kevin the chicken

Been out in one with 600 odd miles on it tonight, waiting for a collection with my feet and hands nowhere near the pedals or the wheel and it just decided to start up on its own. Disaster waiting to happen. The yard at our nearest collection depot is full of them, I can just imagine them all charging around at night on their own playing dodgems

If you havent changed anything recently and the engine is ok and not boiling up or losing fluid, I would start with the stat. Easy to get at and to check. Just put it in a pyrex jug and fill up with boiling water to see if it opens fully. They do go wrong as I have had two or three fail over the years. If theres any doubt replace as they are cheap enough. Kevin

My employer Royal Mail in their wisdom leased or bought a lot (talking hundreds or thousands here) of Fiat Doblo vans. Every week the engine management warning light comes on because the particulate filter has blocked in ours. You then have to go through a set procedure of pedal pressing and key turning to get the engine to rev to about 2000rpm for about 12 minutes at the side of the road with the bonnet up to clear the filter. If you dont do this promptly then another warning light comes on and it has to go back to the workshops for them to put a laptop on. I presume this all happens because the vans are not suitable for stop start motoring. Like we do all the time! I had a puncture and couldnt release the spare wheel carrier because it had rusted solid, not good for a 13 plate van. And dont get me started on the eco stop start system, not available half the time meaning you have to turn the key back to off and then on again even though the damn thing had decided to stop itself. Mind you it makes up for it by starting itself when you are not even in it sometimes. The RAC chap who came to fix it once said that if Fiat can make something for a pound then they only although 99p for it! Here endeth my review

I would agree with all that has been said so far except that I did buy the first car I saw, it was cheap so that helped and I have had great fun (and some hair pulling times) putting it back together. I have learned a lot, much of it through advice given on this forum and met some great people too. It's true that its not a Caterham or a Westfield but does offer reasonable performance with 150 plus horsepower in a car that weighs approx 3/4 ton, it would certainly have beaten my Civic type R to 60mph and that was no slouch. Just look for something that you can cope with if its not road ready. Anything that you think will be done in a week will probably take you a month if you are like me. There are a lot of unfinished projects out there, you dont want your purchase to end up on ebay as one of these. Welcome and good luck with your search, keep us posted. Regards Kevin

Dans right that is one hell of a car. Where do you run it? I am not far from Santa Pod but have never got around to going there although I have thought about it enough times. Maybe next year. When you say street legal are you not supposed to be able to see where you are going though! I dont think old bill would wear that for long around here. Dont suppose it matters that much if your street is dead straight and 1/4 mile long.

Been with Vodaphone for donkeys years and had no problems with their customer service but their network coverage seems to be patchy, namely wherever I go on holiday, Isle of Wight, Cornwall and Devon. Works fine in Greece, Holland and Hong Kong though but these are places I tend to go less often unfortunately!

Robby, Regarding a manual, the one I used when I had to dismantle my weber 45s is How to build and power tune weber and dellorto dcoe,dco/sp and dhla carburettors by Des Hamill. It has loads of good photos and diagrams together with descriptions of how to dismantle and reassemble all these carbs. I think it was about 20 quid but you could probably get a second hand version from amazon for less. There is also information on suggested jet sizes and quite a lot about the actual setting up but once you get them running roughly you will need to get the car to a rolling road. Kevin

I was going to suggest those irwin sockets, got me out of trouble a couple of times but boy is the bolt knackered after using them. Make sure you dont have any other option before you use them.

It all comes down to what you want to spend, decide on your budget first. The more horsepower you want, the more you have to pay. A few horsepower can often be gained by maximising the use of air intake and exhaust, after that you are looking at fueling and ignition system improvements and then if you want to go for more you have to start delving around inside the engine and that can get expensive. Twin webers are good, they make a great induction roar if your exhaust allows you to hear it but I find mine go out of balance very quickly, a tweak with the screwdriver soon sorts this out. My local tuner reckons that they are best for a race car but Dellorto are better for the road. I am currently assembling a collection of spares to rebuild a Sylva Leader and have decided to try a set of Fireblade carbs partially because I have heard that they are smoother and stay in tune but also because they are a LOT cheaper. Second hand webers are probably 300 quid a pair and I got my blade carbs for 65 quid posted! Still got to shell out a couple of hundred quid for an inlet manifold though. It may be that it will be cheaper and easier to start with a new engine to get that extra horsepower. Plenty of things that will fit out there, Zetec, Redtop, Duratec to name a few. If I was going to replace the pinto in my leader I would use a Rover V8 cos I love them. Have got a an SD1 efi in my garage crying out for a good home! Regards Kevin

Hi, I want to put some new spark plugs in and would be interested to hear what other Redtop users feel work best in their car. Mine is running on twin webers with an old style non ecu dizzy ignition system if that makes any difference. I have no idea which variant the engine came from or the age of the engine. I had a quick look at some of the vauxhall forums and some recommend GM ones (probably made by someone else anyway), some bosch and some the NGK iridium ones so I'm no better off. I'm using Bosch ones at the minute and feel sometimes that they just foul up a little bit so that the car doesnt pick on occasions although they do clear once you get going. It may just of course be a slightly duff plug so I want to put some new ones in to rule this out, but want to use the best ones for the job. Regards Kevin

Probably just a little bubble still remaining which you have dislodged on the way home. Try again, furthest bleed point first. Have had immense problems of this sort with old Landrovers, the pressure or vacuum bleeders do help a lot. I would just expect loads of grief and buy a big container of brake fluid. We even put ratchet straps around the brake shoes so that they wouldn't move during the bleeding operation! Brake bleeding is actually one of those operations in which a small child (eight years old) is useful once they know which pedal is which.

I've just ordered a new silencer, also a Motad one and was just going to copy the way my current one is fitted although with a bit more attention to detail and tidyness. The rear of the box is fixed to a bracket which is mounted on the floor of the car with two small bobbin type fittings and the front is mounted to a bracket fixed solidly to the underside. I shall change all the metal work to stainless and make the front flexible too even though I am using a flexible coupling (instead of a piece of ugly flexible pipe which you can't clamp up properly) to join the manifold pipe to the silencer, my thinking being that even though the engine movement on the mountings is taken care of the silencer wont vibrate around and shake the internals around. Exciting having a shiny new larger exhaust winging its way to me next week!

Just got my car back from a local garage where I took it to try to resolve some of my electrical problems. They started off by replacing the connections on the coil which I knew were dodgy, couldn't get any of the proper plugs so they made some up using new pins and other odds and sods which looks neat enough. The end result is the tachometer now works which is a result and now its just a matter of putting a few miles on the car to see if the fuse blowing problem is gone but it is another small step forward and now everything on the car works!

Got a C20XE in my series 7 and very happy with it. Runs on a couple of 45 webers and a non ecu setup but pokey enough and dead simple too. A very torquey set up. Good luck with your installation, there are plenty of knowledgeable people on this forum who will be able to guide you should you need it.

Was going to sorn mine but the wife said to tax it as you get some nice crisp days in the winter. Sailed through the mot this week so as I am off work next week I may go out for a blast if the weather allows. Definitely going to put a better exhaust on it though.

Anybody got any Fireblade carb spares lying around? I need one inlet trumpet/velocity stack as one of mine got damaged and although I think it may be possible to straighten it out I don't think it would be perfect afterwards. regards Kevin

Motad do you make car exhausts or just bike ones? I was going to ask if anybody had any recommended manufacturers so this could be your chance to blow your own trumpet! PETER I WANT LESS NOISE NOT MORE- did you hear that? I have made my daughter wear ear defenders as I dont want her hearing to be like yours and mine. I've got next week off work and I can feel some serious tinkering coming on, my wife approves too as it is going to make the car a bit more passenger friendly (exhaust is on the nearside) Regards Kevin

Hi, As one of this years visual/mechanical improvements I have decided to replace the exhaust on my S7. The one currently fitted has got very noisy in just a few miles that I have put on it and is not a repackable type as there is no way to get it apart without butchering it. Also apart from that the way it has been attached to the rest of the system bugs me as it looks like a crock of s**t, with massive rusty clamps and an outlandish length of ugly flexy pipe. So its going! I am unable to decide with what it should be replaced with size wise. The one currently fitted is about four inches across and looks a bit small in relation to the car, should I go bigger? Would a larger box be any be more efficent given that the size of the manifold pipe is ultimately going to restrict the flow to the silencer or is bigger better? The engine is a C20XE running a couple of webers but not interfered with apart from that. I may put bigger chokes in the carbs in search of a bit more poke but I'm not planning on installing a turbo or nitrous! I'd be interested to hear what you think Regards Kevin

Damn you lot! I've just bought one too. Thanks for your help, it's given me a bit more understanding of what goes on. I'll try either fixing or isolating the tacho first to see if that makes any difference. At least I know it wont be a worn through wire as it was all replaced earlier this year and I have not done many miles in it since then for one reason or another. I had thought of separating the circuits on their own fuses but not as easily as Longboarder suggested so I may follow that idea (hadnt thought of plugging directly into the fuse box). I'll keep you posted Kevin

I did have a good look at the fuse and it was hard to see the missing piece, in fact with the absence of my reading glasses I had to employ a magnifying glass!

Hi, Electrics, my favourite subject. I have an intermittent and annoying niggle at the moment. The fuse that protects the Tacho, speedo and the indicators keeps blowing on occasion. It is a 10amp one, is this sufficient for these circuits? Everything works fine for long periods of time and then suddenly it blows again. I havent really noticed when it has blown exactly before but the last time it happened it was when I was overtaking and flipped the indicators on (I noticed because I stopped almost straight away after and the speedo was stuck at 70) Got home and popped a new fuse in, turned the igniton on and the speedo returned to zero and indicators were working again. The tacho doesn't work anyway, could this be relevant? The indicators are operated by a rocker switch which was replaced a few weeks ago because it had a loose terminal on the back and I think the relay was a new one when the car was rewired earlier this. Where should I start my futile search first? I was so sure that is was going to be that switch. Regards Kevin

It mght be just the stuff I need. Is it ATF proof?

We'll be there, hopefully I can get a saturday off so we can make a weekend of it. Thanks to everyone involved in the organisation of this years event, we all enjoyed ourselves. Hopefully we should get to the steam rally next year too. Kevin

The gauge on mine seems to be all over the place at times but has never yet lost any water (thats the kiss of death for tomorrow!). I think the fans are more efficient if they pull through the radiator as they allow more air to hit the radiator. Are the hoses hard when fan is on at tickover? Just under red is not overheating if the gauge is accurate. If you have filled it up recently are you sure that there is no air trapped in the system. It was a devil of a job to get all the air out of my Redtop when I refilled it. No doubt somebody will have some more ideas later on, don't give up yet! Kevin

I got one off Dan when he re-wired my car for me. I had already ordered one from GBS but it was only a stick on vinyl thing of the archer. The one I got from Dan was a nice enamelled one with the flag on it. If anybody wants the Archer one they can have it, if I can find it that is!