C160SFG - 1986 Series 3

[Casey]

Oh good, signs of summer arriving

[ian65]

I've got a few jobs lined up for the car over the Spring...

1. Fix a blow on the turbo elbow gasket.
2. Swap my TII leather seats for the ones out of the TII I've just broken for spares as they are in better condition than mine.
3. Fit the boost gauge I kept out for the TII.
4. Sort the clutch pedal, it's really soft... I'll try bleeding it first but it might need new cylinders.

Gotta get rid of this bloody Mini first though

[DKWW2000]

I always think it is nice to have a couple of non critical jobs that are fairly easy & nice to do on a warm sunny day (but not the mini)!

[ian65]

As anyone who's been following this thread will know, work on this car and my plans to finish my 13BT conversion came to a screeching halt last October when my daughters Mini took up unexpected residency in my garage with a blown engine.
This week I've finally got rid of the thing and can at last get back to working on my own cars.

I've got a list of things to do but a bad escape of exhaust gases was a priority.
On the way home from last years Retrorides Gathering my car blew the gasket between the turbo and the turbo elbow and it was a sod to fix. The turbo elbow is tight against the bulkhead meaning that I couldn't just pull it off the studs to replace the gasket... the whole turbo had to be stripped off the car.
I've put up with it but it's got worse and has got to the point where the car is unusable, not to mention dangerous.
You can see the gap here where part of the gasket blew out...



so off came the turbo...



and the carb and wastegate...







The new stainless gasket that I had to import from Germany...



and fitted to the turbo including a new stud...



then all back together.





it runs, sounds, smells and tastes much better now without a big carbon monoxide leak finding it's way into the car.


.

[ian65]

Next job was to sort out the soft clutch pedal... it's been getting steadily worse over the last couple of years so today I changed the slave...

Easy job



massive difference

[ian65]

Inspired by my successes with the clutch and turbo gasket I decided to fit my new gauges. I bought a radio blanking panel off Ebay and cut 3 holes in it with a tank cutter...a little bit of extra trimming to the holes to help the new gauges slot in...



then fixed my oil temp, boost and AFR gauges into it...





then pulled out the pretty pointless cubby hole thing from the centre console, did the wiring and fixed the panel into place...





Because the radio plate is the same width and colour as my stereo it all lines up great and matches well. I'm pretty happy with it.

[KiwiDave]

Nice work with those gauges. You might just have inspired me to do something similar. #interior goals

[Casey]

You've been busy Ian! Great work with the gauges and good to see you've fixed the turbo leak.

[Hobbawobba]

As I said on Facebook, those gauges are a very clean setup! Exhaust leak fix always feels so accomplished

[DKWW2000]

They look great....all go for RR now, was the AM easy to fit?