Cheers Liam!!

Well the rose joints turned up today, so trial fitted the brace bar. Fits well, considering I took the measurements with a tape measure. I reckon 10mm shorter each end will allow me to put some tension on it, but it fits.







I'll grind the tabs off tomorrow and throw a lick of paint on it, unless I find the time to chop a bit off each end. Black'll do, I've got some spare and I don't think yellow would work. There's already enough yellow in the engine bay!

I should be borrowing my mates oil pressure gauge tomorrow to double check the oil pressure issue, so fingers crossed.

looks miles better than my attempt at a strut brace! I'd say black's a good shout

Good job Mr Ovlov

Jon, your car will have an oil pressure sender (not switch) on it already.... I'm 90% sure it goes to the ECU....although thinking about it some more it might have just gone to the 3 dash top gauges in the 1.8s and 2.0 clios. Either way, it's a standard VDO sender, so 99.9% of vdo oil pressure gauges will hook straight up to that. Fake has two senders in her, as I didn't realise they came with one and already had the 440 one I was using from the 1.7!

Cheers guys! Started spraying it gloss black with what I had and ran out half way Looks good though in black.

Chris, thanks for that. There's one that goes to the dash lights (the switch) which seems to be fully operational and goes out as soon as the engine fires. The one that seems to be the problem IS the gauge sender. Im not too worried as the dash light one is an indication that there IS oil pressure there. I just want to know for sure, and find out whether it is the sender/gauge or an actual oil pressure problem. I have tried my spare sender and still nothing, as well as earthing the signal wire for the gauge. I'm 90% sure the gauge has packed up.

Its all been pretty hectic around these parts recently. Had to move house twice. Lots of bill paying, housing deposits, uni, busy summer, cutting my leg up with a grinder, that sort of thing.

Here is a long overdue update of the happenings around Derrick the Volvo.

So where I left off. We moved across the bridge to lydney in early summer. Was a really nice place. There I did a fair bit of work on him. I had got the dimensions for a brake disc conversion off Adam, so began work on that. Speedy turned up to do some work on his sigma. Meanwhile I started work on the brackets, only to have the grinder catch, fall out of my hands and chew my leg up! That put the brake conversion out of play for a while!





So with me hauled up and off work, I got bored sitting around so got some plexiglass I acquired from uni cut up and made ploycarb rear windows. I also fitted spacers to the fronts which meant I needed to trim the front end a bit.



So a few months went by, and I managed to make up some brackets to fit the rear brakes on. All was set and ready, until our landlords at the time decided to get a divorce (we'd only been in the new place a few months). so everything was put to one side while we found a new place and started putting money together to fund another move. After faffing around, shouting at estate agents and moving we found a nice place with a double garage.

All packed up and ready to move


New garage




So it all worked out ok in the end, it was just the stress of having to do it that was the batsard. Anyway, we're here now, and RRG 2013 was on the cards.

So after some tyre bombing


we all headed to RRG. Awesome fun.








Then it was all work work work and I haven't driven him for a good while since. Runs really well though, did some measurements I've been meaning to do for ages after an off being enthusiastic (rear axle is a good 1" shifted to one side). A flat tyre (I have no luck with those) means I can't use him for a while anyway. I don't have the spare cash at the moment to do everything I want to so he'll have to wait for a while before things start happening again. Managed to get the spare wings home though so doing work on those ready for moulding as and when I can, same goes for the door cards.

I need to sort out the fuel cell as its leaking badly from the top. I have a replacement ali one which I need to get some weld on fittings for and get them all on. Once that's done, I need to get some new gauges, sort the 5 link out (first getting the axle off Liam which I STILL haven't managed to get off him), and tidy a few bits up too.

In the mean time, I found a MK4 astra splitter at a scrapyard which I fitted and it seems to work well with the car.


and I've also aquired a garage fridge.


In the middle of all that I managed to help get smchris's valver going again, as the cam belt snapped and bent some exhaust valves.


So there's a long list of things to be done, and stuff that I really want to get cracking on, only got one year of uni left so I'll be concentrating on that for the most part, with the 340 and Fiat taking a back seat for a bit until I have some time free. Onwards and upwards.

Awesome with that splitter - and in general awesome car man !
well it's your car who made me wanna get one

love the style of it !

have a question - maybe it's been asked, but..

Where do you get your carbon fiber ?
- do you make it from scratch or what ?

keep it up ! i'll follow this for sure !

Respect ! as only ali g can say it !

Ha ha cheers buddy glad its inspired you!

I get the CF from uni, make stuff myself. Some pre-preg I got off a mate of mine who worked for a company making CF parts for the F1 teams.

Good luck with your car man!

jon-ovlov wrote:Ha ha cheers buddy glad its inspired you!

I get the CF from uni, make stuff myself. Some pre-preg I got off a mate of mine who worked for a company making CF parts for the F1 teams.

Good luck with your car man!

Cool ! yea i notised that you do a lot of stuff..
I'll try making stuff myself then.. :b

It's just awesome

I'm on the hunt hopefully i'll find a sweet one soon :b