steve in stockport

Not us I'm afraid, we'll be on our way back from Cuba that weekend.

Foxoffer are the people who supply the genuine cameras to the guy at tech moan for his reviews. search tech moan on Google or youtube and follow the links from his reviews. Don't bother with the 5000 as the reviews aren't great and the features don't merit the extra money

We've driven quite a few miles around Normandy this week and the roads are great. This appears to be the home of the hairpin bend, there's loads of them!

We're over in France at the moment so we called in at L'Orangerie yesterday. Had a chat with Andrew who was getting the place spruced up ready for the first guests at easter. Booking is all confirmed and he's said he'll do a bit of work to the drive just by the gates where we struggled a bit last time.

I'm looking at organising a return trip to L'Orangerie gite on the above dates. Already have a few people interested but there are some spare places. The cost for the gite is about £95 per person for the week plus your ferry/tunnel crossing, fuel, food and drink. The gite can be seen at http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p421125 If you're interested either contact me or post below.

I don't like the idea of the spreader plates in a 2B with the floor pan rivited to the bottom of the chassis, when you start to do the mechanics of what happens if you have a crash then you soon realise that no matter how many HT bolts and spreader plates you put in there the weak links are the rivits holding the floor in place. A decent shunt will put a force of several tonnes through the seatbelt and seat mountings , so if you can make a strong frame and attach that to the chassis I would definitely do it. The floor pan on the superspec is different to the 2B, I think it's lowered a little and the rear sierra beam is attached differently with 2 of the fixings on a 2B omitted to allow for this, that may be the difference on Steve49er's car.

try adding another earth from under one of the starter mounting bolts to a really good clean earth on the chassis. Also give all the other connections a good clean including the battery posts and inside the battery connections

Cheers Bob, we managed to avoid that one by having a fire in the loft of a house at the same time as that was all kicking off. Managing to melt bits of the appliance is bad firemanship, poor initial positioning and not recognising the severity of the conditions or potential for fire spread. Some good pictures on the Manchester Evening News website that show the size of the fire and firefighters laying out hose that make you think that's never going to put that out.

The problem with putting the cylinder head outlet back into the water pump is that you'll have a constant loop of water that isn't getting cooled by the radiator. If you plumb it into the top hose it at least gets the chance to go through the rad before its back into the engine again.

You have two choices of cooling system, the older spit and suck with an expansion bottle or the more modern system with a header tank. If you're going old style your bottom hose wants to go from the bottom of the rad to the water pump, your top hose from the themostat housing to the top of the rad and the cylinder head outlet plumbed into the top hose. Also change the 1.1 bar cap for a 0.9 bar and pipe the over flow from the rad neck to an expansion bottle. If you're going modern system try to get your header tank as high as possible. Bottom hose from the rad to the water pump but this time with the bottom outlet of the header tank plumbed into it. Top hose as before with the cylinder head outlet into it. Fit a blank/blind cap to the radiator and plumb the outlet from the rad neck to the top of the header tank. Pressure cap only on the header tank and as these are a pretty much sealed system (all the expansion should be contained within the header tank) you can fit a slightly higher pressure cap ie 1.1 bar Did you ever test for evidence of combustion gases in the coolant when you had your previous problems?

Hopefully you've sussed it out and can have two cars to enjoy this summer

As above either Auto Silicone Hoses or Derbyshire Performance Hoses on ebay are pretty good.Looking at your pictures you may be able to use some of the lengths of bendable silicone hose and cut your number of joints down

So long as the insulation is in good condition there's nothing wrong with reusing the original wire in a new custom loom. I used one of these fuseboxes with the compatible relay box and replicated the circuits as per the Haynes wiring diagrams, enough fuses to put everything on sperate circuits and relays for main beam, dipped beam, fuel pumps and horn. I did add one more relay for the ignition circuit to be on the safe side.

Great job there, looks good

You definitely get more margin for error with a normally aspirated engine. If you're lucky you'll get it almost right without a rolling road set up and it'll run well and put a smile on your face. If you're going for forced induction then a good set up is a must, as said I learnt a very expensive lesson about this with two melted pistons and rebuild costs from mapping by someone who thought he knew what he was doing.

I didn't get out over the weekend,I had hoped to but had a failure to start as the battery decided it had had enough after 11 years. So new battery purchased,a small tweak to the cooling system and a 3hr drive round the Peak District this morning before the weather turns wet again.

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Is the meeting happening on Thursday? Thursday 12th March, Darlaston Inn, A51/A34 jct 7.30pm onwards for anybody who's thinking about it and doesn't know the location.

Kit spares/GBS stock the T seal

Happy birthday Bob, hope you had a great day and didn't spend too much time thinkng about non-running zetecs!

sounds like a job for Red Seven Engineering. Are they a regular Zero part or is it something that Graham did himself?

Lesson learned, glad you got away with it. You really do need to adopt your driving style in these cars, modern FWD cars are just too easy to chuck into a damp corner and come safely out the other side that it's not hard to find yourself in trouble if you drive your kit the same way.

Is the shielding on the CPS correct? Some ecus like it earthed and some like it open. Also does the ecu need to see the fuel pump work or could you wire the pump separately from an ignition controlled supply thereby giving the ecu one less thing to worry about controlling?

Lever up the rear of the bonnet with a crowbar or similar, cut the hinges with an electric saw or bolt cutters then pull the bonnet forwards. That'll get you in there pretty quick, but it won't do your bonnet any good. Works well when we have car fires and had to do it a few times last Friday when we had 9 cars set on fire by a couple of half wits in an hour over four streets.

Have a look at radtec, they do an uprated radiator for Caterhams and also an uprated polo rad, both run with a header tank as you want and should fit above the chassis rail