Quote:
Originally Posted by Amir Manzoori
I wouldn't call it kit car Peter, but a Bespoke, a one off and in your particular case an art work. Keep up the good work, you are doing brilliantly.
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You can call it anything you like but it doesn't change my everlasting list of things to do!
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This week I managed a couple of days on the car.
The first day was raining so I had to find something to do inside the garage so I thought I'd have a go at refitting the heater to the body tub. It turned out that this was a good move as it was a lot easier working standing in front of the tub (rather than leaning over from the side). The body tub is still on the trailer so at a good working height as well.
Of course, this should have been a case of re-bolting things back in the original mounting holes but, as always I had to complicate things a bit more. Because of the length of the BMW straight six space between the back of the engine and the bulkhead is at a premium so I had to mount the heater box as far back as possible. I had filled the original mounting holes before the tub was painted so had to drill new mounting holes. It was very nerve wracking working on the newly painted tub but thankfully no major disasters.
Heater by
Sabrebuilder, on Flickr
Not yet finally fitted with nylocks as I had run out of sealing foam strip and I also need to figure which of the multiple outlets I am going to use. You need to be a bit of an octopus to reach both sides of the bolts so I put nutserts in the front fixing points which are almost impossible to reach.
The terminals on the original heater fan module had corroded and rusted badly.
Heater Fan by
Sabrebuilder, on Flickr
Luckily I had already found a new resistor pack on ebay so it was a simple job the fit the new one.
Heater Fan by
Sabrebuilder, on Flickr
And here it is fitted to the car....
Heater fan by
Sabrebuilder, on Flickr
It took me sometime to open up the hole for the heater hose grommet.
The second day's weather was much better so I worked outside on the rolling chassis. I decide to tackle something that has been bugging me for sometime....
Thanks to a Royale owners magazine from June 2000, I have discovered that my original car's builder used the wrong rear springs. Here on the left are standard Sierra rear springs and on the right is the spring originally fitted.
Rear Springs by
Sabrebuilder, on Flickr
The old springs may have come from the original donor Sierra but who knows now where they came from?
The standard Sierra rear spring is 306mm overall length and 14mm wire whereas the springs fitted were 283mm and 15mm wire tapering to 10mm.
Rear Springs by
Sabrebuilder, on Flickr
I followed the Haynes Sierra manual's procedure to change the springs. A bit of a PITA job but much easier to do without the bodytub fitted.
Rear spring re-fitting by
Sabrebuilder, on Flickr
Not exactly real progress but I am really glad I have done this now as it was a lot easier than crawling around underneath a finished car.
...peter