CarlyD's Rocket Type R

[Stiggy]

Congratulations on your pass. Remember though that IVA officials watch forums so it is best not to announce in public of any post IVA mods you may wish to carry out.

[carlyd]

I have insured it today in order to register and tax it with DVLA.
£445 a year fully comp with Adrian Flux, which I thought was a lot, I'm 43, been driving since I was 17, never had a claim and have a clean licence (for now ).
Maybe it's more expensive due to all that extra power from the Honda engine 

I was very surprised to hear that the car is NOT INSURED if I park it up somewhere.. WTF?
So if I go out for the day I can't park up, I just have to sit in it all day. That is just rediculous, so it's only insured for theft from my garage.
Is this normal? or are people not aware? I would hate to hear of someone having their car nicked and not being insured.

I have a car traders policy which insures me on any vehicle so when it's registered I am going to cancel this policy and use my car traders policy which actually covers me for theft at anytime from anywhere.

[airforceone]

Thats about double what I pay and I'm 45. I would have had a look around before committing to that
as you are in no rush to insure it at the minute.

Even cancelling your policy after a few months will mean loosing some money.

[carlyd]

Oct 13, 2016 22:51:48 GMT airforceone said:

Thats about double what I pay and I'm 45. I would have had a look around before committing to that
as you are in no rush to insure it at the minute.

Even cancelling your policy after a few months will mean loosing some money.

I have already taken the policy as it has to be insured to register and tax it. It should only take about 3 weeks to register (I sent forms off yesterday) so I will only lose a months insurance premiums. 

I wasn't able to use any no claims bonus as I use that on my traders policy, maybe that's the difference? 

[Froggy]

I'm with flux too and pay half that, I'm 31, clean license, I didn't even pay that much on my first year of insuring the rocket, and that was with no number plates etc as I drove it to iva!

I agree with Mr Mills, but, after my iva the inspector said I was free to do what ever I wanted with the car! That's after I'd asked about making modifications, and had my iva at notts too.

It does seem that they have completely different standards now though what with all the things they made you do compared to my iva only just over one year ago.

Hope you get your plates soon, the winter months are cold, you won't be able to feel your fingers, but you'll still be out in your pride and joy with a grin on your face!

Enjoy.

[turbosteve]

Congrats well done.

Now.. Post IVA modification, not this old chestnut again.

We best start telling Ariel, Westfield, Caterham, Lotus, Radical, and the others using the Class L IVA category test, then removing protection afterwards, adding spoilers etc.. Most main low volume manufacturers do this. And they advertise in magazines which IVA testers will see?

Enjoy the car, hope the weather holds out for a while for you

[carlyd]

While handing me my IVA certificate my examiner actually said to me "Now you can build the car that you really want".
They know people change things post IVA as some of the rules are just stupid, but for me I am trying to make sure it will still drive straight through an MOT while remaining safe.
I won't be driving it this year, I have already begun on my winter mods.
I have stripped down and plan lot's of changes, all sensible ones though.

I bought uprated springs as Paul at RTR suggested them for track days, they are just horrendous on the roads though so I've gone back to standard. Standard is 185 on the front and 300 on the rear. I had 300 on the front and 450 on the rear, the difference is huge.

I really wasn't happy with my engine wiring loom as due to the problems I had with the O2 sensors I had to quickly run a few wires from the ECU at the front to the rear of the car (my battery and ECU are in the front). This looked messy and the wires were not protected fully with conduit so I am on with that now.
I also had no water temperature on my dash and my fans don't kick in automatically so I am in the process of tidying up the loom and sorting the water temp and fan issues.
I'm fitting rubber matting on the floor as carbon wrap scratches, looks dirty and is slippy when wet.
I need to change the tunnel slightly so I can remove the centre console without removing the tunnel first, which also requires me to remove the seats. That's a pain so a slight mod needed there.
I am going to refinish my seats and have them painted as they look horrible after cutting holes in the to put the belts through.
Fitting a fire extinguisher, making a glove box, making sure the under bonnet area is water tight (from rain) as my electrics are under there. 

I also want to make a new cowl for my steering wheel (which is now quick release) which will house my DASH 2, my programmable buttons for the dash and my lights switch. I am currently using the focus wiper stalk mod for lights but don't like it.
I'm looking into ways to make the cowl, thinking of making a clay mould first then fibre glassing it, still more research needed on that.
Fitting a windscreen too and then looking to add a bit of colour as it's just too black.

It's safe to say that my Rocket is well and truly stripped down now.

[carlyd]

I'm well on with my Winter mods now and while removing the water temp sensor from the engine I managed to snap it, with the majority of it still in the block 
I've bought an 'Easy out' kit which should get it out. I really need to have water temp to my Dash which I don't have at the moment. 

I bought a 'steel' engine coolant filler pipe. The bit that has the pressurised cap where you put water in the coolant system.
Well it's all rusty inside. Looks horrible so I have swapped this for alloy, looks much cleaner.

I have completely covered my engine wiring loom with conduit. Looks so much more professional and gives better protection.

I seem to have filled my Photobucket account (417 images). I can't seem to upload any more images 
Does anyone know how to delete images from Photobucket? It's so annoying with popup all over the place etc. 

[kiwicanfly]

I believe the Photobucket storage limit is size not count so you can fit more if you use smaller images, bit late to tell you that I know

Videos are even worse.

To delete there is a gear wheel top right of the image, click that and the option appears.

Or in your library there is an icon top left of each image from which you can do the same.

But be careful not delete images you have used in your diary though.

[carlyd]

Thank you Kiwi I will have a look at Photobucket.

I managed to snap my water temp sensor with the threaded part remaining in the engine block.
It shouldn't be very tight so I bought an 'Easy Out' kit which is a left handed tap which threads inside the remaining sensor and should give me enough bite to remove it safely.
Well it didn't go to plan, I managed to snap the 'Easy out' tap inside the engine block.
To be fair it needed a ridiculous amount of force to snap it, and I shouldn't have put that much force on it but never the less I am now left with an 'Easy out' tap stuck inside the broken water temp sensor and there is no room to get a drill in to remove it (even if I could drill into a hardened tap). To do that job properly would require removing the engine - which I am not about to do.

Luckily removing that sensor is not essential as the Honda H22A7 engine has two temp sensors. One for the dash and one for the ECU, so I can pick up a feed from the ECU sensor and calibrate my Dash to use that.

There's never a dull moment building kit cars is there 

[kiwicanfly]

I looked at picking up the temp for display on my Dash2 from my Omex ECU sensor, Omex told me it would not work and I had to install a seperate one.

They never explained why it wouldn't work though.

[carlyd]

Oct 26, 2016 9:21:34 GMT kiwicanfly said:

I looked at picking up the temp for display on my Dash2 from my Omex ECU sensor, Omex told me it would not work and I had to install a seperate one.

They never explained why it wouldn't work though.

I have the stock Honda ECU.
The temp sensor for the Dash doesn't go to my ECU it's just a single wire that goes to the Honda Dash. The problem with that is that it has to be calibrated for my DASH 2 so the voltage needs to be measured at certain temps and set the DASH2 up to show the correct temp. My engine has a separate sensor for the ECU which tells the ECU when to put the fan on.
I have bought a temp sensor from Race Technologies which is pre calibrated to my DASH2. I have just ordered an alloy inline hose temp sensor thingy from ASH which my sensor should just screw straight into. 

[carlyd]

I finally got my PhotoBucket working, here is the snapped sensor.
You can see the second sensor in the pic too.



And after I had used the 'Easy Out'




So that will be staying in the engine block.

I just got a call from DVLA.
Apparently my engine recon reciept wasn't enough, it didn't have the wording ' Reconditioned to as new standard' which it must. So I have contacted the engine recon company and asked for a letter stating that. They are great mechanics but rubbish at admin so fingers crossed.

[nate78]

Oct 28, 2016 9:28:41 GMT carlyd said:

I finally got my PhotoBucket working, here is the snapped sensor.
You can see the second sensor in the pic too.



And after I had used the 'Easy Out'




So that will be staying in the engine block.

I just got a call from DVLA.
Apparently my engine recon reciept wasn't enough, it didn't have the wording ' Reconditioned to as new standard' which it must. So I have contacted the engine recon company and asked for a letter stating that. They are great mechanics but rubbish at admin so fingers crossed.

It's a good job everything isn't that 'easy'

[carlyd]

'Top Quality' tools though "apparently"!
Mind you I did use a 2 foot torque wrench with about 1200 lbs pf pressure on it