Actions or Words?

So here we are in the UK and we are in the grip of a heat wave and we are not happy. People I have spoken to are moaning about the heat, a few weeks ago they were moaning about the fact our summer hadn’t started yet. Now we have some glorious weather I am trying to make the most of it but don’t understand why people moan so much. This sunny weather has allowed me to be sanding down my front valance, my radiator valance etc. all outside without having to stand in a dust cloud in the man cave. I have been in the garden with the new flower bed and watching the bee’s enjoy life as much as I am enjoying doing bits on the car outside. I have found a patch in the garden where the wind is hardly noticeable and the sun is not directly on you. This area is perfect for spraying car parts with primer and rust treatment. I was using this area to its full potential over most of the weekend much to my satisfaction. The only down side is the wife don’t like it. The patch which looks like deformed Olympic rings again in grey and black, is unfortunately directly in front of the kitchen window out the front of my man cave. When the wife returned home to see how much I had done with my spray job she didn’t look happy. When I moved the parts to show her workmanship, the attention rapidly moved to the now multi coloured grass. That look (again) was flashed in my direction. All I could think of to say was “That will go when you next cut the grass”. I’m glad I wasn’t hungry that night; I think she forgot me! When I mentioned the fact that there seemed to be a meal missing I was greeted with, “You can make some toast if you cut the bread”. I have now found another shower curtain to spread on the grass so that I don’t make a mess. Sometimes no actions can speak louder than words. Babe, you win!

Over the weekend I went down to see the boys at Mustang Maniac and got a few bits and pieces. I was talking about the fact I needed an exhaust system and Adam asked me about the headers on the car. To cut a long story short it turns out that the headers I have are so close to the steering ram they have damaged the rubber gator. As a result I was told I should replace the original bracket with an extension bracket that moves the ram out of harms way. I fitted the part on over the weekend and placed a photo guide on how to do it under the Photos menus – Steering. It really has made a difference.

buffers and plates in place — bracket and steering ram in place

Recently I have had a couple of nice emails asking about the brakes on the car and if I had a guide. Well yes, I have books that I have reviewed and I also have a few diagrams I keep in plastic wallets for reference of the bits I need. I even coloured in the black and white diagram with the colours of the springs and where they should be, it took me all of about one minute in Photoshop. All of the various diagrams I used can be found under the Articles menu – Front & Rear Brake Diagrams.

Enjoy the weather while you can and keep up the sun screen.

Quick Links:

Steering and Header Spacing click here

Front and Rear Brake diagrams click here

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Secret rules

The weather this weekend for a change has been gorgeous, hot and not a cloud in the sky. Is our summer finally here? A bit late but I will take all the sun I can get at the moment. This Friday evening we got the garden swing seat out from the cover and I was able to evict the cushions that have been squatting in the corner of my shed since last summer. They take up so much room, I could put my Karcher jet washer there, and few power tools in that space. The wife sneaks things into the man cave and puts things on them in her little corner and they fall off. So when I open the door I am greeted by an avalanche of cushions Wellington boots, trowels, hand forks, plastic pots and cardboard boxes from god knows where. The corner of the man cave right near the door. She has the house and garden, I have the garage and the shed – that’s the rules. But women play by a secret dirty secret set of rules that only they know about, they are allowed to put things in my area when they see fit. Yet when I bring in a set of brake springs in the house and sit at the kitchen table ready to treat them, you would have thought somebody had just pushed the nuke button! Trying to explain it’s only a temporary measure seems to add fuel to the fire. Does anybody have a copy of these rules I could look at please, or at least explain them to me. Anyway, while sitting in the swing seat watching the birds and the bees in the garden while sipping on an ice-cold bottle of Bud, I heard the comment, “I think a flower bed would look nice there.” Epic, not. So I chipped in with only if we have butterfly and bee loving plants. With that the Saturday was sealed but I didn’t know it.

Saturday morning and I was straight out into the man cave, I got the front valance out again and rubbed down the filler that has been built up, rubbed down and built up again. The work was almost done when they, being the wife and mother-in-law got back about five hours later. The front valance and grill valance were now ready for their spraying and I was feeling pretty pleased with my little ol’ self.

There were repeated trips from the car to the back garden with plants which were laid out around the area that they wanted the plants to be, yeah I got my bee and butterfly plants “Hot Lips” apparently! They looked quite nice to be fair. Then the shovel came out, from my man cave and the marking of the grass began. As they decided the ground was too hard to dig it was passed to me to dig. Great, the day has been baking in the high twenties and the earth was like rock. I questioned why now and got told the plants would die if I didn’t. I was reminded that I had done my own thing on the car all day so I could now help her do the flour bed. Bearing in mind I looked like I had just been rolled in a giant pack of flour due to the ultra fine dust off the valance while I was rubbing it down. Within minutes the sweat was pouring off me and the dust was now turning into a paste again. Eventually after the new ground was dug up I was released to go and do what I wanted. At that time laying on the grass waiting to pass out seemed like a good idea. But the compost went in the new flower bed, then they got the hand trowel and fork – from MY man cave, and they started to dig the holes only to find out that they could only get down to the rock hard clay that I had got too. So yes, yours truly had to dig the deeper holes for the larger plants.

Sunday was a day of more tiny rub down as I missed a bit to make a final surface prep. The shower curtain went down on the grass and I sprayed the valance and the grill valance, firstly with the Rust Encapsulator I got from Frost, then some grey primer and left them to dry in a shady part of the garden. Then I decided to clean ~~the sauna~~ my man cave out and tidy the Snap-On tool box up a bit. About a month ago when I was bleeding the brakes I needed some very small AF spanners. I bought a set of spanners that were ring one end and open-ended the other. They weren’t very expensive as there is no real leverage required. What I did notice was that they were always falling about and looked a mess in my OCD laid out tool box. I had an idea and looked on eBay where I purchased some carabiner clips like the climbers use for their ropes. Mine was small and not meant for climbing but they sure make a brilliant spanner clip. The spanners come off and go on with no problems and now they are all together! What do you think?

So this weekend was all about compromise, I do the work on the car and then I do work in the garden when the ground is like concrete. The garden it has to be said does look really nice. I sit here thinking; if I didn’t have that beer would I have still had to dig the flower bed? I reckon.

Quick links:

Front valance work updated, click here for link or go to the Photos – Bodywork – Front valance project part 2.

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Slight change of plan

Sun’s out for a change!

I need to ask a question. Why is that when I was re-routing a brake line for my dual Master Cylinder I managed to knock the brake line flaring tool case with my elbow. My own fault for balancing it on the cowl, but I did managed to catch it. Of course everything went everywhere, I was standing there looking like I lost £10 but found £5 if you know what I mean, but no I was holding an empty plastic case. I heard that dreaded clink clank again of various bits rattling down the engine. The flaring dies that make the double flares are quite small and I found four out of the five pieces. My question is where do the bits go that you can’t find. I have looked for hours and I mean hours. I have a torch with a Blue Point mirror tool looking in all places. I know that my started motor teeth are OK and not rusted up. I know that I have missed a little bit with my rust treatment on the left hand side of the chassis just under the steering column. I now know that I have a bolt missing on the bottom part of the exhaust manifold on the left hand side. What I don’t know is where that little mushroom-shaped bit went. Do the gremlins come along steal it, and run off before I see them. If I catch the disruptive swine, will his pockets be filled with thirty plus years of car bits I have lost? It drives me mental. I have rocked the car, I have put my hands in every tiny gap that I could, I have even used my magnetic pick up tool to probe places that I didn’t know existed. I have had bits of grime and rusty bits drop into my eyes and hair when I bang under the engine, as if it would make a difference! I swear it’s not there. Is this just me and my bad luck or does it happen to anybody else? This is not the first time it has happened to me, I have lost nuts, washers and clips. I have still not found them. Perhaps there is miniature version of the Bermuda Triangle that is currently located under that Ford small block v8 in my garage, the Mustang oblong maybe!

OK, so I was going to get the car out and start her up and use the brakes to drive her in and out. I have half bleed the brakes to the rear with the new dual master cylinder from Mustang Maniac and all was well. I was going to do the fronts but other things side tracked me a little on Saturday and couldn’t finish it off. So as today was a lovely day I had a change of plan decided my time would be better spent in the garden, it was time for some bodywork action. I have already removed the damaged paint and the pitted filler from the front valance and the grill valance here in part 1. I have taken some more pictures of the Valances for part 2 and updated the pages, or just click here for the quick link. I have applied a total of three applications of the filler and rubbed down each one to make it a level as possible to smooth out the low spots. The hot weather has made application of the filler a bit of a race against time as the drying process was pretty quick in the warmth. I can bleed the rest of the brakes when it is raining next, that’s an inside job, where as sanding and getting caked in filler dust is not an ideal man cave job in the rain!

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Brakes stop play

It’s been a bad weekend for the part-time mechanic…

I’m back on the blog again, do I hear cheers? Ok maybe not then. The last couple of weekends have been mental and I have not had a chance to update the blog properly, for that I apologise. Last weekend I had to put up a Summer house that was going cheap from B&Q (that’s a big DIY wholesale for those who don’t know who they are over the pond). Well it turned upand was unloaded from the lorry, there was no book of words (instructions). Now I do know that being a bloke it’s mandatory to throw away the book of words as we don’t need it. But, I wanted to check that everything was there this time. To cut a long story short the wife was on the phone giving some poor geeza a hard time. I keept asking for the phone to sort it out, but I was declined my kind offer to have a word with somebody and get it sorted. It turned out that the wife tactics of being upset and complaining worked over my method of having a major rant and losing my rag! We work well – the good cop / bad cop thing! In the mean time I am preparing the car for the brake bleeding I wanted to do. No bits means I can’t put it together, I can do my brakes. I was getting out the Sealey vacuum bleeder ready, the spanners were ready, the fluid was ready, and then the car turned up with the bag of bits and the book of words as a special delivery. I thanked him through clenched teeth, and he spent a while looking at the car in the garage. He liked the car so I decided he wasn’t so bad after all. I had to make out how grateful I was at receiving the bits as I could now put all my car bits away again and go build the wooden hut, sorry Summer house! Oh yeah – like I was well chuffed. NOT. So I started to check the bits and they were all there so I started to build it. ~~I followed all the instructions,~~ I worked out where all the bits were to go and it was looking OK. The sky was getting dark and race against time before it rained on the untreated roof was on. The rain held off which was good and I got to the point of getting the doors on. Well they may have been dolls house doors as they didn’t fit. They will need a router on there to shave about half-inch of the hinge side to enable them to fit in the gap. The lap of the boards was concave in the middle, the doors meet at the top but had a gap I could get my hand in at the bottom. I just so love flat pack. Why was it cheap? Now I know why the doors were from a garden shed and two different ones at that. Now with the right hump, I downed tools and declared that the darkness stops play and the now darkening raining cloud was now hanging over my head following me around.

This weekend was my time on the car and was going to blog it. So Saturday morning I went to the garage and got everything ready. The Vacuum tool was out, the spanners were out, the fluid was out, the wife was out! I decided to check the inside of the brake Master Cylinder and it was a little rusty so I got my 2000 grit sandpaper out and removed the loose rust. The bottom of the bore had a little pitting in there, but it wasn’t bad, so I decided to go for it. The reservoir was filled and I pushed the brakes a little. Checked, all was fine, no leaks. Pressed it a little more, checked all was still fine. I went to the rear of the car and got the bleed kit ready and started the vacuum. Nothing coming through so I give the pedal a little nudge to get the fluid moving down the pipes. Then I went to check. There it was, fluid dripping out of the gap between the master cylinder and the power booster. So I slung a load of rags under the now larger forming puddle over my nice paintwork in the engine bay. I had a little syringe that I sucked out the fluid and decanted into the plastic bowl near me. I didn’t know what was coming out faster, the drips from the brake cylinder or the tears from my eyes watching the brake fluid going to waste. I locked of the bleed nipple and killed the vacuum. A quick call to my Mustang hotline Adam, he said, is it doing this? Yep! Is it doing that? Yep! Conclusion – the master cylinder was indeed faulty, well I am sure that was what we decided it was at the time. So now I have to decide, replace the single reservoir, or upgrade to dual reservoir. I know that a dual is not the original but then again I will have a separate system if one side of the master cylinder went wrong. I slept on it, I read up about it and made my mind up. Dual reservoir is the way to go. Also when I upgrade to discs, I will be ready there that side of it as well. So when you read this Adam, get me a dual master ready! 🙂

Brake bleeder connected to the rear wheel

Today I have been sulking a bit as I can’t do a great deal, so I decided to catch up on the blog. I have updated some pages and added a new page.

Updated:

Front Valance (Part 2), or click here for the quick link

Rear Brake Drum Rebuild, or click here for the quick link

Rocker Covers, or click here for the quick link

Hand brake Cable & Hardware Replacement, or click here for the quick link

Added:

Brake bleeding and issues, or click here for the quick link. With this page I will be updating it as I go along so it will be a running guide if you like. Once I have got to use the Sealey VS402 I will post a review of it, but at the moment I has been used. Not through the lack of trying I might add.

I am in the process of doing a rust comparison between the Granville Rust Cure that I have reviewed (click here) and the FE-123 treatments. I started a few weeks ago and have been watching the results so far. I will keep you updated and start a review once I have a little more time to go and results to hand.