it wouldn't run at all... we'd run out of fuel!
We fixed a piece of carpet into the drivers side seat area and fitted the seat runners to the bottom of the car. We trial fitted the seat, and I had a sit - feels great. Compared to other cars i've owned you seem so far back from the front!
I guess we actually got quite a bit done today... tomorrow we'll finish the interior and maybe make a start on the bodywork.
Todays Build: 3 (hungover) people, 8,7 and 3 hours. Do hungover hours count for the same? Total build time so far: 90 hours, 134 man-hours.
