SRowells Black Rallye

[Eeyore]

I wasn't there when the work was done Jonny. All I can do is trust that Carl did the right thing. If it needs more work on the future then so be it. I plan on keeping this forever so if it needs work itll have it.

[Magenta Sunset]

I suspect that plug in the door could be for leccy windows

[Toms306]

I suspect that plug in the door could be for leccy windows

Yep it is. Odd that they'd waste all that weight of the loom in a Rallye that shouldn't have electric windows though lol...

[Matt]

I've got electric window and mirror plugs on my loom haha

[RetroPug]

It costs more money to manufacture different looms than to have a loom that can fit all variants of the vehicle.

[Eeyore]

I only had one wire up near the mirrors which wasn't attached to anything. Lots of work today will update later.

[Eeyore]

So an unexpectedly large update as I hadnt planned to be working on the car today only cleaning at a friends. Packed the car to leave and noticed a small coolant leak. Decided I could probably make it there. No fuel so went to the petrol station and coolant was pretty much pouring out and rad was empty in no time. Filled it up and pumped up the tyres and then headed home. Called Tom to see if he wanted to play cars...

Whilst tom was on his way i had already found the source of the leak. Seems to be a completely crap fitting in the rad. The rad was brand new and fitted less than a month ago and its done under 400 miles in that amount of time. I cant see how the fitting ever did hold itself in!





Anyway I decided the best thing to do was to get the rad out as it was going to need replacing. Thought i may as well try supergluing the fitting in minus the oring and see if it holds the water which at least means i get to go for a hoon this weekend whilst looking for a new one! Whilst the glue was setting we found some other things to do.

I had loosened a lot of the bolts with my manly strength and Tom finished off removing the bolts and swapping the struts. We then bolted them up and had a quick discussion about how they had always been fitted the wrong way round. We were unable to remove the top mounts so fitted them anyway. The drop link is near vertical when steering is straight and doesnt foul on anything lock to lock so seems to be okay. Need to get some new bolts for the top mounts so measured those up. We then dropped the whole thing down and set the ride height. These were taken off the 1.8 which was pretty slammed so i expected it to sit really low but actually it didnt drop too much. I raised the coils up 10mm which should give more travel and stop the bottoming out i had with the 1.8. Not road tested yet but fingers crossed!





Next up was to swap the worn top glove box for one where the flocking hadnt come off the inside. All of the alarm wiring is mashed in here and its a mess. Ive left that well alone for now and will tackle when the heater matrix needs replacing. I have no idea what anyone was thinking as theres probably about 15ft of cables just bundled up and a random 20 pin plug where all wires have been cut apart from 4. Really weird stuff.



I then removed the steering wheel coweling and the speedo surround. it looked like it had been touched up by someone in the past and i thought it looked better with a phase 3 surround. Left the orange needles and black speedo trim so its still pretty much as it should be. Whilst the surround was out I also replaced some of the bulbs that had blown. Now I have a dipped beam bulb which I stole from the airbag light which will flash once the OMP wheel is fitted.




Next up battery disconnected, airbag removed, wheel off, omp wheel on what i hope to be straight! I think it looks pretty good and car looks a bit more racy. The OEM wheel is a plastic squidgy dire object. Im keeping everything that I remove and putting it in a special rallye parts box so it can always be put back to standard.



Wandering round the car also noticed that the nearside light had filled up with water. First time ive seen this happen on one of my cars however tom thinks it happened to the 1.8 before. Anyway quick 20 second walk to the shed and a new lamp fitted!



By this time i deemed the glue dry and got it all over my hands... fitted the rad anyway and then spent a good time mincing trying to get the lower pipe on. O ring was stopping it fitting so pushed this in all the way around with a small flat head and it slipped in no issues. Hoses connected and rad cabled tied to the fan coweling and we are good to go and test whether the glue will hold for a few hours driving. I havent filled it up yet as i want to give it more time to dry but ill have to pick up some coolant soon. Bash believes he has a replacement radiator for me. Its the early type with the plastic fit lower hose.

I think thats pretty much it. I also stock piled all the plastic interior bits that are needed to complete the inside which I will fit once ive vacuumed it out. Big thanks to tom for coming over and spending hours fiddling with rad lower pipes and seized drop link bolts. Helpful as always!

[Niall]

Shame about the rad. Does just look to me like a cheap nasty radiator which was never made properly.
To be honest if you are thinking of fitting a oil cooler you could happily get a XSI/1.8 rad which are a LOT cheaper and do away with that hose.

[Eeyore]

Yeh so I already have an oil cooler on the shelf ready to fit. I'll have to check out if it can be removed when I take the inlet off as o have no idea what the stock setup is.

[Piggy]

Remember the stock oil "cooler" isnt just a cooler, its a heat transfer unit. Helps keep coolant/oil heat balanced and aids in warm up

[Eeyore]

okay kl. I havent heard of anyone removing it or blocking it up or whatever you have to do. So went to fill up the rad, got my header bottle fitted and everything and sure enough the thermostat housing bolt has sheared... and its started raining... so... yeh. Annoyed.

[Eeyore]

More work today... what started out as being a simple job of bleeding up the system turned into a bit more of a mission. Bled up the rad but couldnt for the life of me get the thermostat bleed screw back in and then is sheared. I removed the housing and had a spare so swapped over all the sensors and fitted that. Found a random bolt which fitted so managed to bleed up the system. The old thermostat housing was very corroded. Judging by the fact everything is so orange and the water comes out orange immediately i reckon this hasnt had any coolant i.e. only water in it for quite some time.






All bled up and running up to temperature the super glued fitting seems to be holding however my search for a nissens rad was completed very quickly as bash had a spare nissens which has all the right fittings. Early type lower pipe, oil cooler water inlet and the reservoir on the side. Still to work out payment but itll be some kind of swap for the yellow wheels that came on the car. I cleaned everything i could get to in the engine bay but the lower gearbox area is still very orange.




Next I thought under the scuttle panels was pretty filthy so decided to have a clean up under there. The drivers side was completely blocked up with what seems to be pine needles. The loom grommet was also fitted a bit funny which meant it wasnt sealing properly. Alarm mounted on the passenger side has some loose wires but as said before im not going to tackle removing that yet. 





Also found a patch where all the paint had peeled off with bare metal behind. Gave it a quick prime and spray with some satin black. Better than doing nothing!



All sprayed and cleaned up.



By this time it was getting dark and cold. I fitted the lower centre console and packed up for the night. A fair bit of work to be done and hopefully i can refit the scuttle panel and wiper arms tomorrow after cleaning them this evening. Tom has the new rad and we will fit that next week as i doubt superglue will get me to london and back! 

[Matt]

Looking good mate! Some real in depth cleaning happening here

[Eeyore]

Its getting cleaner and its taking a lot of time to get through things. Hopefully itll soon be clean and in a state where i can start doing more things to it. Its just getting up to a standard i expect which is taking some time. Annoying that ive spent so much time this weekend fixing stupid things like the broken rad and the sheared screw... both things that were unexpected and have wasted my time... but at least it will be fixed and be better than ever.

[impotentials]

Really starting to look good now, looking forward to seeing it at ace day.

[Eeyore]

So cleaned up the scuttle plastics along with the air intake cover. Then refitted the wipers. Will be painting the plastics and respraying the arms at some point.





Then decided to check it all worked and finally hit the road. Did about 1km and then swapped the wheel as it was almost 90 degrees out. Not sure how that happened. Its straightish now. Decided to take the back roads to felixstowe to get some pictures!











So yeh nothing wrong. The exhuast ringing doesnt seem to be a thing any more. Might just be that I have speakers in and the music is covering it up.

Also i havent said this before but the knocking stopped once the car came back from Carl. Nothing specific was changed probably just oil clogs moving around etc. Happy days!

[Eeyore]

So out with the crap rad and in with the second hand rad from bash. Did find that there was an extra inlet on the reservoir so had to bung that up first. Colour coded pipe and bolt!




and then rad in! Bit harder to fit as its wider and the oil cooler pipe sticks out more. Coolant in so thanks to tom for bringing that over and leaving me with the rest of the bottle! One thing we did find was that the spring in the supposedly stock cap was very tight, almost impossible to push down by hand where as the nissens one could be compressed by hand. Perhaps the previous leaks seen by the previous owner could have been the system unable to release the pressure?



Looking vaguely respectable under there now and at least its all working and tight.




Done 50 miles and temperatures were lower, water not reaching 70 and oil more under 90 than it was previously!

[cully]

coming along now!

[powerandtorque]

Good work getting the old girl back on the road and ever-further towards being in decent fettle.

I think it was a good move replacing that radiator as I really can't see that the union would have held any length of time being superglued in place.... with all the potential woe that risked to both the engine and yourself and fellow motorists (as coolant is surprisingly slippery when dropped over the road in any quantity!)

Done 50 miles and temperatures were lower, water not reaching 70 and oil more under 90 than it was previously!

To me, that coolant temperature sounds somewhat on the cool side if that's reading accurately. Is the thermostat original, as it could be sticking open a little if so?

[Eeyore]

This is whats really weird is that i bought it on the understanding it had a popped a core-plug and was losing its fluid everywhere... but there has been no sign of this whatsoever. The previous owner tried to solve the cooling issue y replacing the thermostat and in the process broke the inlet pipe and thermostat housing both of which have been replaced. In the service history i found that the rad was leaking and footwell was wet which was apparently a matrix leak. There is no history of either being replaced and due to the water being so crap i presume it was a radweld job.

All ive done to the coolant system is replace the radiator and also replaced the thermostat housing when the bleed screw sheared. Didnt drill it as the housing i had to hand was better condition. When replacing the radiator i noticed the nissens cap spring was much weaker than the "original". It could be that the "original" rad cap was too strong and couldnt release pressure and just forced it out of places that would otherwise be sealed.

I now believe everything to be okay. Im going to keep an eye on water levels over the next few drives but there isnt anything immediately obvious going on.

[lolsteve]

That does sound pretty cool (which is surprising for these engines). Doesn't the thermostat open about 80+ degrees?

[Toms306]

Stat should open at 83c iirc. It reached 85ish before dropping off while idling yesterday during bleeding...heaters on full blast as well.

Not sure why it was so cool while driving though? Might want to check the fan switch plug is seated right in in case that's loose and keeping the fan on? I suppose as long as the oil sits around the right temp it doesn't matter too much about coolant temp though?

[7057sam]

Thanks for the lift today mate,had a good hoon there and back,going be good when it's on bodies.

Wheels are really starting to grow on me aswell.

[Eeyore]

More progress even though ive been at the desk all day...

[Eeyore]

Bit of an update. So i went to halfords and bought some super resin polish on natahns recommendation. It was 3 for 2 on cleaning products so i also got some pressure washer foam stuff and some trim gel.

I think my pressure washer is too basic to foam well so i wouldnt recommending the autogleam pressure washer stuff as it was expensive at £15 for 5L. The polish was really good and brought up to the finish below.







And the trim gel was amazing. Completely transforms the look of the plastic bits instantly! really really impressed with it.



So yes, for once it was clean however its rained overnight and made it all dusty now.

[cully]

with the resin polish make sure you put some wax on the top as it leaves the paint bare clean

[Eeyore]

with the resin polish make sure you put some wax on the top as it leaves the paint bare clean

yeh i know nothing about cleaning cars... ill have to buy some and do it again...

[Toms306]

Yeah srp will just wash off without a wax or sealant on top!

[cully]

SRP is a fine form of Tcut you wont want to use it to much as it will wear the paint through eventually

[Toms306]

Srp doesn't really cut tbh, it's just full of fillers which is why it washes out quickly. It should last a few days for you to get some protection on there though.