First Runs Out, Snagging

August 2014

Well, after waiting around 5 weeks to get the registration from the DVLA, I was finally on the road at the end of July. The V5 arrived on friday morning, I got the plates that lunchtime and put nearly 300 miles on the car over the weekend. This included a couple of joy rides for friends (quote - "it's f***ing fast!"), and a trip down to the monthly North West Dax meet:

  

It was good to finally get to show the car off a bit. While waiting for the reg I had spent many hours polishing all of the aluminium, a really long job but worth it I think. I used a polishing kit in the drill to break through the oxidisation layer, then finished with hand polish and a coat of sealant. Hopefully now I can keep on top of it with a bit of a rub now and again.

It was also my first use of the car without a helmet, as it's magically sprouted a windscreen. Well it's called a windscreen, it doesn't seem to screen much - the first time I put my foot down I almost couldn't breath with the force of the wind. But you get used to it fairly quickly. Any long motorway trips will involve the helmet though I think, the buffeting from constant high speeds gets a bit much after a while. All that said, I do prefer it helmet off, by a mile.

The weekend's driving showed up a couple of niggles, and one fairly serious problem. Niggles wise, the seat needs twisting slightly as it's pressing in on my left shoulder; and I want to move the brake pedal down a touch. I've adjusted the throttle so that I can heel & toe nicely, but the pedals are a bit too close. To move the brake down I'll need to chop a few mm off the end of the master cylinder pushrods as they are right in as far as they will go. Shouldn't be too hard a job when I find the time.

The serious problem was in the wiring; the wire carrying the main ignition circuits turned out to be "a bit thin" - I noticed this because the main relay casing had started to melt and the wire insulation was yellowing. So I finally did what I should have done ages ago but couldn't work up the enthusiasm for - I stripped the loom out from behind the dashboard and made a board to hold the jumble of wiring in some sort of order. Instead of the "8 wires soldered together in a lump" approach, I used proper bus bars to connect everything together. And much larger wiring (33A) for the main ignition circuit this time. A much neater job, I just wish I'd done the whole thing from scratch, would have been neater and easier in the long run.

That took a week, but it was raining so nothing lost really. I have a few larger jobs I'm saving up for winter - make a better boot lid, and I've sourced a 3.14 ratio diff to give a longer final drive. In the meantime, I'm just getting some miles under my belt and driving it whenever I can. Here are some gratuitous pics from this evening, just because I can...