May'03

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6th - 7th May, Action.

Having returned from Riviera Run, we had a couple of days off before going back to work, so spent a bit of time bunging a bit more paint on. There were a few Dulux moments, but the car is mostly yellow with a re-blacked roof.

Also... as the oil pressure has been a bit suspect I replaced the oil pump base with a Mocal remote take off plate, this has brought the idle pressure up from 10psi to a healthy 25 - which is nice. It also allowed me to move the filter up onto the brace bar to stop it rubbing on the flip front.

10th - 11th May, Action.

To improve the action of the gear change, and to make a bit more room for an apocalyptic exhaust system I have moved the gear shifter inside with a couple of Mollart joints to sort out the wiggles.

It took a bit of minor fettling (with a big hammer) to get things to work right, but the initial feel is a lot better and a lot less diagonal :-)

With the extra space under the car I intend to go back to twin 2" exhaust pipes, with a balance pipe near the front, each running out through a 2.5" bore silencer. In the meantime I have fitted the new shorter larger bore silencers, angled to exit near the sides of the rear valance, but for the moment they are fed from a single 2.5" pipe & Y piece.

Last job was to stick the orange wheels back on with some extra wide Gp5 arches to keep em a bit hidden.

Shifty, zorsty, archy pics.

18th - 19th May, DRIVING + London 2 Brighton!

I know it's hard to believe, but we actually took Doris out for 2 1/2 hours on Saturday for an afternoon drive, then clocked up another 180 miles on the round trip to Brighton on Sunday.

We didn't do the traffic jam from Croydon, so got in early and parked quite close to the traders. As scabby looking hand painted cars go Doris seemed to attract quite a lot of
attention, especially when doing an occasional 5000rpm 'blip' with the flip front open.

Some people just took pictures, some people asked questions then took pictures and some people laughed their *its off, and took pictures too :-)

The run home was uneventful apart from (1) the tack welds on the gear stick breaking (leaving a 50mm long stick that had a sooper quick action but required a deft blow from the passengers boot to provide enough force to select gear) and (2) a spot of coolant loss.

When the temp guages started to show the return from the radiator at 79 degrees hotter and the feed at 74 degrees we stopped, topped up the header tank with about a litre of Coke, 3 litres of water and a litre of finest puddle. Looks like it can stay pretty cool with 1/4 of the water missing, but the question was where & why had it gone ?

Made temporary repairs to the gearstick with a pair of long mole grips & extra gaffer tape in case we needed to pull away in something other than 3rd (which had been a fine gear from Hastings to almost Rye including some hill starts, ooo I love the torque!)

Engine made an odd ish noise a couple of times after some 'proper' load, like accelerating up hill at 4k+RPM (60+mph), engine temp would show a rise of about 5 to 7 degrees to 83ish and the engine note would sound a bit deep. Not having blown up enough V8s I am guessing it's either (1) head gasket starting to blow, or (2) starting to seize. Water loss may hint at (1), and the lack of nasty knocky rattly screeches may mean (2) is less likely. Compression test time soon, to see if that hints at anything...

L2B Pictures

24th - 25th May, Just some pics !

A bit of a cop out this one, but I needed to take some high res pictures of Doris.

Nice Pics

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This page last modified 04/02/2008.