Start new job, time suddenly speeds up. don't you hate that?! So... here's the offending item that immobilised the bus (literally). Bloody thing, I do hate them. Thanks to Paragon who sent Lee up to my workshop to remove the retched thing.
I will be taking it out and summarily burning it later this week. And here's the offending wiring loom in all it's glory in situ and wrenched from the car:
Check out all the rubbish connections, relay boxes, wires going nowhere, and crispy coatings that had gone deliciously hard over the years. Not to mention the tired bullet connectors, and tape used to hold everything together. It was a wonder the car saw the end of three races!
Anyway, here's the car stripped: took Ian two days to label everything, work out where it all went, remove all the gauges, seats, gear shift, etc to then carefully remove the wiring loom:
Ian then set about making a bespoke loom for the car. I looked into replacing it with a factory loom but there's so much of the loom that's redundant and so much that's required that's bespoke, that it made more sense to make it. Plus we were able to go with modern wire (thinner, lighter but able to carry more amps), cut everything to length in the car, and simplifying a whole lot of the wiring (why did the factory make so much of it complicated?). In the process we pulled the engine and found the input shaft seal had destroyed itself, hence the gearbox oil everywhere. So a new seal has gone in, along with a Feramic 4 puck clutch and solid ally gearbox mounts. Boy do the original steel and rubber ones weigh a ton! I also took the liberty of drilling all the dashboard brackets to lighten them and cleaned about half of SoCal beach from inside the tunnel. I reckon I removed the better part of a kilo of sand (no bull) from inside that tunnel. God knows how it got there but I'm sure the car will feel faster as a result. Ian also took the opportunity to replace the entire rigid fuel line front to back with new ally hose, as we had the front piece split a few months ago so we were never confident of the original line. With the engine out I also spent a long time cleaning the engine bay, above the gearbox and the inside of the rear quarter panels of years of oil, sand and gunk.
Ian also cleaned and refurbished all the electrical components, including the fuse board. So with new wires, connectors, fuses and components we should (I hope) have made the electrical system reliable. Ian also installed new warning lights on the dash as the originals had never worked - nothing like playing Russian Roulette with a £12,000 motor
They say there's two ways to go racing: restore it and then race it. Which I could never do as I'd be afraid of scratching or breaking it. And racing a car and restoring it as you go, which is what we're obviously doing. The latter is always a harder road to take as you've got to schedule a lot of work between races but it does allow you to spread the cost of restoration, and it also means you get to enjoy it while the rebuild is taking place!
We're off to the HSCC finals this coming weekend at Silverstone, assuming the car is back together! Rather surprisingly we're 11 in our class in the championship out of about 25 cars. Most of that is down to two decent class finishes at Snetterton and Brands (3rd and 4th respectively), and because few owners make all the races. Best of all there are only four cars entered in the under-2 litres category (ours) for the final race and only one of them is ahead on points. So if we just finish the race we'll leap frog up to 6th place. Unfortunately the others are too far ahead for us to make up any further places in the championship, but if we finish the race and end up 6th out of 25 cars in the under 2 litre class in our first year of racing I'll be delighted. I'll let you know how we get on. Again, if you've a spare saturday and you fancy taking your car for a drive, come support us at Silverstone: it would be great to see you there. Cheers, Steve
