Brakes Part 2

First job, front drivers side brake pipe

Right, that was easy. Now the rear.

3 way union jobby put up above the diff, line from the front comes in from underneath then splits left/right. Bit fiddly this, can you guess which was the first one, and which was the much-improved-from-experience second attempt?

Might do the left-hand one again. All thats left to do is the long run from front to back, which will roughly go like this:

Unfortunately my £9.99 Argos drill had seen enough for one day and tomorrow the Micra is having clutch surgery so no cobra progress for a couple of days.

Update 05/06/13 I've swapped the 3-way union for a 4-way one so I can add a centre bleed point as the union is quite high and looks a likely place for air to get trapped.

Brakes Part 1

Right then, time to actually drill into the chassis (eek!). I got the Dax brake kit with the chassis which comprises copper pipe (3/16 or 5mm OD I think) with braided flexi hose to get to the calipers. The pipes are pre cut the correct length if you follow the suggested route in the manual. I have heard stories of having to cut down pipes to fit, or including an "engineers loop" so we will see how it goes.

The first one I'm fitting is the front passenger side. Luckily I was looking through my archive of research photos and was reminded that the steering rack passes through in the region of the brake fittings so the steel tube in the photo below is my representative steering rack so I remember to work round it. Quite a complicated route to begin with but it got easier. I used a fan heater to gently warm the pipe for half an hour but it wasnt really necessary, it bent really easily around a 3/8 socket.

First I got some medium duty garden wire to plan the route but again, this wasnt necessary and I just got stuck straight in.

Steering rack neatly avoided, now up the other side and out with the masking tape before drilling and tapping for p-clips. (No budget nylon clips here!)

Thats the difficult bit over with, now just one more bend then the rest will be left coiled up for now as there is no brake master cylinder to fit it to.

Now to drill, tap and p-clip, remembering max 300mm between fixings. I'll put another one on the diagonal bit on the left chassis member as by string round all those bends its just over 300mm

Well that wasnt so bad, bit nervous about finally drilling into the precious powder coated chassis but its really starting to feel like im building a car, not just assembling meccano

Rear Alignment Part 2

Had a final check of the alignment and took a couple more photos to clarify the method, here is the laser level which shines forward onto the steel rule at the front end of the car -

Just shimming the upper forward mount (the one with the temporary brass bolt through in the picture below) then fill in the spaces for the other 3 mounts as required. The laser points forward with a vertical line so I can take a measurement as below:

 

you might just be able to see a faint red line at 450mm, its a bit obscured by the camera flash.

Rear Alignment Part 1

This is proving to be extremely time consuming and I've realised during the process I may be missing some taper washers (yet another thing a simple items list on delivery would have avoided). Cut some 700mm bar with a hole 375 from one end (as per the manual) with the longer length forward. Put one bar on each rear hub. The aim is to shim the rear-pivoting hubs so that the distance between the bars front and rear is the same. This means that the rear hubs are aligned with each other. That wasn't too difficult.

The difficulty then came maintaining that setting whilst trying to align the wheels with the rest of the car. The rear wheels may be parallel to each other, but they weren't parallel with the rest of the car.

I had removed the rear left control arm to have a look at drilling the lower mounting hole in the hub, realised I didn't have a 10mm drill bit so left it with the arm off. I then went through the alignment procedure described above without the control arm attached, which put the whole rear end on the wonk. Confused me for a good half an hour that did before I fitted the arm and could continue.

I bought a small laser level from the Homebase the other day with a magnetic base so I can  put that on one of the bars, which projects a vertical line to the front of the car. The manual then suggests to measure the distance from a good datum on the chassis, the from crosslink mount. Trusty steel rule was employed and when I did this I was amazed how far out the hubs were, even though they are presumably jigged up before welding they were dissapointingly misaligned and I had to make up the difference with a LOT of shim washers. A 0.15mm shim on the rear hub is 2mm on the front measurement and from the initial setting I had to make up over 15mm. That's nearly 5mm of shim washers on the rear end. It took a lot of iterations of changing shims/measuring to get it right.

The good thing to know after speaking to someone at Dax is that getting the measurements within 2mm is acceptable, this equates to 5 minutes toe, so giving it to a garage to do they probably wouldn't get much better. Final setup is within 1mm on the measurements, tending towards toe in which is more stable. Once the car is moving all the compliance in the system will probably mean it ends up tracking straight. Hopefully. Tyre wear will reveal how good it is.

I plan on string-boxing the car when its complete which to me seems a better method than this bar-and-sight that Dax describe in the manual.

Alignment bar fitted to rear left hub:

Rear end with alignment bars fitted to both sides. Looks a bit agricultural but it does work!

Body!

Yesterday (29th March) the body arrived. It will be left outside for a fortnight until I can round up a few people to help fit it, but this will probably do it good if its warm and sunny as the resin is still curing. Sadly no sign of a steering rack yet but this isnt Dax's fault - well not their fault that it is taking so long to come from the supplier, but still naughty of Dax not to even bother telling me they didn't have any. I will get the rack, extended steering column and rivet kit for the body some time next week.

Jeffrey the Jag

As I'm twiddling my thumbs waiting for the body to arrive I thought I'd post some pictures of previous cars. Jeffrey the Jag - sorely missed, no longer with us :(

Sneaky shot of the friendly old Micra :)

Herman the German

front brakes assembly

Thought I was missing some parts, turns out there are adaptor brackets to use the bigger front brake discs as the caliper sits further out (dia and car width). These are random shaped bits of metal with some holes in that at first I didnt know what they were for so threw them to one side and forgot about them

It sees daylight

All four wheels on, decided to go for a photo op and wheel it outside for the first time.

Things noted whilst doing this, the threads on some of the wheel studs are knackered, need to get 1/2 unf die. Also, its  bloody difficult to move it backwards with no steering rack and completely misaligned wheels!

New upper ball joints

Lack of progress due to faulty front upper ball joints. Threads stripped on installation, correct nuts,torque, calibrated torque wrench, no clue as to what was going on. New ball joints arrived today to replace faulty ones and went on a treat. Slave wheels on the front to make it feel like even more progress