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Bleeding the brakes and sorting suspension |
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My Dad was down again at the weekend to help me finish the brakes and suspension.
The first step was to finish rebuilding the pedal box. One thing that caught us out was forgetting which way round the master cylinders went, this caused some problems when finding air in the system.
The first attempt we tried found some leaks, the rear union wasn't done up tightly enough, fluid could be heard spraying out. It was nipped up and the union wiped down. The same was done for the front union. The calipers were bled, the fronts had to be taken off and turned around as the bleed nipples are at the top and bottom of the caliper.
The brake pedal still felt spongey and from time to time would disappear to the floor. The front cylinder was not moving, the problem was we thought that was the rear. Once I checked the pipe work we realised the mistake. The rear calipers wouldn't bleed, the problem was the bleed nipple was at the bottom and even though it was above the fluid input hole there was air trapped above the nipple. Taking the caliper off we managed to bleed it.
The pedal felt better but was still not spot on, we decided to leave something wedged onto the pedal to see which circuit was leaking. It turned out to be the front, one of the unions where the braided hoses went through the bodywork was weeping slightly. Once this was done and the calipers rebled we had a fantastic pedal.
Previously I'd set the rodends so that 3 threads were visible between the end and the locknut, Before we could do the tracking we had to make sure that the distance from the bolt through the outboard rodend to the bolt through the inboard rodend was the same. Once this was checked and the distance sorted we could then do the camber and tracking. My longacre camber gauge was modified as the wheels don't have a flat face to check against so a piece of angle iron was cut to rest against the top and bottom of the tyre. The gauge was then screwed onto this and checked with a laser level and a spirit level to check it was true.
Camber was set to 1.2 degrees negative at the front and 1.5 degrees negative at the rear.
Front tracking was set to 1mm toe in and rear was set to 0.
We then had fun pushing the car around the garage area to settle things down and then remeasured. The car was pushed back into the garage so we could continue working. My Dad made up a bracket for the clutch cable, we found out that the inner cable is 70mm too short. The outer lines up perfectly but with the cable connected the lever is all in the wrong place. I'll raise this with Chris as I have to send the cable back as the soldered end has shot off.
I cleaned up the interior and wiped down the tubes, I fitted the inner panels and cut them to length, using gripfill the panels were then stuck in and held in place with quick clamps.
Not much in the way of pictures but I've moved on massively, once I get the clutch cable back and work out a way of installing the seats I can actually drive the car!
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