IanS

I want, I want, I want.

Are any liable to become available say ex demo??

Ian

The rubber bit in the gear lever has a nylon washer that should be part of it. About 1inch dia by 1/8 thick.

Glueing this back in if no one has cut it off/thrown it away stiffens up the lever.

Very early minis had single speed wipers with no provision for parking switches. Guess what my first car was, park the wiper was an accepted skill in those days.

The 100meters accuracy makes a big assumption.

The assumption is perfect propogation of the radiowaves.

Hills buildings etc tend to mess with this assumption.

The base stations hand over depending on signal strength and in the hills when tracking has been tried some wierd results have come in with the strongest signal from base stations a considerable distance further away.

The direction finding capability of the admitedly 5 year old ones that I was involved with was normally only good to about +-30deg.

Base station spaceing ranges from about every 400meters to 20kms.

Do not forget that the original switches often had 2 lights in them.

The first light (often green) comes on at the same time as the instrumentation lights. and is there to help you find the switch in the dark.

The second light is brighter and normally yellow and is the actual warning light.

The wires go something like this.

The switch itself has a feed in from the side lights (this only allows the fog light to come on with the side lights).

Then there is a feed out to the fog lights. This is often internally connected to the indicator light. Swap these 2 wires and see if things now work.

The third contact is the earth for the indicator light.

Some after market switches have the switch contacts and the indicator light totaly seperate and you wire them up as above. This gives a lot of flexibility in the operation of the switch/light combination.

Ian

Lambda sensor is almost digital.

No O2 in the exhaust then it gives 1V output

any trace of O2 in the exhaust it gives 0V output.

They are a bit slow so the ECU only actualy reads them around tickover.

You need to check at realistic engine speeds and throttle openings where the lambda sensor only tells you if you are rich or weak but does not actually tell you by how much. There are wide range sensors to give you mixture info but the sensor alone tends to cost 70 plus pounds the cheep sensors fitted to most cars work by the ECU constantly varying the mixture until it goes weak then goes back rich so the ECU constantly hunts.

This does not stop certain car acessory manufacturers selling guages that claim to work off standard sensors. Lamdba needs to be between .985 and .99 for them to show anything.

Ian

In my view these imobilisers are a bit of a joke when fitted to older type ignition systems.

The carb and mechanical fuel pump can only be imobilised by a hidden fuel valve and I have yet to come across an imobiliser that does this.

The ignition circuit is so simple that disconnecting these imobilisers is a 30second job.

The only ones that realy work are the ones that Talk to the ECU in a changing code. No ECU gives no injection and no sparks.

Adjustable air bypass channel is the IACV is it not? The well known sticky valve on Ford engines.

I am getting 150miles per tank full of motorway driving with some left over.

2l pinto standard engine complete with vacume advance to get some economy.

Ian

The mini exhaust bobin is indeed useable.

The other option is the Rover (SD1) gearbox mounts, these are slightly stronger.

Both should be fairly readily available from motor factors (look in yellow pages under motor factors).

Ian

POR15 is available from Frosts by mail order.

POR stands for paint over rust.

http://www.frost.co.uk/

Ian

With 2 cams changeing the overlap can move the max torque point up and down the rev range.

If you only have one cam then changeing the overlap is a bit harder.

What you gain at the inlet you tend to loose at the exhaust. The cam manufacturer will have set up the overlap for a suitable max torque at about 1/2 to 2/3 the expected engine peak rev point, buggering round with the timing then tends to loose power at one end or the other without getting much extra at the gaining end of the power curve.

2 litre pinto is a bit heavier than the 1.6 pinto. Not a lot though.

The extra power does make a diference and with the fine aerodynamics that these cars are reknown for the 2 litre adds a bit to the terminal velocity..err top speed is what I ment.

Ian

Ally goes dull faster than you can polish it. Laquering does not last. Anodising on the other hand works well, its just very hard to find anyone with an adequate sized tank.

Stronger... without knowing a bit more like how thick each is well guess away.

My view is if going for a lightweight then weight is the only criterion.

Ian

Things like the chokes put back the right way round or not forgotten altogether come to mind after playing with the carb.

I have used an old SU pump to prime the system on a previous car that had similar problems.

Put a T in the line to the mechanical pump and a T in the line from the pump to the carbs. and connect the SU pump (from a morris 1000 in a scrap yard) in parrallel.

The electric pump switches on with the ignition and primes the system, mechanical pump tends to give a higher pressure and holds the electric pump off in normal running. The mechanical pumps are a bit more reliable than the SU pumps which is why I used both.

Ian

I have used both hammerite and POR15.

Hammerite is ok on something very solid otherwise I found it to chip easily and crack.

POR15 is better but still not chip proof.

I normally use stonechip paint where it is out of sight. This will take a lot more abuse than either of the above but normally only comes in matt black and as it stays slightly flexible most hardening paints crack if painted over it.

What are you doing for a dip switch?

If you trust yourself to never leave the lights on with the engine stopped then taking a wire straight from the battery to the light switch will work, there are rocker light switches from several sources. These are 2 position with a live in and a sidelight and a headlight output. The headlight output goes to the dip switch which is just a 2 position changeover switch. A flasher switch would normally come from the ignition switch so you can only flash when the engine is switched on.

Techincally you should have a fuse for each side of the car for the sidelights (2 fuses). The rear number plate light can go to either side and the instrument lights go to the other side. It is normal these days to have a fuse for each main beam and each dip beam (4 fuses).

Simple??

Ian

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.