I was reminded by Johno's post today that I hadn't finished this write up. In fact its around 8 months since I last posted on here and most of the work was done in 2015.
Johno's post was about tyre sizes and that relates to the next part. When Chris got the wheels back from Washford Finishers we had to choose some new tyres. The old tyres were 165/60 Goodyear NCTs and thanks to careful storage they were not cracked,or distorted. But 18 years of storage still takes its toll on the tyres and the tread was as hard as slate.
After bleeding the brakes, I had taken the car out around the estate and even a gentle application of the brakes would lock the front wheels and cause the tyres to skid. So, if they couldn't grip on tarmac, what chance would they have on the steel rollers of an MOT bay.
After looking at the different options we settled on some Toyo Proxes CF1s -175/60-13s, which Mytyres were selling at just under £50 at that time.
The original 165/60 -13s have a theoretical OD of 528mm. I use the term theoretical as that is the sum of 13" (330mm) and the tyre profiles 2 x 165mm x 0.6. In practice there is quite a considerable variation in OD to be found between different brands, so the theoretical figure is only a rough guide.
The commonly used options are:
165/55-13 Theoretical OD 512mm. Available in a limited choice of Pirelli, Nankang and a couple of unknown cheap brands
165/65-13 Theoretical OD 545mm. Available from a large range of brands, but I have seen fouling issues on a couple of Gold convertibles with this tyre size.
175/50-13 Theoretical OD 505mm. Available in a limited range from Yokohama and Nankang.
175/60-13 Theoretical OD 540mm. Available from a large range of brands.
185/55-13 Theoretical OD 533mm. (Metro GTi size) Supply is now as limited as the original 165/60s. A batch seems to come in from Toyo once a year and sells out within a couple of months!
After discussing the options with Chris we settled on the 175/60-13 Toyo Proxes as they seemed to be the best tyre at the keenest price and, having driven the car, they didn't disappoint us. However, thatis short cutting the story. Once we had had the tyres fitted I found that on full lock they were touching the front inner wheel arch front lip on both sides and the rear of the front arch on the near side. I thought it strange and a measurement revealed that the wheelbase was 4 or 5mm shorter on the near side than on the off side. Further checks showed that this was in the mounting of the front subframe. Fortunately, I found a 3mm thick stainless M16 washer that I was able to use as a shim between the mounting bush and the subframe and that brought the wheelbase back as near as dammit even on both sides.
That still left me to sort out the clearance at the front, but the beauty of GRP is that it is easy to cut and rejoin to be as strong as before. So after working out how much clearance I needed, i simply cut a section out of the lower lip and moved it forward. Then I carefully bonded it back in - after first cleaning back the surfaces to be bonded - with several layers of CSM and then finished it off with some black gel coat to cover the cut lines.
DSC_0117 by
Alistair Courtney, on Flickr Can You See the Joins?
I thought that the car was ready for its MOT, but I was wrong and it failed on several points, a couple of which were to prove to be my fault for driving the car around to help re-bed the slightly rusty brake discs.
So yes, the brakes failed the MOT for despite locking and skidding with the old tyres, they didn't provide enough retardation with the grippy new tyres.
It also failed because the rear dampers had started to leak oil - something they hadn't done before I drove it around the estate.
Also, by the time I had done the driving around, both front tyres were starting to touch on the back arches again - probably due to the old suspension bushes settling back after all my braking.
Finally, the car failed on emissions as it decided to start producing white smoke, which hadn't done previously and also proved to be in part due to having my warmed the car up.
I will try to get back and post again soon to explain the mystery of the smoke and how I addressed the tyre clearance issues.