6/03/2004

5hrs

Brake Servo

During the week I finished painting the brake servo and refurbished the  operating mechanism. This involved fitting a new output seal and replacing the felt pads and filter on the input side. The HM and the instructions with the Lucas refurbishing kit are pretty clear. The felt pads and the filter have to be cut with a single radial cut to enable them to fitted around the input shaft. Take care to stagger the position of the cut when fitting the pads and filter.   Assembled the brake servo and master cylinder. Lubricated the plunger and piston with the brake grease provided. Sealed the joint with translucent silicon sealant . Set about making the distance piece that fits between the bulkhead and the servo. Current thinking by Nostalgia is to pack the servo out with washers and fill the gap with silicon sealer. The solid plate spacer (diagram 1-16 in the build manual) is a much neater job.  A suitable spacer can be made from 4mm aluminium sheet to the dimension in the manual or using the servo / bulkhead gasket as a template. Two plates need to be made to achieve the 8mm thickness required.
 

7/03/2004

4 hrs

Brake Servo
 

Completed the making of the spacer and fitted the brake servo and spacer to the bulkhead. Sealed the joints between servo and spacer and spacer and bulkhead with translucent silicon sealer. Connected the servo input rod to the brake pedal.
 

14/03/2004

4 hrs

Fuel & Brake Pipes

Between  breaks to collect tools from my daughters and power cuts for  most of this morning. I managed to finally plan and start work on fitting the brake and fuel pipes.  I  realised part of my problem was because I am using fuel injection , the return fuel line means there is an extra pipe to run the length of the car and is what makes the  routing of the pipes more difficult to avoid the under floor projections and maintain a neat installation.  I worked out the initial route of the supply fuel pipe using stiff fencing wire.  the enabled me to position the  clips  in the diff area and work out the bend angles to line up with the hole in the chassis cross member.   Using one of the copper pipes as a template I positioned the retaining clips on the inner edge of the chassis rail from the bulkhead to the floor pan.  I then spent the rest of the time working out how to get the neatest installation under the floor, with the minimum of bends. the Nostalgia supplied clips won't do it but I know how and where to run the pipes. I should be able to run the supply pipe straight along the bottom edge from the bulkhead to the chassis cross member  by the diff.  The return and brake pipe will have one bend to go under the floor pan then run parallel to the supply pipe, then another upward bend to restore the run to its original line to pass through the cross ember in to the diff area.  Trial installation says it can be done and will look good.   I'll get some different clips from Unimaster tomorrow.
 

17/03/2004

3hrs

Fuel &  Brake  Pipes

Unimaster don't have any clips so I'm waiting for Automec to send me a catalogue.  In the mean time I have fitted the front brake "T" piece.  Using fencing wire I made a template for bending the LH front brake line which runs from the "T" piece to the transition bracket.  This gives the approximate position and shape to bend the copper brake pipe. fitted the LH flexible brake line. Bent the LH copper pipe to match the template and fitted it.
 

18/03/2004

2hrs

Front Brakes

Fitted the RH front flexible hose. Shaped the RH front brake pipe from the "T" piece to the transition bracket. As before shaped a piece of  stiff fencing wire  to get approximate shape and size. This pipe must be shorter than the LH one by about an inch. This makes the left and right  pipes  asymmetrical.  Even though I fixed the LH pipe to the chassis using P clips I will investigate  shortening, re-flaring the end and re shaping LH pipe to get the same shape. 

20/03/2004

3 hrs.

Brake Pipes

I started by testing the pipe flaring tool I had on a spare piece of pipe. The result was less than satisfactory. The flare was just about passable but the tool scored the pipe where it gripped it.  ( I had been warned about this tool but ignored the advice, I should know better at my age. ) The tool is cheap and available from Clarke's ( Machine Mart) & Sealy.  Take my advice and don't use either.  I shortened the LH  pipe and took it to Unimaster they put a flare on it for me free of charge. I ordered a new Tool (this time, definitely  not cheap).  The  front pipes from the calliper to the transition bracket on the brake disc cover were too long (as supplied by Nostalgia. I bent them to shape and waited the arrival of the new tool before cutting them.
 

25/03/2004

2 hrs

Brake Pipes

The new flaring tool arrived yesterday. I did a couple of practice flares on some old tube, - perfect. I took off the calliper / transition bracket pipes  having marked where they were to be cut  allowing an extra 1/4" for making the flares. I had to partly straighten the pipes to get them in to the tool, but with this done it was a simple matter to flare the ends and re-bend the pipes.  Refitted the pipes. I also removed and reshaped the LH pipe from the T piece to the transition bracket because I was not happy with the final shape. Re fitted the reshaped pipe - much better.

10hrs

Pedal Box

I had looked at the fitting of of the pedal box support bracket before. The holes in the bracket did not line up with the holes in the bulkhead and the pedal box if the plate was places flat on top of the pedal box.  If the holes were lined up there was an appreciable gap between the top of the pedal box and the bracket ( in my opinion too big to fill with sealer. There was also a gap between the front of the bracket  and the pedal box and the rear of the bracket and the bulkhead because the angles did not match.   I decided the best fit was with the bracket flat to the top of the pedal box. With the bracket in this position I worked out the angles, and bent the bracket until the angles agreed. The top of the bracket had an 4mm parallel gap with the bulkhead I made a distance plate to fill the gap.  Now the front holes needed to be slotted until they agreed with the pedal box. This done and the fitting checked, the bracket and distance piece were painted. I returned to fitting the front brake pipe from the "T" piece to the master cylinder. Using stiff fencing wire I worked out where the pipe needed to be bent.  Once fitted across the front cross member and routed down the inside of the RH chassis rail  the pipe passes through the RH engine mounting bracket.  to get the angles and the route as neat as possible I secured the pipe with "P" clips and large headed pop rivets. It was now easier to leave the pipe  position to work out the best route.  This was slow work because of all the planning and checking that had to be done to ensure the bends were in the right place and the pipe was straight and parallel to the chassis. Bends  were made using bending pliers where possible or where tighter bends were required the pipe was bent round a socket.  I finished up  the day making a bracket to secure the pipe to the master cylinder. I stopped at this point because the pipe supplied by Nostalgia is too long and I need to thing about clearances and support of the pipe once the bodywork is in place.

29-30/03/2004

2hrs

Brake Pipes

I was unhappy with the pipe work and the bracket. It looked untidy and in my opinion was possibly spaced too far away from the master cylinder.  Not having a bodywork reference point I could not tell if this was likely to be the case. I decided to rework the bracket and the brake pipe to bring it nearer the master cylinder. I reshaped the bracket by bending a horizontal section in the middle to bring to the centreline and underneath the master cylinder.  Then I reshaped the  the pipe to bring the pipe run closer to the Master cylinder.  The pipe was still too long so having calculated the bend and the pipe length required to line up with the front master cylinder connection, I cut the pipe and re-flared the end. I bent a loop in the pipe around a large socket and teased it in to position. Once in place and tightened up,  I dressed the pipe to get the bends and angles as best as I could. finally securing the pipe with "P" clips to hold it in place. . It is still not as good as I would have liked but I suspect it will not be visible /obvious when the body work is on.
 

31/3/2004

7 hrs

Brake Pipes

I set out today to finish the pipe work. Alas it was not to be. I started by bending the rear brake pipe (using the stiff wire template to start with) around the chassis in the diff area and down the RH chassis rail. All went reasonably well and the pipe was loosely aligned and placed in the mounting clips. I left it like this to work out the bends and position of the fuel pipes.  I  had positioned some of the mounting clips earlier. This enabled me to hold the pipe in place and determine the shape to pass through the cross member safely and down the chassis rail.  I remove the pipe having marked where the bends should come and attempted the first bend. To my horror the bending tool flattened the pipe.  since this bend was 2/3 of the way down the pipe it was ruined.   Now I discovered the pipe supplied by Nostalgia was 10mm pipe and all my bending tools were 3/8".  there is not much difference but enough to flatten the pipe.  So off to Unimaster to get some 3/8" pipe. I straightened  and cut the new pipe to length Bent it to follow the chassis from the boot are , down past the diff and along the RH chassis rail and left it at that for the day
 

Total Hours this month = 35

Total hours to date = 534.5