as the title says, having driven my car for over two years, several things have been anoying me and some things really need attention.
brakes are too hard to apply, my son drove the car on the way to Las Vegas and refused to drive it in the city as he felt the brakes were not efficient enough, his daily driver is a Nissan 370Z, he has never driven a car without power brakes.
he also complained about the steering, too heavy and too much play, again he has never driven a car that was rear wheel drive without power steering.
now i can lock the wheels under hard braking and the positiveness of the 1 3/4 turns lock to lock is fun to me but i must admit that the rack i chose is a piece of junk.
in addition to the two points above, the all aluminum radiator has a leak at the neck.
the drivers side wing window for some reason developed cracks all over it, i have no idea why.
the front mudguards are too short in that they allow too much debres to be thrown backwards into the drivers compartment and into the rear mudguards chipping the paint.
so this is my plan, annalys the reason for the problem and fix it.
brakes, the duel master cylinders are 1" bore so cross sectional area is to large, the original tandem master cylinder on the donor car was 1" with a vac booster, but now i have two 1" and no booster, originally i thought that being light, the car would be inclined to lock the brakes, hence the original size. however, i feel that reducing the bore size to 3/4" would make an emergency stop more controlable.
master cylinders ordered.
steering rack, i have a lot of universal joints in my column, they are all needle bearing type, and i have two support bearings, both in good condition, there is no sideways movement in the steering column, all the play is in the rack. this rack was not perfect from the start, but i didn't find that out until i had built the car and could not return it. it was a heavy duty end steer rack from Dans Performance for sand rails, its junk and chinese, there is no pinion adjustment and no real way to make some. due to the pinion being located in the center of the rack, i am limited on a choice of replacement, most competition car racks have center pinion but again, they are unadjustable with straight cut gears so a used porsche 914 rack has been ordered from the big "E"
i have rebuilt one of these racks before and they are fully adjustable with shimms, when it arrives, i will have to make the rack the same length as i have now and provide ends to suit the 1/2" hiems on my track rods, then modify the mounting points on the chassis to suit the rack.
if anyone can remember what the threads are in the end of the rack (M12 X 1.75?) and a dimension for width without the ends on, it would help. also what is the pinion spline count and diameter under the coupling.
the radiator leak, well i put up with that because if i kept my eye on the level the cooling system is so over sized that when one side tank is too hot to touch, the other is cold, even after a run in the Arizona heat. the neck had been welded in before the tank was attached to the matrix and wasn't done very well so they had epoxied it, again not very well and the epoxy was comming off. i cleaned off all the epoxy, wire brushed the joint with a stainless brush, washed the joint with phosphoric acid and quenched with lots of water just incase there was any corrosion in the joint and used some Devcon fast epoxy, that got the leak fixed. i did this in situe.
the wing windows, i just made new ones for both side but ensured that the hinge pivots were exactly in line to reduce any stress in the perspex if the car was left in the sun (not much chance of that in Arizona).
the front mud guards, when i cast them i made a test mudguard to see if my steel mudguard was a good enough mold so i will cut a 2"-3" section from that and add it to the rearmost edge of the mudguards and repaint them.
the rear mudguards are showing a lot of stone chips so i will try and make some aluminum plates for the front face, if that doesn't pan out i will repaint them and apply some adhesive film over the top which can be changed when necesary.
i will report back as i progress with the jobs.
_________________ this story shall the good man teach his son, and chrispin chrispian shall ne'er go by, from this day to the end of the world. but we in it shall be remembered.
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