More progress
The annoying clacking noise emanating from the front bulkhead / dashboard area has been pin pointed to the steering column bottom bearing being goosed, so a replacement was demanded off a metro breaker off ebay along with the wiper stalk too since that didn’t work either
Im always dubious about buying second hand car parts off ebay (and with good reason too, when I built the quantum and needed the driver’s side XR2 tie rod bracket I had to have 3 attempts to get the part in a useable condition, the first was so bent from a front end shunt the 3 bolt holes ended up a 45 degrees to each other and the second looked like it had been gnawed off by an angry badger) but in this instance the part was in such good condition it could have easily passed for new both visually and physically so I’m very happy and it was put to good use.
All fitted in and no clackety clackety clack
Next the cat, the heat shield welded under it has rotted and rattles like mad, then the cat itself hits the upper heat shields on the move again making annoying noises, the decision was taken to fit a de-cat pipe in place, since this is pre K reg I’ll probably get away with it as back then the standards were pretty low (not like removing it from a 2014 car anyway) so we shall see, I’ll hang onto it just in case, after drenching the nuts in WD40 for 3 days it made all of no difference,
when you’ve got yer best spanner on the nut and 1 foot tuber for leverage and your pulling so hard your dragging yourself across the garage floor and its still not shifting the nut you know you’re in trouble (not as much trouble as I could have been had I not had good reason for the subsequent scratches down my back when the wife asked, note to self, must carpet garage) and I didn’t fancy heating it up either with it being so close to the body.
After a bit of head scratching I chocked the exhaust to the body with wood so it couldn’t move, then put spanner on nut with a trolley jack under the spanner, the car literally lifted 3” or so before any movement on the thread at all, I don’t think ive ever had nuts that tight before (snigger)
With the old cat out the way it was just time to realise the de-cat pipe was made by someone working from a blurry photo, so my new shiny pipe had to be tweaked with a large hammer and a bench vice, I didn’t feel happy with what I had just done but it fitted and only hit the heat shields most of the time,
Lowering the rear exhaust hanger did the trick of providing more clearance in the end and nothing looks too bad after all.
Old cat
No cat
My cat
The drive to work this morning was the quietest yet with only 3 annoying rattles (one may have been down to me leaving the boot open) so it’s actually becoming quite refined,
The down sides of this work is spending so long under the car I’ve now noticed nearly all of the fuel and brake pipe clips are doing nothing to hold the pipes in place, that job is being taken care of by the anti-roll bars and cable ties (?)
So there’s another one to add to the list
Its good to be busy….