Steering colum sorted

The past week has mainly been taken up with trying to figure out a solution to the steering problem. The reinforced bracket for mounting the steering column arrived from Peter, so I stuck it on the car. The reinforcements eliminated 90% of the flex that had concerned IVA, but the bigger issue was that I couldn't find a position that gave satisfactory clearance from engine, chassis and exhaust.

After a lot of struggling, I could find a position that would give me about 2 mm clearance in each case, but I had to space the bracket on one side so that it was quite twisted to achieve this, and in any case, now that I was thinking about clearance, I wasn't really happy with this (I think it's about what I had before IVA).

Much time was spent fiddling around, and eventually I figured that I would need to move the bracket inboard a little, which meant cutting a notch out of the side of it. This was done without issue, but unfortunately that removed some of Peter's reinforcement and left me with a fair bit of flex; and it still gave very marginal clearance.

The options seemed to be: a redesign of the steering column; chop a corner off the engine; chop a chunk out of the chassis.

The former would be a big help - there's room to rearrange the lower shaft in such a way that would improve clearance everywhere, but obviously this is quite a bit of work. I'm not keen to chop bits out of structurally important bits of the chassis, so that left the engine. Comparing notes and photos with Jason (many thanks to Jason for all the info and help here) showed that the M52 engine I'm using sticks out a little bit more than the S50 that he's using, which perhaps explains why he didn't have the difficulties I've been having. The protruding bit seemed to just be a bit of plastic rocker cover and a bolt to hold the rocker cover on, so I removed the bolt and used a hacksaw to trim back the rocker cover.

Trimmed corner of engine.

That done, I finished bolting in the column mounting bracket, but felt that it still had an amount of flex - not enough to actually be an issue, but since IVA didn't like it, I wanted to eliminate it completely. Most of today was spent making up a couple of supporting brackets, which have now completely eliminated play in the bracket.

Supporting bracket 1.

Supporting bracket 2.

I think IVA should be happy with both clearance and lack of movement in the column, so that's another item ticked off.

Remaining to be done:

• sort out headlight position so they don't obscure the driver's view - the new bar and headlights have arrived, so this should be straightforward
• move indicators - I will probably mount these on the cycle wings for IVA, and then move them back to the headlight bar afterwards. This should just be a case of knocking up a suitable mounting bracket.
• sort out steering self-centering. I have some ideas which may help here; now the steering column is back in place, I can start to investigate this problem.
• Trim - a few sharp edges to cover up with rubber trim, about 10 minutes work most likely.

So, plenty still remaining, but one of the tricky bits is now sorted, which is a good step forwards towards being road-legal.

Mistakes and fixes

Midweek, I took a look at the slight leaks I've been seeing from the diff and gearbox. Last week I wiped them down and put paper underneath so I could see how much was leaking. The diff was still dry, so I think the apparent leak must have just been oil on the diff casing from when I filled it. The gearbox was leaking, so I checked the torque specs for the drain plug, and found that I had indeed tightened it correctly. Crossing my fingers, I dialed up the torque wrench a bit and over tightened it. The gearbox casing didn't crack, as I've read can happen, and there have been no drips since, so I think I've got away with this one.

Emily was away this weekend, so I cracked on with the car. First up, I put the boot floor back, then put some protective rubber trim around the immobiliser as requested by IVA. I thought I'd better check I hadn't pulled a wire loose when meddling with the immobiliser, so gave it a quick test start and... nothing.

A few checks later and it was clear that there was no immobiliser fault code, which was good, but also no fuel, which was a problem. Pretty quickly I figured that I'd accidentally pulled out the plug to the fuel pump when I was putting the tank strap in, so I drilled out all the rivets again and this indeed proved to be the case. Kind of wish I'd used more rivnuts instead of rivets on the panels now, for ease of removal, but it's too late to change without getting all new panels.

Unfortunately, the package of bits from Peter (mainly containing a modified headlight bar, indicator mounts, steering column bracket) hadn't arrived, so I couldn't do any more things needed for IVA. Since I still had a quick rack waiting to be fitted, I decided to fit that and play around with steering setup and see if I could locate any stiffness which might be hindering self-centering.

I trial fitted the rack without springs, but the cycle wings were (just) hitting the bodywork, so I dismantled both racks, and transferred the springs over to the new rack. These limit steering travel too much, I think, so after IVA I'll replace them with a suitable number of washers - but for now they solve that problem (if a bit too much) and may assist self-centering, so I'll keep them on for IVA. Note to people doing the same: if your rack has the large round bit that is hard to grip when dismantling, I recommend doing as I did and grinding a couple of flat bits on it so you can get a spanner on it.

The hard to unscrew round bit.

The new rack has one immediate benefit: it permits far more toe-in than the old rack. The old one maxed out at about 2º of toe in each side, by my crude measurements; the new one goes far beyond that, which may help me get self-centering.

Toe measuring setup

To measure toe, I taped a couple of broom / mop handles to the wheels, then measured the distance between them at different points. A bit of simple trig then gives toe = sin^-1(((w₁ - w₂) / 2) / d) where w₁ and w₂ are the two width measurements and d is the distance between them. Modulo the inherent inaccuracies in measuring angles of a few degrees using broom handles (although it did seem reasonably repeatable), I currently have about 3º toe in and will see how that goes.

After this, I took a crack at measuring camber (the amount the wheels lean inward), which was harder. Eventually I used the iphone to measure wheel angle and ground angle, and established that one wheel was at 1º (which is probably about right), and one is at 4º (which is too much). Fixing this involves removing a ball joint, which did not want to come out. After battering the end of the ball joint with a hammer, it was still stuck, but with a damaged thread preventing the nut from going on. Progress of a sort. Things being a bit desperate, I got the dremel out and managed, eventually, to cut the end off which left just enough thread remaining to get the nut on properly, and left it at that.

Fuel issues fixed?

The current theory on the very poor fuel economy is based on the observations that (1) the temperature only gets about 1/4 of the way round the dial (I'd expect it to sit about halfway) and (2) the fan comes on, a lot, even in just-above-zero temperatures. In other words, this points towards the engine not getting up to temperature because the fan is on too much, and therefore using more fuel (apparently fuel economy drops considerably on these cars if they don't get up to temperature). The only flaw in this theory is that I'd expect the thermostat to close, so the fan being on shouldn't be an issue because water wouldn't be flowing to the radiator - but it's a start.

I boiled up the fan switch in a saucepan today and found that it switches on at 87 ºc, and off at about 79 ºc, whereas it should be switching at 97 and 105, so I've requested a new one from Peter. Hopefully this will sort the engine temperature and fuel economy - if not, then I'll have to try replacing the thermostat in case it's stuck open, which apparently occasionally happens even with new thermostats (which mine is).

Peter also tells me that he's sorted the steering column bracket and will post it tomorrow, and plans to get the IVA people to look at his new headlight bar design towards the end of the week, with a view to getting mine modified and returned once he's happy that the new design will pass IVA requirements. We're still not sure how the indicator position problem is going to be solved (they need to be slightly further outboard), but we'll think of something.

With these issues progressing on Peter's side, I took a look at the fuel lines issues raised by IVA. They felt that the fuel lines were chafing against the tank, so I removed the boot floor to address this. They also weren't happy about the earth to the tank (they wanted photos), and the lack of a tank strap securing the tank (they couldn't see the bracket holding it in on top of the tank).

Once the panel was off, I took a bunch of photos for evidence of the earth and the brackets, then decided that actually I might as well just fit a tank strap and make 100% sure that they're happy with it rather than hope that they're OK with my photos of the bracket arrangement. Thanks to Jason for the strap.

Strap in place. Note earth lead on the right.

I also found time for an extended and long-overdue garage tidy - I can actually find my tools now which helps.

I've noticed that I'm seeing a slight leak from both the diff and the transmission (by slight I mean a very, very occasional drip from the drain plug). The ideal solution would be to get new gaskets and replace the plugs, but that would mean (another) oil change, which is annoying. I'll have to start by making sure they're properly tight and see if that helps.