So, sailing, taking SWMBO away for a few days, followed by chores means that there’s been limited time on the SC recently.
I refitted the rear under bumper valance, mopped the oil from under the engine that appeared to be the result of poor aim when filling the oil tank.
I swapped in my new wheels & tyres,
… from these
(anyone want to buy a set of garage wheels & tyres ??)
..to these
Much shinier
then roughly checked the camber angles – about -0.5 on the front and 1 – 1.5 at the rear, which is good enough for now.
Ride height was a little high at the rear and a lot higher at the front, but after a drive around today (more of that later) the rear is about 25”, so spot on. The front (with almost no fuel in the tank) is around 27”, so about 1.5” high. Yes I know, I should really be doing my measurements in mm.
I fitted the headlights
I did manage to think ahead, and checked the lights were working before buttoning everything up. We all know that if I hadn’t checked them, then one or more bulbs would have not worked.
The black vanity rings are on, but they keep slipping off the top of the headlights, so I guess they need some further fettling.
Then in a moment of boredom, I gave the rubber a bit of a clean to remove some of the surplus and dried on rubbing compound
Hardly the most important things, but I added the engine bay decals (from Matthew at Type911)
Having adjusted the ignition timing last time, we were all systems go for the first test drive. Or we were once I set the tracking (near enough using my Trackrite gauge).
The car has almost no fuel in it, so it was a good job that the first drive is not supposed to last too long. I passed 2 fuel stations without fuel and the third had a mahoosive queue, so I didn’t bother waiting. Always a stressful time when you first hit a traffic jam - will the car behave or not. With Jonny’s electric aircon running, on a couple of occasions early in the drive, the charging light came on when I stopped. No matter though, turn the aircon off and the light went out. Didn’t seem to be any issues later.
Not sure how many miles I did, as although the speedo works, the trip meter is no longer working !. I’ve fitted a smaller steering wheel – I have to contort to see any of the gauges, apart from the rev counter that I had twisted around, so that the important rev range is right in my field of vision.
What else – the gearbox synchro graunches a bit going into first, but the other gears are fine. Might need a slight adjustment to the selector joint or maybe the Seine system, but not too far off.
The car exhaust (2 in, 2 out) drones a bit, but it’s far less noticeable when I close the windows and turn on the aircon instead.
Things to follow up on - there’s a very slight oil leak from somewhere. Can’t see where it’s coming from yet, but I’ve got a thin film of oil along the parting line, maybe coming from behind the engine mount area. Plans are to finally buy a scissor lift, so maybe I’ll wait for that before crawling around underneath looking for a leak and adjusting my front ride height.
Still need to refurbish my targa roof and polish the froot and front wings. Probably ought to make some time and build a list of all the ‘spares’ that I should sell (wheels & tyres, pre-74 heat-exchangers, boss for mom wheel - to suit earlier cars, cam tensioners and cover plates, camshafts, set pistons & barrels, etc, etc). I’m instructing (sailing) on the weekend of the next Swap Meet, so I’ll have to start an advert thread on here instead.
Oh, and I need to cut my flapper boxes – they are from the later cars, with the long outlets. These leave no room to get a flexible pipe to the heat-exchangers, so when the lift arrives …..
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