Pete's S4

[Pete Clayton]

The car arrived yesterday after a bit of hassle getting it moved from Scotland. It looks solid and a good base for a project but as usual there is more work to do than originally planned.

The main jobs are, the brakes need freeing off, hardly any of the electrics are working, pedal box needs bracing as it flexes horribly, track control arm to replace, rear wheel bearing, cooling system to look at and fan to fit. The front bodywork has some bad cracks that need repairing. On the good side, i've had it running and it sounds sweet and I moved it in to the unit under its own power.

[Dave Adams]

I will be having a closer look on Friday, i have everything i need for the repairs.......

[Steve Kerswell]

Do you know what gearbox you have Pete? I do like those red tops. Looking good.

[Pete Clayton]

It's a getrag one out of a Manta Steve

[Pete Clayton]

Nice one, thanks Dave!

[Steve Kerswell]

That's the one. I am a wee bit envious Pete :-))

[Pete Clayton]

Day off today and Dave Adams came down to give me a hand doing some fibreglassing. We got all of the repairs done and glassed over the rear light apertures so I can fit my replacements. I just need to get some body filler on at some point and tidy everything up.

Dave started with the worst bit where one of the arches had been snapped and then repaired by over lapping. With some acetone and a bit of persuasion they separated

After being cleaned up and reattached he moved on to the other side to sort a poor crack repair

The front spoiler was a mess there were lots of bits to repair, this is what it look like after giving it a clean and bracing some of the broken bits

and then fibreglassed up

Last up was deleting the rear lights. I made up some cardboard templates, greased them and stuck them over the outside of the holes

and after applying the mat and resin this was the result when I removed the cardboard before I went home

A big thanks to Dave for all of his work today!

[Pete Clayton]

Crossed another job off the list today, tidied up the fuel pump and filter mounting and changed the filter whilst I was at it.

Before

Afterwards

Next up was to remove the pedals, they flex horribly and haven't been mounted well I have bought an Escort pedal box to go back in

Cut an access hole out so I could undo the bolts

Pedals removed

The reason the clutch pedal was so bad was there wasn't quite enough room so the person who fitted it padded it out with two alloy blocks, the whole thing was held on by two bolts. I have a video of how much the pedal was moving i'll upload it when I have a minute

[Pete Clayton]

Here's the video of how much the clutch pedal was moving!

http://youtu.be/0BbDi95HeCw

[Pete Clayton]

To sort the pedal box situation I got hold of a mk2 cortina one as normally used in the earlier Phaeton's and modified it for cable clutch use. Today I fibreglassed a load of holes up in the bulkhead (with my newly learned skills from Dave A) and then mocked it up, once positioned I made up a spreader plate for the rear to stop the bulkhead flexing, i'm going to make a bracket to I can use the top mount as a steady too. I drilled all the holes and connected the clutch cable to test, much less flex!  I may need to bend the brake pedal at the bottom to give more clearance for the accelerator pedal. The only problem I now have is the push rod to the servo is about an inch short, I either need to find a threaded extension or a long clevis any ideas?

[Steve Kerswell]

Hi Pete, worked on a few lately, have seen various mods. The most common seems a threaded bar with locking nuts.

[Pete Clayton]

Thanks Steve, I was thinking of something like this http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Indicator-Extension-LED-Mini-Indicator-M8... just need to find one where I know it's a good quality material

[Steve Kerswell]

Hi Pete, you can get threaded rod extensions, M8, M10, etc. from Screwfix or your local industrial pipe supplier, duct workers have loads too. If you get stuck should be able to find a few in the cave :-))