agent_zed

maybe iam sad but that made me laugh....

Thanks for all the replies, ive gone with just cutting it without extra capacity. so hopefully this afternoon she will be back on the road cheers

i asked the man at the dvla when i was registering and he told me 1 year until i queried him and he went off to ask. He returned and told me i was correct that it was 3 years glad i asked...

Cheers all, i'll let him know and see if we can sort it out. His mechanic seems bemused by the whole thing which makes me question how good a mechanic he really is. Thanks again

I used the ones RH supplied and passed without a problem with them on the body sides. My mirrors didn't have an E mark but they didn't even look, not sure if they are more strict on lights though.

Yeah i had an upper ball joint rubber and the track rod end split on me with no road time but then it had been a few years in the garage by then. I had a quick look for replacement rubbers but i couldn't find any. I assume that it normally isn't worth fussing to replace the rubber as on most cars the balljoint would need replacing anyway by the time the rubber splits. Ive kept my other ball joints in a safe place so i can use the rubbers (if they haven't split by then) off the one ive got one the car if the ball joint wears out. I should have the part number on the box if you are unsure which one you need for the top, just let me know. regards

Hi guys, thanks for the replies. hmmm decisions... ive been thinking and i think iam going to try and find a sump off anouther car that is the same width but longer than the deep part of the ford one. Then i can cut the ford one and effectively put the new sump up over this and weld at a much higher place, the increases length would give more capacity forward. It would also mean that it would already have a sump plug and if my welds broke they would be sufficiently high up that it would still hold oil. This of course relies on finding a suitable one at the local scapyard, otherwise it will just get cut off and welded for now. Has anyone else done this? Does this sound like a good idea, i can't think of a reason not to do it this way.

and finally my scuttle area. The bulkhead was actually made from an old seat ibiza bonnet Ive made it a bit weird as the original rh bonnet piece just sits over a panel which holds the windscreen wipers and heater box. The wiper spindles just poke up through and are not actually bolted to the top panel so i didn't have to have bolt holes. The heater channels again just line up with the original holes in the rh bonnet. hope this helps

heres my car from the front, with the bonnet section standing at the back of the picture

here is a picture of the aluminium former i made. I had to add the diagonal supports to stop the curve bending out as the glassfibre is quite strong.

Sorry if this has been asked before. Iam about to shorten my sump and was wondering if i need to add extra capacity, ive seen many people have done it but is it actually necessary? i have a standard 1.6 pinto so it won't be pushed that hard. Does anyone run with a short sump without extra capacity? cheers

Its nice to see other poeple are as crazy as me when i took a saw to my brand new bonnet and made it into a scuttle bonnet and nose cone . For the nose cone i made a former out of Aluminium flat which matched the bonnet shape. This was then bolted down to the chassis and the nose cose pulled down over it to give it the correct shape. My bonnet has a very little gap now on the corners where it meets the nose cone. A couple of alu "tags" on the bottom front bar secured the nose cone at the bottom. hope this helps. i can take pictures if required...

Interestingly i found that the bottom nuts were a fail as were the top bolt head and seat belt metal part itself. I had to make a panel over the boot which also covered the seat belt metal parts. This was just some hardboard and leather cloth which came off after the test. Apparently if the boot is not covered and there is a bulkhead between the cockpit and the back then the boot is technically outside the car and therefore everything has to be radiused hence the nuts fail. Even the examiner thought it was stupid but thems are the rules.

ooh don't know iam afraid, my girlfriend doesn't know and they use different plates so i don't know the age. I know it has a manual box and a turbo charger. I think it is around 1990. Cheers.

If you run an engine that was not designed for unleaded fuel you will eventually burn out the exhaust valves. DEpending on the engine this may be quick or slow. I read an article that said that the old Alfa twin cams would run on unleaded even though they weren't designed to as the fuel in italy in the 60's was so crap that they designed it to cope. Basically you need hardened exhaust seats. Haven't really used lrp as all my cars are ul so can't comment iam afraid, although i wouldn't be surprised if it was completely phased out in the next few years. just remembered that there is a chart on the forum somewhere that shows you the pinto ages etc might be in the wiki.

Hi, sorry i realise this isn't a hood question but i have an interesting problem that i was hoping someone could answer. My girlfriend's fathers discovery has a sticky diesel solenoid which sometimes needs to be hit to start the engine and sometimes to stop it. Recently it won't stop unless you press the brake pedal at which point it turns off. Iam not very good at fault diagnosis but am thinking that it is an earth fault on the solenoid, is this likely to be the problem and if so whats the best way of fixing, just add an extra earth strap or something? any suggeestions appreciated.

This is my own view but after looking at how much it would cost to tune a pinto and rebuilt it etc i realised that it would probably be easier to buy a more modern engine that is already more powerful and cheaper. You could get a 130bhp zetec out of the old orion or perhaps a k-series rover engine both of which are 16v twin cams. They are probably significantly lighter than the cast iron pinto. But i guess that isn't what rebuilding engines is about if you have the time and love i imagine it would be quite rewarding to build to your own spec, it just ain't that cheap. Check out burtons for bits and pieces to see the prices. good luck though

i might be wrong but i think all you have to do is reduce the angle of the rear inline brake valve down a bit so it is easier for the ball bearing to move forward under braking. it is obviously an inertia mechanism so i don't know what happens at sva as it won't work quite the same on a rolling road. The sva man said he had seen that valve in all sorts of positions even horizontal across the back axle so it only worked on one wheel when cornering

If you have a welder and can be bothered you can change the length of the stroke. For my set-up i modified the nearside one so it sweeps further as the standard stroke on the fiesta system doesn't go all the way across (This might not be the case for the nova as haven't used it). in any case Just have to shorten (i think) the wiper lever and that blade will go further. Takes a bit of trial and error to get the length right though. Good luck

link didn't work for me. My sony laptop has a 3.5mm jack plug that is the tv out which is next to the mic and headphone socket. Does yours happen to have this? If so all you need is a 3.5mm jack to phono lead which is the same as you would connect an mp3 to an amplifier. Most aux visual output ports are in yellow if that helps.

The SVA man in avonmouth failed my windscreen supports the first time as i had no trim on it. I would argue that it would be almost impossible to round them sufficiently to get a pass as 2 x 2.5mm radius would require a 5mm width (my supports are about 4mm) and a very steady hand to file a perfect curve although different testers may be more picky, i had to add rubber around my alu filler cap that came with the kit as it was 6mm from the bodywork and they wouldn't pass it as it was "sharp" as an aside if you are just putting the windscreen together consider using machine screws and tapping the holes into the windscreen rather than the tiny (and scary) little self tappers that RH supplied. 6mm hex head machine screws work well and must be soooooo much stronger than 3 tiny self tappers. regards all

you will not pass without it. I just put some simple black rubber u shaped stuff around it (took it off afterwards). It also needs to be down the front edge not just the back. For info You will also have to trim around the box sections which hold the wishbones (if you have 2b+) and also the coilover suspension as the zeemeride shocks have the huge nuts to adjust ride height which are too "sharp" the brackets onto the wishbones also fail as the sva man can get his ball thing into there. If you kept the seirras heating duct there should be 2 identical black tubes with a foot shaped peice on the end that fits over the shock and bracket quite nicely. if in doubt trim it!!! the top nuts that hold the wishbone ball joint will also fail, i used squash balls which i cut and siliconed round the nut. get a ball that is 100mm diameter and go round the car and touch everything if it can touch anything that is radiused less than 2.5mm that protrudes further than 5mm from the main bodywork it will need to be trimmed. The twin tube exhaust rear bracket needs to be cut a bit so it cannot be touched by the ball. sorry i seem to have gone off the point a bit

if you want a quick fix, the plastic orange ones that you get with a 2b can be used. i simply cut the ends off the screws so that they didn't protrude past the backing plate and then siliconed them on so i didn't have to put extra holes in the bodywork (steel bodywork). The sva man didn't even question them, i guess they looked like they were screwed as the screw heads were still there. I was going to change them but i quite like them now. I have them just behind the wheels on the top of the body side.

This is why i don't let my Greek Cypriot girlfriend drive my car definitly gonna send this link to her!

If you have small holes from your long wings you could just run the wires through and use stick on side repeaters, kill 2 birds with one stone. With such a long bonnet i would personally prefer to make sure people can see me and where iam going and avoid any issue with insurance if i was hit as a result of them not seeing my indicators, but iam not sure whether they are a requiment or not post sva. cheers