Mr Simmonds 3B lite project.

[newsh]

There's a special grommet for the battery tray with a small hole for the barrey vent pipe, if you don't vent the battery outside the car you can get rusty under the back seat pretty quick, had this on my Ur.

[K Simmonds]

Cheers for that tip John, I'll get that sorted then.

[K Simmonds]

It's really quite upsetting how quickly nice shiny new / re-conditioned parts turn rusty in this country.
What is planned next for this coupe Kit? Or are you planning to lavish the RS with some love?

Yeah, the amount of salt that gets chucked on the roads over the winter plays havoc with the underside of our cherished cars. It really is most disheartening to see components that one has spent a lot of time either fabricating or restoring slowly dissolve. I'd say the exhaust I knocked up using aluminium coat mild steel from Jetex has about a year's life left top's, it has one pin hole I need to put a blob of weld on already! In hindsight I should have made it out of stainless but it cost peanuts to do it with MS and I wasn't sure how successful the end result would be. As it happens I'm really pleased with the system in all aspects, clearance, noise, performance etc so I'll copy my existing one using SS instead.

Plan for the Coupe is to keep on using her as a daily driver as it is whilst I sell off my VW's and the stash of spares I have for them, once all that's out the way I'm probably going to get something cheap and diesel powered to run about in. The S2 is great fun to thrash about in it's current RS2+ spec guise, the Hoffer software I'm running really makes the most of a K24 7200, particularly the bottom end grunt. Though I am slowly collecting parts for another (stronger) engine the final spec of which is yet to be decided upon. Apart from rods, pistons and a turbo I have just about every else required to build it up, however those parts and the machine work are the expensive bit so for the foreseeable future I'd rather spend any spare money on my RS. Plan for that car is to refresh the front suspension, fit a replacement exhaust system, get the headlining done, repair/paint the bumpers then keep on enjoying being lucky enough to have one.

[K Simmonds]

Time for a bit of an update....

The S2 is in daily use and has been serving me well with a stock K24, want to use the K24 7200 on my RS2.

I took the car down to FCM in Bristol to have the alignment done before Christmas, was very pleased with their service and Lee is a genuinely helpful chap. Before I went I fitted new top mounts all round as I couldn't remember what state the one's I used to replace the solid alloy Compbrake were in when I installed them last year. Turns out they were all still in pretty good shape but given how long they tend to last I thought it best to replace them all.

Andy10V very kindly sorted me out with a pair of new stock Blue items, a pair of Meyle HD one's as well as two pair's of mount savers for a very reasonable price...nice one mate.

I used the blue one's with mount savers on the front and the Meyle HD items on the rear, due to the concave shape of the top of the HD mounts the savers don't really fit so I saved the other pair for on the front of my RS2. Before I tightened up the strut/hub bolts I put a jack under the wheel studs and set the struts to give as much negative camber as possible. That way if I have to remove a strut I know I can put it back in the same place and not wreck the alignment.

FCM set the car up as follows,

Front...

Castor, 2 degrees 13 min's on the left, 1 degree 50 min's on the right.

Camber, 1 degree 27 mins both sides, which is how I set them myself before going so they didn't have to touch the ball joint bolts. I'd like to have gotten more castor on the right but as the camber was bang on the same side to side and the castor close Lee advised I leave it alone.

Toe, 5 min's on the left, 4 min's on the right.

Rear...

Camber, 1 degree 12 min's on the left, 1 degree 17 min's on the right, again this is how I had set them so he didn't need to adjust the ball joints.

Toe, 12 min's on the left with 11 min's on the right.

Basically as close to stock as possible but with as much negative camber as the tolerances allow, the car's driving really nicely now on a fresh set of Uniroyal Rain Sport III's I fitted to stock wheels for the winter. I also gave it a quick go on my set of light weight 17's with 215/45 R1R's and it felt great though the 16's are obviously much more forgiving on some of the rough roads I regularly drive.

I've also finally gotten to the bottom of the rich running on WOT, it was such a simple fix and I feel a right idiot for not thinking of it sooner. I had the DV and ECU running together from a single pipe T'd from the IM, which is how it was arranged when I got the car. However after checking the diagram for the small bore pipe work I realised that the DV should have it's own feed straight from the IM with the ECU and FPR sharing a T'd feed.

I put it back as it should be not really expecting any difference but I took the car out and found it now runs between 10.8 and 11.2 on WOT and feels all the better for it.

No sooner had I sorted that I started to get a random misfire under heavy load companied by very rich AFR's, a quick wiggle of the MAF plug relived the culprit so I fitted new gold plated female terminals to the connector which I got from Alex (Error404) some time ago. They were a bit of a fiddle to install but solved the problem, for good I hope, I tinned the ends of the wires first and soldered them on for good measure after crimping them on as per OE.

[K Simmonds]

Forgot I took a few photos of the various mounts and savers prior to installation.

A new mount and saver kit, such a simple idea, I hope they help them last a little longer, though to be fair the one's I took off weren't too squashed. Maybe running stock suspension and wheels give them a bit easier time..



A new mount compared to one off the front after a years use.



Meyle HD mount next to a new stock one.



The top of the above mounts, as I mentioned the top of the HD mount is solid concave rubber as opposed to having a step for the savers to locate into.

[K Simmonds]

Unfortunately I reserved in to a low, hence hidden wall at work on Monday morning, I've gotten the car straight again and lost a some a load of rot whilst I was at it.

Cardcrash gave me a hand and took a load of pic's and a video which I'm sure he'll upload soon...

[mackenzie50]

******! But there'll be a few of us who've done similar over the years....

[cardcrash]

Unfortunately I reserved in to a low, hence hidden wall at work on Monday morning, I've gotten the car straight again and lost a some a load of rot whilst I was at it.

Cardcrash gave me a hand and took a load of pic's and a video which I'm sure he'll upload soon...

It's "cardcrash" and I'm sure you 'reversed' into a wall. No doubt you were in a hurry this morning but you may want to edit your first sentence, it's a grammatical nightmare!

Well, unfortunately I never took any before pics of the shunt, nor did I have my phone/camera on me on the day we tied the front of the car to a tree and the rear off side corner to a JCB backhoe to stretch the f**k out of the car. But what follows is the work that took place yesterday to spot weld the boot well to the rear panel which tore apart during the stretch due to the corrosion that was already there. Plus welding in a little bit of fresh plate at the bottom corner:

Before the day's work got into full swing:


Fuel tank breather was leaking so Kit stuck some chemical metal type stuff to seal it:






Emptying the tank. I always try my best to catch Kit in an amusing posture:


Out with the tank:


Now where to put it?:


Here is the tear from the stretch, apparently daylight could be seen through the join already but the tear made it much clearer:


Here it is looking from the other side, you can see the hole on the bottom corner:




From the outside:


Opening up the split for cleaning:


Work begins on cleaning with power tools:






Little bit of welding commences:




Spot welding the seam:






Now to tackle the corner, shaping and welding:












New plate goes in:








Now for a little more stretching:














Real shame I wasn't able to get the original daytime footage of the stretch but here is a final twilight attempt to pull things in line:


Getting dark now so time for some slightly more heavy handed yanking:

[AndyP]

Nice use of the JCB!!

I dread to think what mines like under the rear bumper, I don't think I've taken it off before

[John.]

Nice use of the JCB!!

I dread to think what mines like under the rear bumper, I don't think I've taken it off before

I know what you mean......could be a sobering thought?!

Nice work Kit and cardcrunch.

[Ian_C]

Haha, quality posting guys!

Impressive farm yard too!

[jubjub]

Yep who needs a jig and panelbeaters

Andy bits of kit the JCB

[Codman]

Wow. Rusty like old B2

[cardcrash]

cardcrunch

[John.]

thought you'd like that!