Looks like the bomb cyclone will be dropping plenty of rain and maybe even snow on us on Saturday and Sunday.....
Yeah it will be nice here this weekend with some nighttime rain. Good weekend to detail a friends 2005 MCS.
We are looking for a lot of rain tonight into tomorrow. I'm scheduled to warsh Skooby tomorrow afternoon. Minidave, remember light or wipers, but never both. Rain-x is your friend.
First to arrive at the party....my Innocenti is the red car in the shop, my green car is parked outside......Inno body is painted, still need to do the roof, boot lid, bonnet and doors, plus the tanks. Green car in the corner of the shop will be coming to me sometime in the next month or two for some electrical work to finish it up.
Supposed to rain all day today, so we'll just hang out in the shop and do some wrenching..... The Vtec Pup and the car with the hot rod motor I built had a drag race, the Vtec won,but the guy in the other car had a passenger....even so it was very close!
Love the pics and this build thread! Wish I had the space and time to do a classic Mini build. Some day.
At dinner Sat night...the whole bunch minus one family who were local and headed home instead with their three small children. Sunday a few of us met up at the shop to load up various bits and then headed off to home. Our trip home was uneventful, sunny skies, light traffic and warm temps
More parts.....I've been waiting for the valves to come from MiniSpares - I thought I would have them Monday, but here we are Thursday - they're supposed to be here today but nothing yet. I also finalized the Newton Commercial order for the new seat covers, they took the original order no problem, but they wanted me to pay for the shipping separately. They claimed they sent me a link to pay it but I never got it, so I sent them an email, they said send my CC info in an email, I said no so then they finally managed to send a link to the balance, I paid it today so now they should be one the way too. It was expensive shipping - £270. That took two weeks too! Lastly, my Garmin that I use for a speedo in my Green Mini died, (it was 5 or 6 years old) so I tried to order a new one from Amazon. My account had not been used for over two years (because I couldn't get it to open) so I called customer service. The reason I could not use it even tho I had the sign on and password was that they wanted to send me an email to verify it was really me - perfectly fine idea except......since I had opened the account I had changed email addresses and the one set up with the account did not exist anymore - so they could not verify and I couldn't get into the account to change the email address. Round and round we went. Finally in frustration I opened a new account and ordered the Garmin......but now I have no access to my previous order history. PITA.
Sometimes the Internet can be a great tool that makes things easier and other times it can be so frustrating you question your sanity on why your trying to use it.
Yeah, and DHL did not deliver today even tho they said they would "by the end of the day" which is as close as they come anymore to giving you a delivery time. I checked tracking and it said "EXCEPTION" so I called customer service and they said they could not get to my door. This is the second time in a row they've said that - it's an excuse for a lazy delivery guy to me. Then they sent me an updated delivery notice that said I asked for a change in delivery date!?!?!? If it doesn't hit me tomorrow, Ima call them and get loud!
Parts from England made it about noon, so I ran them downtown to the Cylinder head guy, he said it would be done "sometime next week". Since I was out and about I drove further north to drop by the crankshaft guy. They had not touched it yet, but promised me it would be done "sometime next week" too. The crankshaft place had a sign at the desk claiming that wait time for engine work was as much as 10-12 weeks out! So if I do get I next week it will have only been three weeks! I guess I should feel lucky...…
The 10 - 12 weeks sign is pretty shrewd. When you get your crankshaft back in less time you feel as if they really went the distance for you.
All the engine work I have done over the years has always taken way longer than it seems necessary. Just the way it goes I guess. Once I had to have the head done on the race car & I needed it by Friday. Darned thing dropped a valve. Dropped it off at the machine shop on Monday. Told him I needed it Thursday due to a race. Got a call on Thursday it was done! I about fell on the floor when I heard that. Picked it up & the guy told me since it was for a race car he jumped on it. Happy ending, worked all night Thursday & actually made it to the track Friday for a test & tune before the weekends race. Back on topic..... Man those machine shops are slow.
I guess part of the problem is it's the only crankshaft shop I know of within about a 4 hour drive! They were jammed with work too, engine blocks and cranks all over the place. The block/head place that's less than 5 miles away and the one I have a good relationship with can't do cranks. He is also just slammed. When I dropped the cylinder head off downtown a couple of weeks ago they said they had somewhere around 85 ahead of me! They have the guides and hardened seats in, they were just waiting for me to get the valves to them so they could do the seats and shim the springs. I probably shouldn't complain tho, 10 days ago I really hurt my back, I should be just about all healed up time the stuff is ready!
The old guys who know how to do these things are truly a dying breed of craftsman. It's sad that their skill set seems to not be passed down. One day it will be a crate motor only, no more back yard rebuilds. I'm making myself sad talking about this. Back on topic.... Lift carefully so you don't jack your back up.
While not as bad as last week my back is still hurting, but I got tired of sitting on the couch and there's nothing on TV so I went down to the shop and cleaned a few bits in the solvent tank and swapped the shaft and rocker arms for the new forged ones we got. A couple of things to note, even the *new improved* rocker arm shafts are not expensive and the wear patterns on our old one show why you always change it. Also in the second pic you can see the wear patterns on the tips of the old rockers - note that they're offset. They are supposed to be that way, the idea is that they hit the end of the valve stem just slightly off center, which causes the valve to rotate a tiny bit each time it opens and closes, this is to make sure you get even wear and heat/cooling on the valves. In the last pic with the new rockers you can see that a couple of them are offset just a bit, that's because the stands are not placed exactly central to the valves - I won't know for sure which one will end up where till I get the head back and set the rocker assembly on the head. It's fairly simple to slide them off and on again but a bit fiddly. Another thing you have to watch for is that the push rods don't hit the sides of the holes they go thru, this might require yet another rejigging of the rockers on the shaft. Once the crankshaft gets back from the shop I'll install it and one rod/piston with no rings, then I can dial in the cam without the drag of all 4 pistons/rings. To get all of the measurements set up correctly I'll have the crank in and out a couple of times. It takes a while to build one of these correctly, but the finished product is worth the extra time to get maximum performance, economy and life out of the engine.
One other small project I whipped up this afternoon..... To set the timing on these early cars there's a small window on the bellhousing that you look thru to see the timing marks, back in the days of the 850 it was easy to see in there, but on later cars, especially those with a brake servo mounted over the bell housing, about the only way you can see the marks is with a mirror....it's dicey at best. So, I made a small bracket, and once I have the crank in place and I've used a dial indicator to find TDC, I'll make a corresponding mark on the front pulley ( this pulley is from another - later - engine) to match the pointer. Then I'll have TDC, and with my fancy schmancy timing light I can easily set it to whatever I need just by using the TDC pointer and the adjustable scale knob on the timing light.