IanS

I have always found araldite to be the only satisfactory glue for petrol if much of a gap is to be bridged.

Blue hylomar is fine when it is under pressure as between a gasket and metal but has little structural strength bonding things together.

I have done 35000 miles now on unleaded with a totaly unmodified 83 2l pinto. There have been no problems with the valves.

Shame that the sump is now a bit bent from hitting a sleeping policeman!

Ian

Could the white be a feed from the lights to dim the display at night?

Eratic tachos are often associated with poor earthing of the engine or the instrument.

The instrument cluster will require a short earth lead to the nearest chasies point.

Body panels will require good earthing to the chasies (pop rivets every few inches will normally provide this.

The engine will require an earth strap to the chasies as well as a strap to the battery negative.

Ian

Uncle Henry fitted an normal incandesant bulb as high beam indicator. They dont care which polarity they are connected and so will absorb the back EMF with no ill effects. So Uncle Henry has saved the price of a diode times Xmillion sierras produced.

One of the plugs could be breaking down. I have had new plugs that were bad. Try changing them one at time for the best looking old one that you have.

If you have a 2l engine I would not worry to much about the engine size of the donor. If its a 4 pot the gearbox will fit (V6 has a diferent gearbox input shaft) and everything mechanical will swap across.

Just tell the DVLA that you have fitted the 2l engine to the donor before you start to get the V5 correct.

My imediate reaction is that the diffs are not the same ratio.

Did you ever check your speedo reading against another car?

You should be able to check the ratio of the diff you took off easily, mark the output flanges and check that they are both rotating together when you turn the input flange. Count the input turns to turn the output exactly once.

If the outputs will not both turn together then lock one and count the input turns to turn the free output exactly twice. This will give you the diff ratio.

You can do the same to the diff on the car its just a bigger job, jack one wheel off the floor, mark the bottom of the tyre and with the gearbox in neutral you should be able to turn the input by hand and again count the turns to turn the free wheel twice (the other rear wheel is on the ground and will not turn).

From your rolling road you should have a power out curve. If the power is the same for 4k and 4.5to4.8k revs (4th and 5th) then the top out speed will be the same and peak speed will be reached with an overall gear ratio between 4th and 5th.

Ian

Near side wheel runs in the gutter and throws up all the crap that gets washed there.

Drive in the center of the road :boohoo:

Most car wheels are in the 13 to 15 inch rim diameter. So these machines tend to assume 14 inch and the error over the normal range of sizes is smaller than the normal setting tolerance.

5.5mm should be the difference in the distance appart of the front of the wheel rim verses the distance appart of the rear of the wheel rim.

So if you know the wheel diameter 14inch?? then you can work out the angle.

Ian

My understanding is that the fan should only come on after the thermostat is fully open and before the coolant boils.. So a switch in the range of 76 to 95 should do the job.

Point 2 any sender that actually is a switch should easily energise a relay so go ahead and substitute or even connect in parallel so that you can force the fan on.

I say any sender that is actually a switch because some computer controlled systems use the temp sender and software to control the fan.

Ian

The battery voltage changes and this affects the guage readings.

The alternator regulator prevents the battery over charging but does not stabilise the voltage. Just after starting a cold engine the voltage can fall below 10 volts for a short time. A fully charged battery will be about 13.2 volts.

Dolomite guages expect a 10 volt energisation.

Smiths instrument regulators are available from many of the vehicle electrical suppliers at shows or by mail order.

One wire should be an earth.

Fuel senders have thier body earthed often through the tank mounting but if you rubber mount the tank then you need a seperate earth.

This also happened to my Exmo just over a year ago.

I think it more likly to happen to stainless than zintec. This is because zintec streaches a lot before tearing.

Be warned when this happens it happens fast.

At 38 thousand miles my suspension tops were OK, I had the tops off as I removed the wings to do a small repair to the fiberglass.

At 38700 miles the struts punched through, the suspension does not go splat it sinks giving time to stop, and even drive slowly home about 30 miles.

Ian

This has been done before. It has slight efffects on snap opening and closeing of the throttle. Otherwise provided you get it gastight and dont restrict the passages there should be no problems.

The Facet pumps are good for more than 6 psi.

Delorto dont like more than 3 psi.

This could be the problem see if you can get a presure guage to check this.

I have had sticking valves do something like you describe.

When head and valve cold the valve moved OK. As the exhaust valves warmed up the stem got bigger and the cam had to work harder to open valve, But the spring could not work harder to close the valve so the piston closed it. There were some interesting marks on the piston when I took the head off.

I also had inlet manifold gasket leaking coolant into a cylinder cause odd problems. The engine apeared to run OK cold but as the coolant warmed up and the presure climbed it got into one cylinder, on strip down that piston had a perfectly clean crown where the water had cracked all the gunge of the piston.

These were 2 cars about 20 years apart.

Ian

No the correct way is like mine pointing down at 30degrees so that the meter gets a nice echo off the ground

Ian

I have made a mental note to post the date of the next meeting here.

Ian Sumner

If I was doing my loom again I would make it in 2 bits with connectors between.

The break would be where the loom meets the dash, indicator stalks etc.

Getting a neet transition from dash wireing to body wireing proved a long job.

It has to be bigger than 1 ltr because this is the rule.

It will be measured at SVA and a pass requires it to release at least 1 ltr of water.

Some of us are trying to start up a North Wales, Cheshire meeting.

We are going to meet up at 8:30 at the Fox and Grapes Hotel Hawarden near chester on Wednesday 2nd June.

I have built an exmo so am several generations past in build problems.

http://www.multimap.com/map/browse.cgi?pc=CH5%203DH

Ian

The filler neck goes through a gasket salvaged from the donor tank. It is made of a rubber type material and should form a petrol tight seal even after the neck has been removed many times.

Ian

They only need one type because the spark requirements of 6000RPM 4 cylinder engines are just about the same no matter what engine.

The major change was from points to stabilised electronic ignition, this required a change of coil. All 2l sierras were electronic ignition, the later ones were also fuel injected and engine managed but this did not change the spark requirements.

Newer engins have gone to electronic switched multi coil packs as with ever cheeper electronics this now cheeper than a singal coil and mechanical distribution.

So the only difference between coils for electronic ignition distributor is in the conectors which can be bodged.

Then there is the problem that as new cars have coil packs fitted the presure on spare part makers drops (ford would soon switch from a supplyer that had lots of breakdowns) and so quality tends to drop.

Ian