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Post by lemans75 on Jan 2, 2019 18:45:39 GMT
Quick update on the accelerator cable issue with my US donor. The cable isn't dramatically longer and with some routing I made is work without any sharp bends in the cable where it might bind. However, after creating the square hole and passing the cable thought, the distance between the firewall and the pedal brakes means that the butterfly in the carb is partially open, even after adjusting it all the way back. The solution turned out to be rather simple. The bracket that holds the adjuster has two 10 mm bolts, I simply undid these two and rotated/flipped the bracket, thereby moving the holding plate forward about 1".
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Post by lemans75 on Jan 15, 2019 23:59:20 GMT
After being out of action for a couple of weeks, I can start getting back at it. I have a feeling the bottom bracket on the LHD steering column is a mirror image of the RHD setup (which would make sense). This makes getting it to meet any mating bolts on this RHD setup pretty much impossible. I can get the right hand "leg" to meet the firewall inside of the brake's base plate so I'll bolt that one there. The left hand "leg" just gets in the way of the clutch pedal no matter what I did so the only solution was to cut it off. I used an old belt to hang the assembly in place while I hunted for the steering column plate that will add the real strength in the setup but it's gone astray. Without skipping a beat, Andy very kindly popped a replacement in the post to me and i'll be clamping it in place right up until I'm sure of the final position. Here's a view from the front with the plate getting ready to replace the belt.
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Post by lemans75 on Jan 16, 2019 0:11:23 GMT
The other important piece to put in was the handbrake and this went in with minimal fuss. First time with rivnuts and I love them. Used 3x 10mm rivnuts to bolt the handbrake in place with a good amount of slack in the line and then tightened up the long nut to get the setup clamping the brakes as it should. The only snag was that I immediately saw that it was only clamping on one side, with one side pulling freely and easily movable by hand. These were rebuilt rear brake calipers and my first thought was that I had a dud. Then I remembered that there's an adjuster hex screw hidden under a bolt and sure enough after perusing the Haynes manual, I got everything working as it should. The bracket that mates the two cables did rub a very small amount on the tub so a small piece of vinyl flooring I had lying around with peel off backing was a good solution to keeping the paint from being marred.
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Post by lemans75 on Jan 16, 2019 0:29:49 GMT
Next step is fuel. I'm reusing the steel fuel lines and found that simply gently straightening out the first two "kinks" after the long straight in the main line makes it fit almost perfectly. Having an NB I only have the return vapor line to deal with which is nice but I do have the big old charcoal canister to deal with. My thought is to put it next to wherever the battery is going to go since they are similar in use and shape. The NB has a "fake" charcoal canister up front which is for the "visual pass" for smog in this country. There's no sensor attached to it so I've deleted it without worrying about getting a CEL. There is a third "canister" about the same size as the fuel filter that houses a paper filter as far as I can see and goes to the "snorkel". This may find it's way to the parts bin but I want to get it running properly before I started going too far off script.
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Post by R2S on Jan 16, 2019 16:33:30 GMT
On the handbrake you'll no doubt see that we have come up with a number of solutions to prevent the T piece contacting the trans tunnel, I used the original Mazda rubber sleeve and plate held in place by an angle brackets, others have used a pulley wheel or other form of bracket.
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Post by tojeiro on Jan 16, 2019 20:29:36 GMT
I had same issue so this was my solution, just something that was lying about in the garage. by -Tojeiro 74-No design patent Not sure if Andy’s steering bracket is same as Stuart’s design but I found that to get the wheel at the right height and position I had to make a slightly longer bracket to basically drop the column down about 25mm. This was primarily to suit my seat position but had added benefit of extra clearance between column and bottom of the dash.
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Post by lemans75 on Jan 18, 2019 12:47:30 GMT
I've seen the brackets bolted to the top of the frame and others have opted to bolt it to the underside of the frame. I imagine I'll be bolting it to the underside of the frame to drop the setup a little and go from there.
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Post by lemans75 on Jan 22, 2019 1:42:18 GMT
The steering plate is in. I opted to bolt it to the underside of the frame rail to keep the top frame clear of any exposed bolts. Given the shape of the plate I would also assume this is where it is "Supposed" to go. I used rivnuts in the main rail to bolt into and if I had to do it again I would do this before I installed the pedals since they got in the way while installing the rivnuts.
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Post by lemans75 on Jan 22, 2019 1:44:50 GMT
Installing the petrol tank (I apologize in advance if I refer to it as the gas tank I got some edging material from Amazon to protect the frame from the tank rubbing
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Post by lemans75 on Jan 22, 2019 1:46:38 GMT
Here's the other side, mounted on 30mm rubber isolators (earth strap to come). You might spot that I 2-toned the gas tank, the underside is red, not sure why, just had a rattle can of red lying about that needed finishing off.
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Post by lemans75 on Jan 22, 2019 1:57:24 GMT
I installed the headlights and a couple of things came up that I thought would be good to share. 1. I bought classic 7" mini headlight buckets and lights from moss motors that came with buckets, bulbs, clamping rings, adjusters and pigtails. 2. I cut a cardboard circle that fit the entire headlight space so that I could drill my pilot hole to guide the 6" hole saw. 3. I cut my holes and then drilled out the adjuster holes so that the buckets fit just right and also drilled the bucket fixing holes. Now having drilled all of these out I was thinking it might be a good idea to "seal" the GRP I had just drilled into and having looked long and hard online I decided to test a couple of ideas on the big GRP washers I now had at hand. The basic idea is to seal the edge and I tried both a clear coat touch up pen I had lying about and some PVC pipe glue (the kind with the blobby wand) and both seemed to do an excellent job of sealing the edge and drying pretty fast. (time will tell) The headlight kit didn't come with a foam gasket so I used some draft seal: I installed the buckets with 4 stainless machine screws, washers on both sides and a nyloc nut. Here's the backside view. The adjusters are capped with their rubber booties. Here's a pretty pointless shot of the hardware followed up by the installation sequence of the headlight retaining rings And here's the final result!
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Post by lemans75 on Jan 28, 2019 21:21:27 GMT
Big moment coming up! I brought the wiring harnesses into the house to thaw out a bit before diving back into the garage to lay them out roughly and start plugging things back up. Some of my zip-tie labelled plugs didn't like the cold and a few fell off but enough stayed intact that I was able to ignore the right ones and hook up what was left. Yet again I found myself battling the LHD to RHD conversion with clutch and brake plugs being too short but after a couple of hours I had just about everything hooked back in. I got some decent gauged wire to hook up all the earths up front to the single earth pigtail coming off the transmission case and ran another line from there back to the negative eyelet just before the battery terminal just to exclude earths as a problem when nothing turned on. And that's exactly what happened... nothing! I had a couple of big unlabeled plugs and could not find where they went anywhere and after an hour of that hunting around I spied the fuse box that i had not removed during the build and carefully zip tied to the frame. Sure enough that's where that last connection was and we have lights! There is a slight hum from the engine when I turn the key to get the dash lights and I'm thinking it might be the oil pump - anyone have other thoughts? On second thoughts it's more of an electrical hum than a mechanical one so not very reassured. I did crank her once and she seems to turn over so next step is to add some petrol and see if she roars back to life! UPDATE Had some petrol left over from filling the snow blower that I have on standby when the polar vortex decides to get lairy. Once the pump got the juices flowing she sprang to life and came to a lovely smooth idle - incredibly pleased and as everyone says, it does feel like a big milestone. Given the rat's nest I have going on, pairing back the harness is going to be cathartic.
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Post by hammy3601 on Jan 29, 2019 12:14:12 GMT
Great news on the easy restart mate, well done! Did you isolate that noise you mentioned or was it just the fuel pump?
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Post by lemans75 on Jan 29, 2019 13:01:18 GMT
Thanks! - Noise is still there but hard to isolate. I'm almost positive it's coming from the engine but with the harness draped all over it, it could be coming from a relay of some kind. I'll try to record and post it tonight in the event someone knows what it might be.
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Post by ancsportscars on Jan 29, 2019 14:23:10 GMT
It'll be coming from the inlet manifold. Stick the handle of a large screwdriver to your ear and the sharp end against the plenum. It'll be loudest here. I'm guessing its maybe either the fuel pump noise transmitting up the fuel line or something like the idle speed controller actuating prior to start-up. Mine has the same hum - so I presume its perfectly normal.
One thing to remember ref wiring- is to retain the dimmer switch for the dash backlights - otherwise they will not illuminate. you can set it on the brightest setting and secure it up out of the way underneath the scuttle area if you don't want to have it on show mounted to the dash.
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