Fake - F7R Motorsport Daily

[TasMan]

Great read Chris, interesting to see some ingenious 3D printing design.
I had the same thought about my phone mount while thinking about using one of those magnetic air vent clips, don't fancy it. I already have the top vent surround to replace where the hazard warning switch clips in, snapped top and bottom...
My phone floats around in front of the gearstick but that will change when I eventually fit the gauge panel.
Looking for an oil temp gauge if you happen to hear of one.

Its also nice to see a few interesting posts on here, far prefer the forum, takes a bit more effort to post but it certainly weeds out the FB dross

Cheers Dave

[Chris_C]

Thanks Bogbasic, I missed your post yesterday!

Dave, that's where my phone used to sit in the old cars, but whilst I don't use satnav often, I'll have it on for traffic on a long journey if it's bad traffic time and for the last 5 miles of somewhere I haven't been before. This is better than nothing. The phone case I have doesn't lend itself to the metal stickers they come with, so I have a piece of steel shim waiting here

3D printer, I've had access to a work one for years and have always said I wouldn't get one for home use based on the consumable cost and a few other bits. However, this one came up cheap (~£70) and uses a mechanism I've always liked, I'm a bit of a sucker for an interesting mechanism (which is also why the Cyclemaster arrived...). Since having it, it's been used for a lot of jigs and tooling as well as oddly shaped brackets. I actually would go so far as wouldn't be without a home one now, especially as the "reel of plastic" type are significantly cheaper to run (£20ish / kg plastic)

Oil temp gauge, I don't think I have as someone else asked me recently, but I'll check the gauge box!

[SteveP]

Awesome jobs on this, all these little things add up to make the car much more usable and nicer to drive.

I can't believe it was that long ago doing the window mechanisms in Southampton. Here we are 14 years later faffing around doing the same thing

[TasMan]

Thanks Chris, yeah let me know if you happen to find or hear of a temp gauge, be nice to complete the pair.

Lots of interesting mechanisms in the old stationary engines I tinker with, particularly the hit and miss governor systems...

3D printing is something I have never really looked into but seems like there is a huge amount of possibilities and for producing things like the small brackets etc it must be invaluable. I think you could easily sell a few of the phone mounts and gauge clips to 300 folks.
Any chance of printing a copy of a Hella grille ?

I noticed a gauge panel and gear level console went on Ebay tonight for a fairly reasonable price all things considered. The panels and gauges seem to turn up fairly regularly.
Keep the updates coming !

[Chris_C]

Not much to add, but grabbed some parts from Fake recently to start sorting out the looks of the car.

Jobs on the list are sorting out a solution for broken bumper clips (bumper side, they are plastic welded onto the bumper during assembly) and a bit of paint. The colour coded on Fake has very bad lacquer peel and pre my ownership had a self tapper put through the snapped clip.


There's a few other bits to paint, so I'll try do them together.

I did rescue my R-Sport wheel, but that is also pretty rough having spent 10 years in the sunshine being ignored. I'll need to come up with a plan for that.


And I also found my cavity covers. I've been searching the house for these and they have finally turned up. They need a decent level of clean up and I think I'll try to come up a new hinge, I really don't like the metal clips as they tear up the plastics.


Having fitted the gauges a while ago, the oil pressure sensor I bought didn't clear the oil filter. I should have known, I've always just taken them from scrapyard 400 series cars which always have the little angle bracket. So grabbed Fakes one of those too, wired that up to the gauge panel loom yesterday. I also hadn't done the econ gauge as I was out of vacuum hose but I ordered some of that a while ago. Along with a facebook post yesterday, I had a look through the blue leaflets as I hadn't done one for 15 or so years. Blue leaflet covers B14 and B200 but not B172k explicitly, so a couple of photos. It can be worked out from the B14 pictures but I couldn't remember where the restrictor sits in the B172, which was a great excuse to have a chat with Mac.

Restrictor is in the lumpy bit in the red circle.

[TasMan]

Interesting stuff Chris.
I am hoping to do my econ gauge install on the GLT over the winter along with my ambient gauge.
I should be removing the front bumper when doing the radiator and water pump as well so that is a good chance to mount the ambient sensor.
I have a set of cavity covers too, quite like them. I'm looking at making a solid boot floor as the original carpet (while still pretty clean) is all warped, maybe some thin ply cut to shape and either the old carpet laid over, or some new material will do the job.
Good idea on the clips, I had noticed that myself and thought about a smear of silicon grease to reduce the plastic from chewing up, not tried it yet though.
Cheers Dave

[Chris_C]

Right, I've not been completely hiding!

Rough time line, I decided to try to sort the steering wheel. The R - Sport wheels are a MOMO, so my following rants will be based around MOMOs build quality not Volvo's! Given how many of these are around, I wanted a proper job, so rang a steering wheel refurb shop. They were great, but were concerned that it might be a bit tricky. For all that it looks like the leather is stitched around the wheel that isn't the case. The white stitching is purely decorative and the leather is glued to a foam core. Their concern was that the foam was perished and would tear giant lumps off when the leather was removed. I could see their point, they were concerned I'd blame them but on the other hand, they clearly knew the pitfalls which made them the sort of people I wanted to do it. I did a test removal at home which seemed to go ok and the shop were up for giving it a go.


They were insistent I stayed in the shop whilst they removed the rest of the leather (again, understandable) which went ok... if a little scary. I could take my time at home, whereas they are a business. However, all was ok, it looked a bit scary, but they were happy to give repairing the foam a go and recovering. I drove home to pick up the wheel a week or so later.
The foam:


In the mean time, I had a phone call from them that it was harder to repair the leather than expected and could they have a bit longer and a few more pennies. The quote we were working to was prior to any work on the foam so I was happy with that, and they only charged an extra £15 so I was very happy. A week later I had a message to say it was ready, so drove up again.



I'm super happy with it. It's much darker in real life, same black as the original and the craftsmanship is superb.

The middle bolts were looking a bit rough at that point (rusty and hexs deformed), so got some of those on order




Happy with that. I might still look for the centre pad, not decided yet.

[Chris_C]

Whilst driving up to drop off the wheel, the car was smelling more of fuel than normal. It's always smelt a bit, but I've redone all of the perished hoses (in fact, I've done nearly all the non perished ones too, but not the one nearest the carb with the expectation of a rebuild in the future and it looked) and the fact that it was still there was concerning.

So, I had an investigation around the engine bay and noted that the carb had some tell tale signs of needing a hug. Things that concerned me were wet on the top of carb to air cleaner housing gasket, a lot of black down one of the venturis and the wet/marking around one corner of the carb base flange. I deemed the car "off the road" and as work was still being pretty hectic gave myself 3 weeks to rebuild it.








Three weeks elapsed, without much action. So I rang Mac and asked him if he would be prepared to do the rebuild for me. Which he said he would. I have progress pictures along the way, but issues found and rectified were:

• Spindle bush wear
• Thread damage in top carb plate casting
• Isolation block glued to carb, cracked and leaking around securing screw.
• Broken gasket on part load enrichment diaphragm.
• Split accelerator pump diaphragm.
• Float overweight.
• Secondary throttle spindle gummed up and partially seized.
• Choke pull off servo vacuum port clogged.

So, photos of the repaired unit. As per normal with Mac's work... yes, this really is the same carb!

[Chris_C]

I am aware the last two posts are effectively me saying "I haven't done much on my own car recently, but look at how good a job other people have done!" so, I thought I had better get the car in a fit state to fit the carb.

Well, I mostly did. Part of me wanted to put it in a glass display case and just look at it. Another part of me enjoyed watching the mechanisms work when it all moved, so that put glass case out of the running. Might as well fit it then.

First up was a bit of flange prep. Nothing too bad, but somthing had hit the edge of the flange at some point and raised a burr. Dressed that flat. Other thing noted was discolouration around each edge, similar to the carb base warpage seen. Carb base had been machined as part of the rebuild so made sure this was truly flat too.




Clean flange


Next was preparing and assembling the factory "anti carb base warping solution" the green block (and magic shaped rubber gasket)







And then, carb onto the car. I'm not ashamed to have had to ask Mac where the Neoprene washers were to go, no car I've owned has ever had one!







I've not a photo of after this bit, but I also changed all the fuel hoses around the fuel pump. The previous owner had renewed all of them... but for the wrong sizes as I found out here. All were new (in the last not too distant, given the J6 rating), ethanol proof but given they had stretched the wrong sizes in several places they had cracked. Those are now also replaced with Cohline from Merlin, which just leaves the fuel sender ones.

[Chris_C]

Whilst I was here, the choke light has been very intermittent on this car in my ownership. I have a spare cable but they are not common to fit, so I thought I'd see if I could clean up the contacts.

Short answer yes.

Long answer don't do it when you are tired. I manged to snap the male thread on the cable when refitting. I've secured it ok, but one of the things I might look into remaking is choke light switch components in the new future.

Under the small panel held in by couple of snap clips, lives this little brass bit. Mine was very tarnished, so a quick clean with a bit of scotchbrite and it was fine again. Pop all back together, but be away the plastic is 30 years old when putting refitting!




Come back a few days later... start car, and for the first time in my ownership it had a stable idle (it has always had an air leak and non stable idle up until now).

Took the car out for a run and it felt very flat compared to what I was expecting / remembered. Again, long story short, I'd not given the car a decent ignition service as the carb was always not right.

Car had the correct Renix (a 415) but needed leads, distributor cap, arm and I fitted plugs as well given the rest. And now it runs superbly, better than I think any 1700 I've owned or driven previously. So very happy, finally got to the bottom of all of the overheating, rough running etc. Back to visual pretty things now I think.

[TasMan]

Great read....!
The steering wheel looks spot on...
The carb rebuild is a work of art....wow...I assume Mac re-plated the original parts and ultrasonically cleaned the remainder...?
I don't blame you for not wanting to re-fit it but it sounds like it is better than new and running sweet !
Cheers Dave

[Chris_C]

Yes, Mac gets the plated bits replated and cleans up the castings.

Thoroughly enjoying driving it currently, it's running superbly I'm not used to this

[Chris_C]

Update on the carb. Driving was absolutely lovely for a good while, then I was starting to have a sticky second venturi. Added to that, the choke started to feel like it was running through sandpaper. I had a look at it, rang Mac to talk through the problem and between us we had an enjoyable near hour of chasing.

The cause? Something that felt like dust on the accelerator pump jet actuation arm. Literally felt like dust, but caused both the second butterfly and choke mech to bind. Fixed now

Only other thing going on is I'm trying to find some boot seal to replace my mishapen one, it started leaking a bit a few months ago. I've fixed most of the leak but in the process have found a few of the availble seals are very much not the correct shape, even though they are marketed as 300. I'll update when I get somewhere.