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March 2005

March 18th saw me going for my 2nd SVA attempt. Bright sunshine weather to greet me in the morning as opposed to the blizzards and snow drifts just 3 weeks ago !

As a reminder here were the failure points from last month and the fixes for each;

- Emissions; couldn't achieve 1.0 lambda, the lambda reading of 1.338 indicated that it was too lean. All I had to do here was to set the carbs back to 3.5 turns out on the mixture screws making it run too rich. The control box then compensated for this by adding air. I had previously set them too lean which the control box obviously couldn't do anything about - it can't add fuel...

- Headlamp beam and aim; initial failure was because the snow had fogged up the perspex covers - I removed this and he retested but then there wasn't enough range of adjustment on the headlamp to meet the requirements. The fix for this was to present the car to the test without the covers on and also to have the base of the lamp spaced out about 1cm with washers. There's no way that the lamp bolted to the bonnet moulding on it's own would get close enough to be aligned.

- Mirrors; Not enough surface area - they need to be min 70mm high and mine are 62mm. This was resolved by borrowing some NHS chrome mirrors from Fishers. These just have SVA pass written all over them - ugly things that spring-bend under force, rounded edges, large surface area... unfortunately they also come with very ropey fittings so they fell off on the way home. I'll just have to re-fit my tasty F1 mirrors now - damn !!

- Sound test; 103dB @ 6,500rpm - need 101dB max. Added a baffle with a fistful of wirewool behind it - result - 98.3dB at 7000rpm. Massive improvement if quiet is your bag. The thing is it just killed performance of any kind. The car would literally slow down when the throttle was more than 25% down. Easiest way to accelerate was to just gently prod the accelerator and allow it to build up gradually. Max speed acheivable - 68mph !!
My Remus race pipe will hopefully free it up a bit...

- Wiring; there's a single wire going to the temperature sendor on the rad - this wasn't covered with anything so I re-covered this all the way up to the loom with some trunking. This is an area where I agree with the SVA test as I've now got a much improved finish on something that probably would've done but now looks much more "finished".

Initially the emissions were looking pretty good - smiles all round until the machine suddenly started giving strange results. They re-ran the test but same again. I then noticed smoke pouring out of the exhaust side (I was on the drivers side). They removed the probe to find it had melted - there is a nylon inner part that had been entirely burnt away and the remaining bit that fell off was making it's way through their plastic-lined workshop flooring.

I'd told them about the baffle that'd been fitted but they reckon that wasn't anything to do with it. I still think the probe was pushing against it and not just in the gas-flow.

The garage owner was hopping mad - I was feeling quite guilty but he told me not to worry, re-assured me that it wasn't my fault and that his 6 grand machine was going to go back. Sideways up the Sun salesmans rear-end if they acted up.... glad I wasn't their Sun rep.

I told this to the SVA man and he said he'd heard of it happening a few times and produced an extension part to carry out the test - no problem.

After this I had some time left so decided to chance my arm at the DVLA. Yes, I know I'm supposed to drive straight back home and yes, I know that I'm supposed to book an appointment with the DVLA but what can I say - MAC in one hand, sun in the sky, I'm sat in a sportscar on a Friday afternoon off work. I just got lost that's all officer...

As it happened the queue at the DVLA was enormous - I had a one and a half hour wait but it was worthwhile. We managed to get through some of the paperwork but they needed to inspect the car and the inspector had gone home. Apparently the supervisor could've done it but as she was the only supervisor in at the time she couldn't leave the office. I pleaded with them as the car was visible through the office window, it'd take 30 seconds to look at a chassis plate but they weren't having any of it - wouldn't even accept a cash bribe. So with disgruntled acceptance I arranged to return for the inspection the following week.

Typically the weather report for the Tuesday's inspection was for rain - compared with 21dec C and sunshine on Friday I could've really done with them having checked the car previously, not even to mention the fact that I've had to take yet more time off work...

True to form Tuesday morning arrived with a downpour - by the time I'd pushed it up the drive it had cleared up so decided not to don the crash hat and waterproofs. Big mistake.

10 minutes later I was as wet as a I could possibly get - there was no point wiping my goggles as there was as much rain going inside them as it was bucketing out the sky. Closest I've been to swimming whilst driving. I knew it was bad when I took a left hander and got sloshed with the water out of the passenger seat !!

Nowhere to park at the DVLA car park so I decided to dump it on the crosshatch area - that was fine until Mr. Parkie saw me;
"You can't leave it there"
"I'll only be 5 minutes"
"Well, OK then - but buy a ticket" (it's a pay and display at Maidstone)
"There's no windscreen to put a ticket on"
"Ah well, you haven't got a registration so I can't even book you !! No more than 5 minutes please"

35 minutes later I left clutching my soon-to-be-soggy tax disc and certificate for getting number plates. It's registered as new on an '05 plate - quite good actually as they've only just come out a few weeks ago.

Back home and after drying off I took off most of the SVA kit, took the dashboard out and removed the steering column to get the quick-release boss welded on. Can't ditch that ugly Sierra wheel a moment too soon. I expect I won't be back on the road for a couple of weeks - I've got a list of things I want to change already. I can see I'll have to prioritise the list so I get some fun in the sun. Right now all I need is sleep after 2 years of 3:00-4:00 am overnighters in the garage...

Here's the first of the jobs I wanted to do though - to get rid of my indicators and paint the inside of the headlamp shells.

Before and...

...after - how's this for a moody shot ?

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