Now I’ve done a lot of work on my car over the years and my language has been more than a little fruity on many occasions. However during this install I actually ran out of swearwords. This was a first for me.
This is part way in.
At this stage in desperation I’d remove a cover from the top of the unit to try and gain more space. After a while I decided that was unwise and put it back again
All throughout this I really couldn’t see how it was actually going to go in there but my other concern was that once I got it in I wouldn’t be able to get it out again. Meaning that if everything attached to the unit wasn’t perfect then I would be stuck with it.
It was getting more and more stressful and I was utterly convinced there was no way on earth this thing was going to fit in there.
This particular morning I had Spotify playing me hits from 1973 - when I was 10. It was a (mostly) nice trip down memory lane. However at the height of the stress of trying to push it in the speaker was blaring ‘Mama weer all Krazy now’ by Slade. I love the song but it wasn’t helping. I put on some classical morning music and took a few deep breaths.
Part way through I remembered an article I’d read by AA Gill (sadly no longer with us) many years ago. I always enjoyed his writing and bought a book by him which was basically a collection for stories about his various trips.
The book (and trips) were massively varied - including railing against the lack of western funding for cheap malaria pills for Africa all the way to a trip that involved him going to America and getting the chance to write and direct a porn film. The consistent thing was that the writing was brilliant,
This is the passage that I could not get out of my head while I was trying to cram the blower into such a small space
It struck me clearly during this process that if I got this blower in then it would truly be more impressive than anything Paul Daniels made disappear…..
Eventually though, and to my surprise, it went in. Even more surprising I was able to pull it out fairly easily. And more surprising still was the fact that once I knew it would fit in there, I was able to re-insert it again. And again. And again. I’ll say no more on that except that like many things in life there is a knack to it and once you have the knack it makes things a lot easier.
There is also a tab hanging down from the top of the scuttle and I did have to bend that out of the way
I did have to keep taking it out to deal with the drain holes. There are two holes in the bottom and before installing the unit I’d joined them together and used a T piece to produce a drain pipe that would go into the original drain tube. -you can see it in this pic sticking out of the bottom of the unit
Somewhat predictably as I pushed it in both drain plugs were ripped out. Re-reading the instructions it said you can drain from both holes (like I’d tried to do) or from either individual drain holes. Also you could drain it into the steering cavity.
When I had it in I could see that the right hand drain plug sat in just the right position to drain into the steering cavity, so I just had to block up the other one
First thoughts were a bolt of about the same diameter and some glue to hold it in.
Tried that - looked good but on the next trial fit it was ripped out.
Then I remembered a YouTube video I’d seen involving cotton wool and superglue. You stuff the hole with cotton wool and drip superglue into it - keep doing it until it is saturated. it very quickly set like rock
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro