Project Zippy (Midas Mk1 Coupe) Engine In!

[Thom89]

Id be making that nose into a "Plug" taking a mould and making a brand new one, cut the old nose off, and graft in new, simpler than you think, and will last a damn sight longer than trying to repair that one!

Thom

[Len]

Looks a bit ropey to me too!

If you dont like the sound of Thom's suggestion then you could put some new layers of glassfibre on the inside, at least 2 minimum I would suggest as a lot of strength has been lost.
Personally I would bond in some plywood as well.

[MrBounce]

Had a bit of a tidy up in the Manroom (and boy did it need it!) and due to the cold weather not being ideal for playing around with fibreglass, I thought I would have a look at the front hubs. I have two sets; one is the set covered in Gold Hammerite (yuk!) which were on the car and the others were a pair that were in the spares box and are normal disc brake hubs.

I set about removing (and binning where necessary) the balljoints. Having hammered the lock tabs back down I then had the delights of trying to undo someone else's over-exuberant work with the torque wrench. On both of the "spares" hubs, the balljoint nuts were stupidly tight. I ended up using my 1 1/2 foot bar with a 3 foot metal pole on the end of that before they would shift. Something tells me someone did them up "as hard as they could", probably using the same method as me. The gold ones were much easier; just the weight of the bar plus a gentle lever seemed to have them clear.

You've also got to love the way something allegedly so simple can turn into a nightmare that takes stupid amounts of time. The rear oil seal on both of the "spares" hubs was seemingly welded in place. It eventually took much brutality involving heat, screwdrivers, pliers and a hammer. The bearings in the spares hubs were nasty - full of grit and not actually complete in one instance. The gold hubs seemed in better condition with fresher grease but both sets of bearings were binned anyway as they're an unknown quantity. Having given both pairs a cursory wipe down I noticed that the gold hubs are a bit, well "weird". Someone has taken a grinder to the front face and hasn't done a great job. I have no idea why they've done this but I won't be using them all the same. This car still never ceases to amaze me...

Two pairs of hubs for stripping



The poxy oil seal that took far too long to remove



Gritty, nasty interior. Will clean up nicely after a dunk in the parts washer.



Gold hubs. There's something not quite right about them...

[Thom89]

You realise that the outer races are still to be removed and discarded from the hubs, they should easily tap out in the opposite direction to which they are fitted, using a small drift and hammer
Apologies if you already know this



Thom

[MrBounce]

Not a problem Thom - I did know 

It is January, and as last year, the Manroom is a VERY cold place to be. As such I have decided to bring some of the work inside, and for now that meant wiring. This is very possibly my most hated thing with any car, as I don't really understand it well enough. Guess I will be learning...

I first of all cleaned up the rear loom as it had been inside a car which had been sat for 11 years. A wipe down with some white spirit made it much nicer to handle. The exposed end near the rear lights is not partcularly pretty, mainly due to the constant ingress of water. The connectors for the rear lights are poor (not usually a problem as they're easily replaced) but it's disconcerting when you try to pull them off and it brings half the (rusty) light fitting with it. There's also some butchering where the wires themselves have been cut a few inches before the connectors, then soldered back together badly and not insulated. I have no idea why this has been done, but in due course I will be replacing all the crimped connectors with proper soldered terminals and will re-solder and/or heatshrink the butchered bits. I will also remove the yellow tape and re-tape it.

Then there was the main loom to look at. This scared me a lot, so I took it round to see my good friend Mike. He is familiar with most aspects of car electrics and said he'd be happy to sort it out as I've been helping him with his Biota project. He spent the best part of two hours on his kitchen floor removing stuff that wasn't needed and identifying what wires did what. It is of course, second nature to him as he's been working with electrics since the age of 16, but to the untrained eye (like me!), the man is an utter genius. He has carefully unravelled things once I had discarded all the wrapping, old tape & plastic binding, then bunched all the wires together in the proper order with the minimum of electrical prior to further modification when in the car. I want to have the fusebox inside the car anyway, so this will happen in due course.

He also gave me distinct instructions to sort out yet more exposed soldering in the main loom. I have duly cut out said rubbish, resoldered and applied heatshrink. At least I did once I started using different solder to the cheap garbage that was in my new soldering kit... It seems the old stuff is definitely the best. And I didn't set the smoke alarms off, which pleased Mrs Bounce!

Rear loom, just after I cleaned all the old gunge off.



It holds such horrors as this...



..and this. Soldering iron's gonna get a lot of use.



The main loom. I kept pretending it wasn't there.



The Master at work.



All the junk taken out of the loom that wasn't needed. It's a lot.



Beautifully laid out and almost good to go. Modification, fusebox, new soldered terminals & wrapping to follow.



Butchered bits were re-soldered, and heatshrink applied.

[MrBounce]

There's not too much of interest to report as I have been stuck inside due to the horrid weather or been waiting for parts etc. We have managed to put an accessory feed into the loom along with the appropriate wiring for a manual fan switch. No pictures yet - all is more likely to be revealed once it's all finished - wiring isn't the most exciting of things to photograph. I have also removed the (almost always corroded) bullet connectors for the headlight looms. I find these give unnecessary problems so I always solder these together and apply heatshrink accordingly. Finally I've removed the nasty corroded bullet connectors on the end of the rear loom and used heatshrink where they were inexplicably soldered. No new spade connectors yet because Mr Numpty here ordered the wrong ones...

I suddenly realised I hadn't done anything with the rear light lenses after the studs snapped other than clean them, so I pulled them out of the lights box and set about cleaning them up so the M4 set screws I'd got would sit flat. I used my old friend the Dremel for this and ground everything flat with the smallest die grinder I had. I then mixed up some epoxy resin (which stinks of course) and glued them in place. To make sure everything was in the right place I slid the light fittings over the studs and kept them off the lenses using a screwdriver, just in cas they bonded themselves together.

After a couple of hours they were solid enough so I put them back where they should be on the car to avoid damage whilst I throw stuff around the garage!

Rear Lenses dug out of the box



Old fittings ground flat



Light fitting added with screwdriver to make sure all was correctly placed & didn't stick...



..and the other side too.



Solid as a solid thing. I will leave it for several days to cure properly.

[Thom89]

Good old TR7 lenses! 

Thom

[SoundillusioN]

Good old TR7 lenses! 

Thom

Tip of my tongue... was trying to think. 

Haven't seen this project for ages....  Don't come in this section enough, really getting stuck in now mate, keep at it. Love it. 

[Len]

Those outer ones look at a bit of an angle but if it works ........

[MrBounce]

February sucks. It is either too cold outside to do anything worthwhile or something rubbish happens (whilst I like doing project stuff I do draw the line at working in temperatures of -4 degrees). Can you guess what happened this weekend???

Thought I would turn my attention to the rear hatch hinges which have been sitting in a box in various places whilst I tried to find a pillar drill. They were in the garage, then my brother's shed (he didn't have time despite having a pillar drill) then in the car whilst I went to pick up a pillar drill (which wasn't there - long story...) then back in the garage again. All four bolts in these had of course snapped off when I tried to remove them. This was most likely something to do with the bolts being steel and the hinges being aluminium. They don't tend to like each other over time. So my only option was to drill them out, hence the pillar drill - many thanks go to Paul for the loan of his.

So off I went to the hardware shop and bought some amazing (& expensive...) drill bits - bolts are notoriously evil things to drill out. I grabbed a piece of scrap steel and drilled a 6mm hole in it (the same as the bolt) so I could then use this as a template to accurately find and drill a pilot hole in the centre of the bolt. I also used chalk to mark exactly where the bolts sat as it was all the same colour. I started drilling with a 3mm bit and gradually worked my way up to 4.5mm. Once I had done this I should (in theory) be able to collapse the remains of the bolt and then re-tap.

However, this was not what happened. Having successfully drilled the bolt, I put the hinge down on top of the vice. And knocked it on the floor. It broke. So I now need a new one, preferably two. If you have a pair please get in touch.

February sucks.

Hinge with broken bolts & template



Using chalk so I could accurately place the template.



Then this happens. Nuts.