ibrooks

Stripping a caliper won't damage it unless you are ham-fisted about it or there has been a buildup of rust between the piston and cylinder but if this has happened then they need work anyhow. That said I've also found that I can get exchange calipers for not a lot more than the price of seal-kits so don't usually bother - especially if there is rust on the pistons and you need to replace them too. Iain

Just bacause it came to mind whilst I was on here has anyone had any experience with interior trimming of complex shapes? I'm going to need to get the dashboard of the 200 trimmed at some point as I don't want to just leave it in the bare fibreglass. I'd like it trimmed in vinyl/leather like the roadgoing originals but it's obviously a much more complex shape than the usual Hood dashboard so has anyone got any contacts or know of companies that would do such a thing? I haven't done anything to look myself yet so obviously Google/directories will be a first hit when I'm looking in anger so for the moment I'm just sort of testing the water for the forum's knowhow/experience. Iain

None of mine ever had a warning light and I've had a fair few including Ghia's which would ahve had most of the toys including door ajar/missing lights - yes I kid you not it lit the little diagram to tell you the door was open and flashed if the door was not present (OK it was probably telling you the switch was un-plugged/faulty). At the moment I've got a GLSi 4x4 which hasn't got a light and a VERY late GT 4x4 with the facelift dash and that certainly hasn't got a light. That cluster is from a Triumph originally although Reliant used them too (alng with other stuff from Triumph's parts bin). I've got one in the GTM too. I'm going to have a play with some electrickery to add the low fuel warning to the Mini system in that as I reckon I could market them to the Mini clubs for a few quid a pop (a small circuit board that goes inline with the sender wire and has one lead to go to the gauge as normal and one for a light). I'm not going to panic about it coming on around corners as in practice it's not a problem - anything under half a tank in the Scimitar and the low fuel light would briefly light up when cornering hard but when you straightened up it went out again. It's not exactly rocket science to ignore it unless it stays on. In practice I used to start planning the next fill up if it started lighting up when pulling away from the lights - i.e. when that started happening I'd be thinking of filling up again the following day after work. Iain

Yes please - I'll have a pair to do at some point on the 200 (got solid mounts to replace them). Whereabouts in York? and when? I'm on hols all next week playing with the fleet so should be able to come across and get it almost any day/evening/night. Iain

I seem to remember hearing that it's the driveshafts from a turbo-diesel Sierra you want but I don't know what diameter they are. Ford made special stub shafts to fit drum brakes on the end of a lobro shaft so I can't see them being the same as the disc ones. Iain

Definately an earthing problem - probably corrosion in a connection somewhere. Iain

Looks like a Jag XJ6 one to me. Indicator warning lights are in the speedo and the rev-counter so you've just got the right hand indicator light and one of the other warning lights in there. From memory it's a fairly crude way of doing a leccy speedo - it's actually a cable speedo with a motor on the rear that is spun at a varying speed to make the gauge work. They might have gone to a stepper motor on the later ones in which case you are short of a bit of logic to make it work. I'd be interested to see what it says on the rear of the round bit on the back (the red and silver? sticker). Something like ELREMCO.... Might gove some clues. Iain

Rad caps are a fairly standard fitting so almost any will do the job of sealing the hole. The next thing is the pressure it'll hold. Generally around 18psi works on Hoods but since each car is different this is by no means definite and should only be considered a starting point to get you running around and to the point where you can establish what you really need. The higher the pressure it will hold the higher temperature the water can get to before it will boil but the more pressure the coolant system has to withstand without leaking somewhere. They also come with and without a second seal around the extreme outer edge of the cap. This is designed so that the system can draw coolant back from a non-pressurised expansion bottle/tank (an overflow bottle). Some cars run without an expansion tank and allow the car to vent ecxess coolant onto the road but generally this is a bad idea when the vent point is not the highest point in the system and if you are venting from the rad in a Hood it probably isn't. Iain

If space is short on Saturday pitch 54 will be empty so you can overflow into that. Actually it would be a bit of a favour if some of you did as I'm a bit embarrassed about the number of people who told me they would be coming and then changed their minds after I'd told Pippa and ordered their tickets. We will be there with the Minis on Sunday though so please leave it free then. I still have one Saturday wrist-band spare if anyone wants it and can come and get it from me in time (or you could possibly ask one of the local people to me who are going to take it with them and then get them to meet you at the gate with it when you arrive). Iain

You need to mix and match to fit them to a non-4x4 hub. There's a big thing about "Cosworth" running gear and it's just hype - the VAST majority of the 4x4 Cosworth running gear is exactly the same as all the other 4x4 stuff (gearboxes, brakes, diffs). It's only the 2wd Cosworths where things got quite different (4-pot calipers, 7.5" diffs etc.). The 260mm brakes were fitted to V6 Sierras as well as the 4x4 Cosworths but the 4x4 hubs have the mounting lugs for the caliper at a different distance from the face of the hub and so the discs have a different offset (and they even varied within the V6 4x4 range). The calipers will physically bolt onto the 2wd hubs but you'll need the "correct" brake discs to get the actual disc to line up with the caliper and that might not be the "Cosworth" disc. Some people get around this by making a spacer to go between the caliper and the hub and using longer bolts. Iain

To work out from the info supplied we would also need the tyre sizes and this will be what Grim has done with his assumption. To work it out we know that 4th in almost every car gearbox is a 1:1 ratio so if the engine is doing 4krpm then so is the prop-shaft. If the diff is 4:1 then that means that for every 4 turns of the prop the wheels turn once. With these assumptions that means the wheels are doing 1krpm. If we know the tyre size we can work out their rolling radius - this one gets complicated because of the daft way we measure tyres. 185/60/14 means we have a tyre with a sidewall height of 60% of 185mm so 111mm or 222mm when we count both sides and it' on a 14" rim so that's another 355.6mm. Total diameter of the wheel/tyre therefore is 577.6mm. Pi times the diameter of a circle is it's circumference - 1814mm or 71.4". The wheel is doing 1000 of those in a minute or 60000 in an hour which is 4284000inches per hour and since there are 63360 inches in a mile that works out at 67.61 miles per hour. Substitute your numbers there if any of these are off. I've made the diff ratio simpler (4:1 instead of 4.1:1, the wheel circumference assumes a solid wheel and Pi is limited to 3.14 so this isn't going to be mega accurate. But..... to establish for certain I usually find it best to actually look at the thing. Assuming it's not a LSD lift one wheel off the ground. Tape a card or similar pointer to the wheel-arch and make a chalk mark on the tyre a the point. Now spin the prop-shaft until the wheel turns twice (twice because with the other wheel on the ground and stationary you're raised wheel will spin twice as fast) and count how many times you turned it. It's not so easy to spot the difference between 4.1, 3.9 and 3.6 turns of the prop-shaft so multiply the numbers to make the difference bigger (i.e. if we turn the prop until the wheel has turned 20 times we'll be looking for 41, 39 or 36 turns of the prop - only your arm will have fallen off from turning the prop that much so maybe just multiply by 2 or 3). Iain

Pictures of the wheels and various markings. It's possible from what I've been reading that that final 6 on the size is the offset but I'm not certain of that. Two of them also have larger kerbing marks than I remembered so I've taken close-ups of those marks - nothing dramatic that would stop the wheels from being used and I don't think it would be any drama for one of the wheel repair outfits to sort.

He was on the TV somewhat more recently in the motorway control room. Iain

No probs on pinchig some resin and matting. Some of the left-over resin from the first gallon is left over in Jam-jars and is gone a bit thick but still useable and cures fine with the catalyst. The remaining gallon hasn't ever been opened so we'll see what it's like. Iain

Hi Mark, I've got a gallon of resin and some matting sat doing nothing here from when I was altering the flip-front on my Mini (it was as cheap to buy in bulk as it was to buy the dinky little bottles/packs of matting aimed at car repair people). If the milk bottle is the right shape then it's a fairly simple affair to glass over the top of that and it shouldn't need much re-inforcing but there are ways. The item you make will be rough on the outside though and need sanding/filler to get it smooth ready for covering/painting. If the milk-bottle is a little large you could glass inside it and your resulting cover should be fairly smooth on the outside. If using th bottle as a mouldit shouldn't be a big problem as far as release agents go as the resin won't stick to it very well and itshoulf flex easily enough to remove relatively easily afterwards. Iain

Just had a look and Midland wheels will sell you a set of the modern copies in the same size for £75 per wheel. Iain

No photos yet as I'm just testing the water with these but I can supply photos or someone can come and look at them.... I have a set of KN Engineering Starmag alloy wheels for sale (originals, not the recent copies). They are 13"x7" alloys and are the same size/offset and whatnot as the Capri 2.8 injection "pepperpots" which means they are on the old Ford RWD offset and will sit further out from the body than a standard Sierra wheel of the same width. They currently have 205 tyres which I think are 70 profile - they are the same rolling radius as a standard Sierra wheel/tyre combination so wouldn't upset the speedo but the tyres are all very old so although they look OK at first glance I wouldn't trust them for anything other than rolling the car around. The wheels all appear to be in good order with no major kerbing marks or scuffs but they are bare alloy so a bit dull as they haven't been polished regularly - they have also been painted gold inside the dish at some point and this is coming off (a brillo/scuff pad would probably remove the rest and have them looking 10 times better). Personally I think they look the puppy's privates on a Hood as I don't like the massive wheel and rubber band tyre look. I think they also work better as the deeper sidewall adds some give to the suspension on a road car. Obviously being 13" they won't fit over all the Sierra brake combinations but they will be fine over the standard 240mm disc and rear drum setup that most Sierra's came with. I think they'll fit over 260mm discs but not over the standard rear discs. I'd like £100 for these as they are a bit of a rarity. Iain

I've got all the bits necessary to convert a Pinto to electronic ignition if it's currently running points or to keep as spares if you're already running the Sierra leccy ignition. This includes the Dizzy, Amplifier and the wiring between. I chopped the wiring out of a Sierra some years ago and it's sat in a box since - There is all the wiring between the amplifier and the dizzy plus some extra stuff that'll be surplus as I didn't unwrap the loom but it's not exactly rocket science to narrow it down to the wires you need between the two plus a supply on this wire and a ground at that one. Surplus to my requirements so come and save it from the bin if you're interested. Iain

The switch should be tapered as it doesn't have a seat as such but I would expect more than a couple of turns before it goes tight and it does sound like the wrong thread to me. Have you got a spare brake nut? if so try that in the hole for the pressure switch which should confirm that is known to be M10x1mm then compare the nut with the switch - if they are the same then you should be able to get the threads to "mesh" nicely. Failing that if you've got a 3/8UNF bolt then that's the next most likely candidate for the switch if it's wrong so tr comparing that to the threads on the switch to see if they match (or see if the switch will screw nicely into a 3/8UNF nut). Iain

Pull the big nyloc off and then put it back on a couple of threads. It's a two part boss and the three nuts/bolts just hold the two parts together so leave them alone as you will need to replace the whole boss. The ignition lock engages with the boss so you'll need to make sure the key is in the ignition and has released the lock. Then push, pull, bash from behind or apply a puller to release the wheel. The reason for putting the nyloc back on is that when it finally lets go it will inevitably be when you are sat in front of it pulling it towards your face and as hilarious as it is to the rest of us a broken nose is no fun. One of the Mini club members recently did exactly this and was not impressed when his wife initially gave him stick for bleeding on her carpet and then collapsed laughing when she found out how he had done it. Iain

There's a page dedicated to the fact that it has to have a space for a rear registration plate. The only mention I've seen of the front plate is that it or it's supporting brackets shouldn't be included when measuring the vehicle's length. Iain

Dax have done it in their seven. In a Sierra the front diff is bolted to the side of the sump and the driveshaft for the passenger wheel goes through the sump. Trying to retain this setup pushes the engine too far forwards in order to get it between the front wheels so the trick is to ditch the 4x4 sump and move the diff on it's own so.... you would need a longer front prop-shaft. The diff would need to be mounted in a suitable frame. The halfshaft lengths would no doubt need to be tweaked as the front track of a Ronin Hood is different to that of the Sierra (although there are other disadvantages to doing this with the 4x4 system so it might be better to alter the wishbones to make the front track match the Sierra). There is a possible issue with getting the front prop past the engine as the front diff will want to be higher in relation to the engine to keep the halfshaft angless anything like sensible. The transfer box exits the gearbox on the drivers side so I suspect you would have trouble with losing the space on the drivers side of the cockipt. In answer to the original question though. The rear axle is exactly the same as a standard Sierra. The diff will be a 7" LSD and is the same as the Sapphire Cosworth 4x4. They only went to 7.5 on the 2wd Cossies because then the rear diff had to handle all the power (and 9" diffs are motorsport stuff). It might or might not have rear discs. The gearbox is the MT75 with a transfer box on the back - it's relatively easy to remove the transfer and fit a 2wd rear end to the box but if you've got a 2wd MT75 to take the rear casing off you might as well use it instead. The MT75 is a lot stronger than the type-9 but it's a bit bulkier and quite a bit heavier. The engine will need a different sump and pickup pipe to be converted to 2wd format. Most of the front suspension is different in some minor fashion but as mentioned it's likely only the hubs you would need for a Hood anyway. Iain

and they still haven't sorted the bookmarks

Yes please - give me a shout to let me know what where and when. Iain