1984 silver series 3

[spoddy]

looking good. nice to get new parts, its handy when you can do stuff yourself.
the little extras are nice, i have a similar symbol on my az3 mx3 jap model.
it says heat and think its the sensor for the CAT, so maybe on that 12a turbo,
tool is breaking it means the same?

i dunno the CAT setups on fbs though.

[Steve-A]

Looking good Ian

Love how thorough you are with the details, will really show in the finished car

[RamoNZ]

looking good. nice to get new parts, its handy when you can do stuff yourself.
the little extras are nice, i have a similar symbol on my az3 mx3 jap model.
it says heat and think its the sensor for the CAT, so maybe on that 12a turbo,
tool is breaking it means the same?

i dunno the CAT setups on fbs though.

Yep, the sensor is the cat converter heat sensor. Tools FB was injected and has a cat. The idea is that if the cat gets too hot for any reason, the warning light is there to tell you not to park near or on top of, piles of dried leaves or tundra, as they will quickly catch fire and engulf your car in an inferno - I think it happened on occasion hence the implementation for the warning light, but it might have been simple scare mongering that triggered it.

[ian65]

as the clutch hydraulics went on my black Elford, I needed to order a master cylinder from Rockauto..... the parts are unbelievably cheap but the shipping is the bit that costs so I decided to order 2 masters, to be shipped together and put a new one on each car...





I've now put a new master cylinder and slave on this car and have got a clutch pedal! Great!
This is good news because it means the car will now be able to move under its own power, making it much easier to work on.

I'm currently rebuilding the front and rear brakes.

.

[ian65]

took the drain plug out of the fuel tank today and drained off the remaining 16 year old fuel.... I also wanted to see if much rust came out of the tank...
There was only about a litre of stale fuel in there, it looked like vinegar and smelt like thinners.... horrible.



No rust came out though... the bits in the bottom of the tub were already in there.
I then connected up the fuel pump and fitted it to the car and put a gallon of fresh unleaded into the tank.
Stuck a good battery onto the car and tried to start it..... nothing.
It spun and spun but nothing.
The fuel pump was running but nothing was coming out of the fuel feed line before it went into the carb.
Its a bit baffling..... I know the fuel lines are clear back to the fuel filter, tank side of the pump so there must be a problem between the tank and the filter.
I hope it's not the pickup in the tank... I didn't want to drop the tank.
It's a bit frustrating.

[codge]

From memory I think there's a strainer on the end of the dip pipe inside the tank~?
Try a gentle blow back into the tank? Will the check valve on top stop it?

[ian65]

From memory I think there's a strainer on the end of the dip pipe inside the tank~?
Try a gentle blow back into the tank? Will the check valve on top stop it?

there is a strainer on the pickup and I gave the tank a good few clanks with a rubbet mallet before I drained it to try to dislodge any rust from the roof of the tank.... but it was clear..
I dunno what else it could be except the strainer but that means dropping the tank
I think the check valve only cuts the fuel flow if the car flips over..... although I might be wrong

[ian65]

dropped the tank on this car today and took the pickup and return pipes out of it. This revealed the cause of my fuel starvation issue.... pulled the strainer off the pickup and found that both the pickup and return pipes were clogged solid with thick brown tar about 3" up the tubes......... I suppose it was petrol 15 years ago. I cleaned it out with a long drill bit and some brake cleaner then blew them through with the airline..... should be good to go now. The strainer is a bit discoloured but will clean up.
I'll give the tank a good coat of POR15 while it's off the car.





.

[spoddy]

well seems if you leave petrol long enough turns back into oil lol.
thats what it looks like in the pic. alot of work ian, but you are progressing rightly.

i'm sure you're looking forward to the end result and getting the car back on the roads.

[ian65]

Due to work commitments, I haven’t had chance to do much to this car recently but had a few hours on it today.
While I’d got the petrol tank off the car, I thought I may as well strip the rear suspension of it and refurb it..... the link arms were ok but the axle itself had a lot of surface rust and as the bushes are 27 years old, it’s worth replacing them to restore the handling and ride...

Getting the axle off was a real struggle... the trailing arm mounting bolts were unbelievably tight... I had to get a 4ft bar to release them which was difficult in itself as there isn’t much room under the car to get any leverage. The nuts are in such a position that I couldn’t get the buzz gun on them.
One bolt sheared off and I had to get plenty of heat on them to free them off.

Some of the arms had corroded themselves to the sleeves inside the bushes and took some moving and the watt link pivot was completely seized. The car would have handled like a broken shopping trolley with the suspension parts seized like this and without stripping it down, I don’t know how I would have detected these problems.

2 hours later it was finally off....









The seized watts link...




If getting the axle off the car was difficult, cleaning the rust off it was the stuff of nightmares..... 3 hours with the wire brush on the angle grinder....loads of bloody fiddly bits to get into...... glad it’s all done.

I’ve got some POR15 on order so will maybe get chance to acid clean and paint it one evening during the week.