Another day, another visit from the workshop brothers, Kev & Terry.
So what did we achieve today guys?
...no, I'm serious. What did we do?
Lots of tweaking & fine tuning & measuring going on, which means I'm in charge of passing spanners at the moment.
First job- start the engine & measure the brake output. Brrrmmm ...bleurgh. Silence.
O.K. First job- strip the carb down, fix the sticking float needles & rebuild it -
then check the brakes.
Kev's pressure gauge showed the dual circuit servo to be working correctly, but although the suppliers say it's ambidextrous -it doesn't matter which side is hooked up to which brake circuit -it obviously isn't. One side of the servo puts out more pressure than the other & we have it plumbed in the wrong way round. We also need a bigger bore master cylinder & the pedal ratio needs sorting.
We made a start by taking out the brake pedal & cutting the bottom arm, which connects to the cylinder. We had a ratio of 3 to 1. It needs to be more like 5 to 1. So I cut 20mm out of the arm. Once Loony's welded it back together it'll be spot on.
Over the next week I need to change the oil, remove the alternator & drop it off at the local reconditioning shop, then look at reducing the exhaust note. We'll be following Loony's Dad's suggestion & mounting my 2 spare Cherry Bomb silencers side by side under the battery box, across the chassis. We'll hook the existing pipes up to them so the left pipe will exit to the right & vice versa. It'll make sense when it's done!
I'm seriously thinking of pulling out the heater now. After running the engine for just 10 minutes, the floors above the silencers were already warm. Loony tells me when he was sat in the truck for the duration of the SVA test, the gearbox tunnel was warm to the touch too. I can see it being a real sweatbox in the Summer. Have to invest in some heat reflective floor matting I think.
Moving forward, bit by bit.
As usual, thanks for your time today guys.