IanS

Just out of curiosity. When did anyone start thinking that there is a De-dion tube on any sierra? A De-dion rear suspension was fitted to the rover P6 and the IRS caterhams but I have yet to come across a ford with one. The sierra has semi trailing arms fitted to a tubular subframe. De-dion has an unsprung tube bolted between the wheels forceing the wheels to stay at a fixed camber through any suspension movement.

Looking at the picture the track rod appeared to be at a large angle to the wishbones. This makes me thing that the rack is mounted too high. Do you get much bump steer or has this been setup since the picture?

Petrol gradualy softens sikaflex. Takes a couple of months though

The thing to remember is that the vacume advance is there for economy. It comes into its own at part throttle. Tapping into just one cylinder, especially with a large overlap cam, gives a lot of presure pulses to the diaphragm on the distributor and so the advance does very little except cause the diaphragm to flutter. Trying to connect all 4 together helps a bit but you do not get the full vacume so you only get a small improvement in mpg. Expect 20mpg with no vacume and posibly 25 - 27 with all 4 connected.

First plate with copper. Brass is an alloy and it is nearly imposible to plate an alloy onto anything. Copper can be plated onto just about anything which makes it a very usefull interlayer.

I have run an 83 pinto on unleaded for about 20K miles without any trouble. This engine is suposedly leaded only. Ian

If you raised the engine in the car did you allow the air to get out of the top of the cooling system?? It normally gets out of the head to the top of the radiator which should be higher than the cylinder head, an expansion tank if fitted then comes from the top of the rad.

My reading is that the screen demister must work. If it works all the time OK If not just like a normal car you must be able to easily switch it on. go flame me for getting it wrong. Ian

The ECU relearns the value of the pot at closed and fully open throtle. It also attempts to learn the cold and warm coolent settings. If it cocks these up it is probably due to restarting the car with your foot on the acelerator or with a warm engine. Starting with your foot on the acelerator will confuse the ECU, it will eventually figure out the temp problems. ian

I fitted a simple baffle to my tank. It is made from a folded piece of stainless that goes from the back of the tank to forward of the pickup then goes to 1/2 inch from the left hand end. it is 3 inches high and has folded edges to give a larger area to attach to the tank wall and bottom. I attached it with araldite as this is petrol resistant (most glues are not). My pickup is near the left hand end of the tank. When the tank is nearly full the baffle has little effect but when it nearly empty it traps a small amount of petrol when I turn hard left, when I turn hard right (or straighten up) it allows the petrol to feed normally Ian

I replaced the sierra instruments in my exmo about 18 months ago. I got a set of smiths instruments from a triumph dolomite in a scrap yard. These cost £15. But Speedy cables charge £30 for a new speedo cable. The speedo calibration was the same. I used the original fuel sensor with the smiths guage, it is not linear but to my mind it works the right way round reading above the 3/4 mark when the tank is over half full and then going fairly rapidly down untill the engine stops about 20 miles after the guage needle hits the empty mark. I had to make up a new dash face as I wanted the tacho and speedo in front of the driver not in the middle of the dash, I made this from a 4 foot by 1 foot sheet of aluminum (with the top corners rounded off to fit) and cut holes to suit the instruments then used this as a template to cut holes in the existing dash. I made an instrument wireing loom to suit the instruments and added an old smiths instrument voltage regulator for the fuel and temp guages. The wireing was then just tapped into the connector for the sierra instruments.

The North Midlands, Staffordshire, South Cheshire & Shropshire area does not at present have an area secretary but some of us still meet on the first Wednesday of every month at 8pm at the George & Dragon pub on the A34 near Stone. Just because our area secretary has resigned we have not stopped meeting. Ian Sumner 01925 601434

The url was almost right http://www.chris-longhurst.com/carbibles/index.html

Just a thought but there are 2 starter rings fitted to pintos. I have forgotten the diference but the effect is as you describe. Most pintos have the standard ring but some transits were fitted with a ring gear with a diferent number of teeth per inch, these required a special gear on the starter. Sorry I do not know the measurements but perhaps someone will have thier memory jogged by this. Ian

Sierras were never fitted with balast resistors. You only should have a balast with points ignition. With points type ignition you could cook the coil if the ignition was left on the points were closed and the engine stopped. You will get some signal from both ends of the coil because the current rise time is fairly fast when the plug sparks. For the technical there is inductance due to the length of the wires from the battery throught the ignition switch to the coil so the high frequency part of the signal will get through from the battery side of the coil, but there will be a bigger signal for the tacho from the switching side of the coil.

You probabaly have a 50 amp alternator so the guage might spend some time at full scale. That said I have never seen a small car battery that will take 50 amps at 14 Volts. Right on to the nitty gritty. Your donor had 2 wires to the + of the battery, a thick one that only goes to the starter (leave this alone) and a thiner one that takes all the other current. Lift the second wire from the batery and extend it with 3.5mm dia wire (10sqmm) or thicker to the - terminal of the meter. Now useing the same size wire conect the + terminal of the meter to the + of the batery. Make sure that all joins cannot short to the body. Job done. If the meter reads + when the engine is stopped and the lights switched on just reverse the connections to the meter. Light(s) in the meter have one lead to earth and one to the feed for all the other instrument lights. Ian

I worked with electronics for 30 years some parts dont change and feel like they have been round since the arc was built.

The regulator is a standard electronics 78 series voltage reg at if I remember 10Volts. It is in a TO220 package and is a 7810 available from RS and posibly CPC

If this is a rebuilt / reconditioned alternator There is a good chance that it is also duff. A lot of them are rebuilt and not realy tested.. The first check I do in situations like this is batery polarity.. At the risk of teaching granny to suck eggs.

You will need to check that all the brown wires are earths in the CPU. For this you will need an electrical multimeter set to ohms (lowest range) or continuity. Connect the plug to the cpu and measure continuity from brown to brown, the meter passes a low current through the circuit and this will not damage the cpu if connected to the wrong wires. Hopefully all browns join at the CPU if so connect any to any. There might be a few sizes of wire connect big to big, small to small.. Good luck

This wire allows more current in the coil when starting. The amplifier limits the current normally so that the sparks are the same energy at tickover and flat out, older contact breaker ignition systems gave a reasonable spark at tickover and nearly no spark at 6000RPM. It can help when your battery is on its last legs and winter has bitten. Ian

Sorry No picies of my screens yet. If i am able to get to donnington I will let you know Ian

Hood material is what my side screens are made from. I have the frame trapped between 2 layers. They are sewn round a frame. Sewing them is not hard with a domestic sewing machine if a bit of thought is given as to where the seams are before you start sewing. You will need a leather needle in your sewing machine, these can be got from any sewing shop (look up haberdashery in your yellow pages) and rot proof cord. I obtained material and cord from woolies at a show, they advertise in most kitcar mags and do mail order.. Joining the top to the bottom was done by extending the material up about 1 inch above the frame on inside and outside leaving a channel. The bottom inch of the polycarbonate was roughed up with sand paper to give a key and then the polycarbonate had a layer of Sikoflex222 spread on both sides and this glued it into the channel. The ends have come undone a bit and I have bolted a stainless U strap 1 inch high by 2 inches long round the front ends to stop this Ian

The screen is surrounded by 2 pieces of U section aluminum channel. The first goes up the sides and over the top, the second goes along the bottom. The glass should have a rubber strip in the channel seperating it from the aluminium. The bottom and upper halves of the channel should be joined by a (from memory) 2inch long by 1/8 inch self tapper screw, one fitted each side. This is fitted horizontaly through the sides just missing the bottom of the glass and into the bottom rail. This assembly is then held to the uprights by 3 short self tappers per side and the upright by 2 bolts per side to the scuttle. The bottom rail should touch the scuttle at the rear bottom but has a gap at the front bottom due to the angling back of the screen This is filled with sealent as Allan says in his reply. Thats how I did mine after watching the video. Ian