ibrooks

Not necessarily - could be classed as a quadricycle like the Gwizz leccy cars. I suspect there is a combination of things that would allow you to drive a car-like vehicle on a bike license. Maybe something like three wheels and under 550kg or 4 wheels and under 350kg. Iain

Probably - will PM you to sort details. If anyone else might be able to help please post up in case we can't sort it. Iain

Who could carry a type-9 box for Dave R? Please let us know. Thanks Iain

Nope - sorry. The bell-housing is different and the input shaft is too long. These are both things that can be swapped for the 4-cylinder versions so although the answer is actually largely yes it's quite an involved job. Iain

Would suggest you either find another motor factors or simply learn to ignore him. It matters not a stuff when the car was made - it's a case of what the engine was designed for. The Pinto is an old design (it was old when it first appeared in UK cars). Quite simply the oil-ways and tolerances are optimised for a thicker oil. If you start shoving thinner stuff in there it's not going to work as expected. One of my other passions is Minis and we see a lot of trouble with later cars due to the same thing. Rover in their wisdom (laziness) started specifying 10w40 in the later owners manuals so that they only had to stock one sort of oil at the dealers/assembly line (all the other petrol cars at the time used the thinner oil). They hadn't changed anything else about the engine. They lasted the warraty period just fine but once they've got a few years down the line they tend to start chewing up gearbox bearings and camshafts (especially on the Coopers and JCG conversions where the lift was a little higher and valve springs were a bit stiffer). On a freshly built engine you'll get away with it for a good number of miles before you start seeing problems but this is more of an indication of the resilience of the engines than anything else. Iain

A 1600 should go straight in where a 1.6 has come out but the head swap is a bit of a no-no. It will physically fit but the compression will be silly low as the 2.0 has much bigger combustion chambers than the 1.6. A 1.6 head on a 2.0 drives the compression sky-high but will kill the engine after a few miles. Iain

Any chance it was item number 250448671971? If so then it does specify that the chassis is a one-off so it might be a home-made one which would be OK from an identity point of view but he'll have to watch it very carefully for stress fractures. There were some horror stories about the normal mild steel chassis cracking not too long ago and stainless is only ever going to be more susceptible to this sort of thing. If it's a stainless copy of the original chassis then I'd be wary. Iain

I'd be suspicious that it's maybe a dead Westfield's identity on a Robin Hood - buyer beware in a big way. Although I seem to remember that Robin Hood advertised stainless replacement chassis for Westfields at one point (early '90s I would think). Have you got the item number from ebay or a link and we can maybe cast our eyes over it and see if we can spot anything that might save him making a several thousand pound mistake? It could also be worth talking to Westfield themselves - a chap here at work recently bought one and spoke to them a couple of times to confirm details before he actually took the plunge. I was quite impressed with the service he seems to have recieved from them since the sale was nothing to do with them and the only thing they stood to gain was maybe some business in parts from him in the coming years. Iain

Sorry dude - I've had trouble trying to post a gearbox in the past. Courier turned up, took it and then brought it back an hour or two later saying that they wouldn't take it unless I could prove it had been professionally cleaned because it was leaking oil. Funny how there was oil on the outside of the shrink-wrap (and there was a LOT of shrink-wrap and cardboard) but when I took it all off there was no oil on the inside. If you're not in a rush we can see if we can get a relay going amongst the club. Iain

I'll pass then thanks - I'm going to use the donor one for the test and then put the twin masters and bias pedal-box back once it's registered. Iain

Is that "not sure what it's off" as in which type of Sierra it's from or as in it could be from any type/make of car? I specifically need a Sierra one as that's what I want to fit but I don't want to start pulling parts off the donor vehicle that stop it from moving around under it's own power until the last possible minute. Iain

As per the title really I've got two that are surplus to my requirements. I've never driven either but they both run through the gears fine on the deck and spun over by hand with some resistance on the output shaft there are no nasty feelings or noises. £20 collection from Darwen-ish Iain

Anyone in the North-West got a Sierra servo lying around - with or without the master cylinder/resevoir? Similarly I'm after a pair of 4x4 engine-mounts. I want these so that I can bolt things in and check space and clearances so if they are a bit old and naff it's not a problem but if they are nice shiny new examples that you don't want silly money for then I'm still interested and of course anything in between. Let me know what you want for it and if it could be brought to the meet on Thursday it would be nice. Iain

I've used them regularly and whilst I have had two mistaken sizes they have swapped them quick-sharp each time. Anyone can make a mistake - so long as they sort it I've no problems. I have noticed though that they've started charging seperately for postage - it used to be that the price they displayed for the tyres was what you would actually pay and there was only an extra charge if you only bought a single tyre. Maybe it's because this is the way everyone else does it and it could make them look a pound or two more expensive than places like black-circles. As for fitting. I'm spoilt as I have the gear to fit and balance them myself. Iain

Is that sticker on your roll-bar crooked? I enjoyed my brief visit and it was good to meet people again. I'm surprised Jim hasn't posted about the little drama on the way home though. Iain

Yep - you need to keep the oil at the same level in relation to the bottom of the engine block and therefore crankshaft. Capacity has naff-all to do with it. Every so-often some clown thinks that when they cut a couple of inches off the bottom of the sump they also need to cut a chunk off the dipstick. Does your dipstick still have marks on it or have they been cut off? Ideally you need to measure the tube that the dipstick goes into and the dipstick itself and compare them with a known un-modified one. And just for interest. My Grandfather was an HGV mechanic before and during WW2 and was involved with an investigation where a bunch of trucks sent to South-Africa (I think) kept killing engines despite the fact that many other countries were using the same trucks with no problems. It turned out that the amount of oil needed to bring an empty engine to the top mark on the dipstick left a little in the bottom of the standard cans. It was standard practice for them to just dump the rest in the engine rather than keeping it somewhere. This brought the level up to the point where the crankshaft was dipping into the top of the oil and whipping it into a lovely froth - which the pump was unable to suck up and so plummeting oil pressure and dead engines. No-one had been able to work it out until a British mechanic was sent out there and actually watched them service a truck - at which point it suddenly became very obvious. Iain

As people have said more and more calipers need to be wound back rather than just pushed. Some manufacturers are putting left hand threads on one side and they are also trying to come up with as many different drive methods as possible. Some have a big slot and others just have dimples in various different locations. You can get cheap tools that just do a few of the calipers or you can get more complete kits that come with left and right handed tools and a host of adaptors to fit various different pistons. I've managed to get by without so-far using screwdrivers or long nosed pliers as Matt seems to have managed but I suspect it's only a matter of time until I have to throw money at the problem and buy the tools. Punctures can generally be repaired so long as they are not within an inch of the sidewall. I've had them done cheaply at National (£15 from memory) but ATS were going to charge me within a couple of pounds of the price of a new tyre. Iain

My mates 02 is on it's third gearbox. Diff cage disintegrated on the first one and when he dipped the clutch the diff rolled forwards into the rest of the gear cluster and resulted in the front wheels locking. He was in the outside lane of a dual-carriageway in the middle of rush hour traffic. Nice big wide front tyres in a fairly nose heavy car on dry tarmac - the car just stood on it's nose and drew two black lines down the road without the brake lights going on. Pretty impressive bruise from the seatbelt and apparently there were two cars that swerved onto the central reservation (nice wide grass island) to avoid him with more swerving into the inside lane. Amazingly no actual crashes but he did manage to make the traffic news as an obstruction in the road whilst he waited for the recovery truck since the car was un-movable and after the slide sat almost sideways in lane 2 of the carriageway. That box was replaced under warranty. Second one forced the main-shaft through the end casing of the box (OK it just cracked the end casing and made it bulge a bit). This time it was under the warranty of the replaced box as the original car warranty had expired. They had the box repaired. Third one was pretty recent and we think a recurrence of the first problem. He'd driven to the Mini Club's workshop and been working on his Mini during the day. In the afternoon he went to move the car as one of the other guys wanted to get the trailer out of the big doors and it went about 18" forwards and stopped. He thought he'd rolled up against a brick on the floor as they were doing some work on the building at the time so he tried to reverse and see what was going on and it went back 18" and stopped. So he got out and stepped into a puddle of gearbox oil. Once again the car is imobile with the front wheels only able to turn about 18" in either direction. It was fortunate that it went where it did as they managed to get the thing inside the workshop on trolley-jacks and wheel-skates. No warranty this time just us and a replacement box, £160ish from memory. The diff pin had slid out of the planet gears and as the whole assembly tried to turn it tore a hole in the casing until it hit a strengthening web where it stopped. Each time has lasted around 60k miles and it's a bit scary how little warning they each gave before pretty catastrophic failure. The first one had felt funny around the previous roundabout so he'd decided to go all around the next one and head for home since he was only 5 minutes into his journey at that point (the roundabouts are maybe 500yds apart and that's why he was in the outside lane). The second one just jumped out of gear whilst cruising along the motorway and wouldn't go back in so he coasted to the hard-shoulder leaving a trail of oil. The third one had given no signs at all on the drive to where it was parked but just wouldn't move again several hours later. OK the third time was a failure to a box that had already experienced a problem and been repaired but if it lasted 60k miles you would think the repair was fairly proven. But hey - PG1 boxes are cheap. I had a Rover 45 and whilst it was a perfectly good car it was written off for very minor damage as the parts are silly expensive. There's no real problem with supply it's just that the suppliers seem to have taken the loss of the manufacturer as a license to charge whatever they like. Suppliers like X-Part/X-Power seem to have taken up the cause and get a lot of the common stuff at reasonable money but some of the less comon stuff is just daft. You pays your money and all that.....

The front does look vaguely like a wishbone 2B but from there on it's not like any Hood I'm familiar with. The 2B's have a structural tube along the top edge of the dashboard and verticals running down from it that the gearbox hangs from - OK they were modified on the later ones but I can't see them at all on that car. The rear panel looks way too close to vertical which may well just be a perception thing but..... I bet it'll be interesting getting those arches fitted as it looks like when they are centred over the wheel they might be sticking out past the rear panel at the rear - again it might just be the angles of the pictures..... The rear shocks seem to be in an odd place - they are reminiscent of where the top suspension munt is on a 2B but their angle suggests that they are heading in a very different direction. Maybe they are attached to a top wishbone rather than a trailing arm? Bit of an odd setup if they are. Some of the tubes around the rear look much smaller than those of the 2B (roll-bar stays). The tubes in behind the side panels are all wrong or a 2B. Now the SubK was similar to the 2B but with a few differences and certainly had some of the lighter tubework around the rear but I didn't think it was that different. I think some of the 2B04's and onwards kept some of these differences around the rear so it might be related to one of those but I think I'd be making a bit more certain of the origins and having a proper look in person before I started throwing money in that direction as there are obviously some differences from the tried and tested in there and I'd want to be sure that it was going to work before parting with my hard-earned. Of course if it's cheap enough when the auction ends you could cope with having to undo some badly thought out changes - and you never know, there might be some wonderful innovations in there that everyone else ends up trying to copy. Iain

On one of our sites the guys use a device where there's a fixed and powered unit attached to a computer which "sprays" the entre area with a laser beam. The operator then uses a mirror mounted on a sphere to touch reference points of the component he's making (it's actually 3 mirrors set at right angles to each other so that as the operator points it towards the base unit a beam is reflected back). The brains of the operation then uses the measurements obtained to construct a 3d map of the reference points. The units are pretty bulky and bolted to the floor but they are fairly old and I believe there's a much more portable version available. Thing is that the jigs that our guys build stuff on rotates and has stops every 90 degrees so that after they've mapped one face they can spin the fixture and map a second face. To map a room with items in it you would have to move the base unit and give the brains of the outfit pretty accurate co-ordinates of where it was sat each time (and I'd assume it's orientation). Iain

You did at least set the static timing didn't you? EFI or not it won't work if the dizzy has just been plonked in any-old-how. Iain

Can you clarify which engine you are talking about? The Pinto is a SOHC engine. The same block casting was used for some of the Cosworth YB engines and this is the only form that could possibly be considered a DOHC Pinto but very few parts are common. There is a cylinder head conversion about which does make a twin-cam Pinto but you are looking at close to £5K for the head and they are made to order so I doubt this is what we are talking about. Which leaves the DOHC engine that was fitted to the Sierra and Granadas in the '90s. That's a VERY different animal to a Pinto. It's designation is I4 and it's more commonly seen in transverse form. Originally in the MkV Escort RS2000 and more recently in the Galaxy where it's gained 16 valves and comes as a 2.0 or 2.3. It's also fitted to Scorpio Ultimas in both 2.0 and 2.3 versions and yes they are still longditudinally mounted but it's the same lump. I could be interested in a YB engine or parts of one or possibly in a 2.3 I4 short engine for the 200 but it's going to be down to the prices. Would we all need to be buying the same thing to get decent prices as a bulk purchase? Iain

The Scorpio Jim was driving was definitely a Turbo-Technics conversion on a BOA Cosworth lump. Given the nature of their business though it could well be a one-off where the owner (or a previous one) had simply driven it into their workshop and waved a cheque-book over it. I'm told the BOB engines will run just fine on BOA management and that it's quite a common way to get around the PATS problems. Apparently the BOA also responds well to having the BOB cams fitted. I was offered a Scorpio Cos that had been rear-ended by a bus last week for £300 - so tempted to grab it but I think it would be a bit too heavy for the 200. I'm fairly set on a YB as I'd like somehwere over 300 gee gee's. I am looking at the I4 conversions that are going on though as people are seeing good results from hybrids of the 2.3 bottom end with the head from a 2.0 16v (both from Scorpio's or Galaxy's) running on MkV Escort RS2000 cams and management. I'm hearing about similar sort of torque figures to the V6's with only a little less power and they are a good deal lighter and smaller. Iain

I've had two long service awards so far - we get them every 5 years. I'm also in the minority in the company in having received one. Pretty sad indication of the state of the I.T. industry if you ask me. Iain

You know the main part - you need a coil suitable for points (or contact breaker) ginition systems. After that you also need to know what voltages it's for. Car systems generally come in two flavours - ballasted and un-ballasted. Ballasted ignition has a resistor or piece of resistance wire in the power connection to the coil so that it only runs at 6v in normal running despite the car's 12v supply. When the engine is cranking the resistor will be by-passed to run the coil at the full 12v meaning bigger sparks when the engine is cold and needs the extra help to start. Un-ballasted ignition just runs the coil at 12v all the time. Which one your loom is going to run is down to whoever made it but you can tell with a voltmeter on the coil supply leads and watch what the voltage is when the ignition is on and when the engine is cranking (or at least the key is in the start position). That should be enough for any half decent retailer to offer you a couple that will be suitable and then it's a matter of whether you want the normal ones or the Soopa-Doopa ones with the silly price-tag. Generally the fancy "high power" ones are only necessary if your engine has been tuned to quite a high degree or you are running forced induction, if the engine is in reasonable condition and the connections to the coil are good (they should be with a new loom) the standard ones should do the job nicely. Iain