ibrooks

Sorry - should have posted it up but these have both gone now. Iain

So they are worn on the inside more than on the outside? Uneven wear across the tread would suggest the camber is incorrect. Basically the wheel is leaning towards the centre of the car too much and so most of the weight is on the inside edge of the tyre which therefore wears faster. There is normally a little camber to the tyres so that as the car rolls a little in cornering it brings the outer wheel back to the vertical and therefore puts more of the tread in contact with the road when you need it most. The Sierra geometry is also set to keep the tyre vertical as the suspension drops (again as you corner and the weight shifts to the outside wheel the suspension drops and the change produces a desirable effect). There are two things you can change on the Sierra setup to change the camber. First is change the ride-height - in your case raise it (it's probably because it's running lower than the Sierra is designed to that you are having the problem but it would also likely make the car look wrong). The second is to add shims to the upper edge of the hub between it and the trailing arm mounting face which brings the wheel closer to vertical. Some of the guys made wedge shaped shims that went between the hub and the trailing arms and some have just used washers behind the upper pair of bolts. Iain

Unless you are a dealer he has no legal recourse about the condition of the car. If you're just Joe Public how would you know that there wasn't a potentially lethal fault with a car? It's down to the buyer to either check the car or have a professional check it. If you were doing it profesionally then the game changes and you have a duty of care. Iain

I know of a van for sale but it doesn't need any work and the price reflects that. I'm a member of South Lancs Mini Owners Club and the Leyland Mini Owners Club so I'll ask around there. You might also give Jim Brindle from Road And Competition Engineering (R.A.C.E.) in Withnell a shout as he specialises in Minis and often gets to know about this sort of thing. Iain

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

Think I'm going to be heading over Saturday too. Anyone earned Phuckawi stickers that hasn't had them yet? I usually give Mitch the stock but they tend to run out pretty quickly (coz I never seem to have time to extract a digit and make more). If I get time I'll make a bunch in an assortment of colours but you might be weeding them yourselves at the show. PM's please rather than spamming this thread. I think there might also be a new offering being modelled by Mr Chairman's car Iain

That's the one I'm talking about and to be quite honest I think it's appalling that we can't take it for granted that every single one of those points hasn't been true for years.

Pre-sactly. When they "catch" a speeding motorist with a camera it's nice and easy to put a tick in a box and say that one crime has been commited and one criminal has been punished. If there was a visible police car driving along or sat at the side of the road instead of a camera then only a fraction of those offences would have been commited - presto the road was safer. But...... they can't put a nice definite number on how many crimes have been prevented so it doesn't look as good to the bean-counters who seem to run the world nowadays. The live policeman can also exercise some discretion between those who are exceeding the posted limit but not actually increasing the risk to themselves and others appreciably and those that are driving like cocks (quite possibly below the posted limit but in a dangerous fashion so the camera is no use whatso). Same with Police on the beat - if they were a common sight then a huge amount of the petty/opportunist crime would disappear because the people doing it would constantly be wondering if that next car/person that comes along the street or around the corner might be the Police. But you can't count somethng that hasn't happened - you can't tell if that guy walking down the street "would" have kicked the mrror off that car or thrown a stone through that window so a Policeman walking along the road is only seen as a cost and the benefit is never quantified to be offset against it. What really got my goat recently was this "Policing Charter" that all the forces have supposedly signed up to. Effectively the forces have all said "we haven't been doing it properly up until now but we're going to do a good job from now on - aren't we great" /rant mode off 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.....