So buying a kit car that has little build history is like doing automotive archaeology. I’m slowly working my way through the car from front to back figuring out what’s in there, fixing any issues and upgrading where I can afford! O… and I’m learning a lot too!
I spent more than a couple of hours down at the garage this morning after the disappointment of the rugby (Rugby Union World Cup defeat to SA). I posted the front shocks off yesterday to be serviced and repaired so I’m really looking for jobs to entertain myself that don’t cost too much and don’t stop me driving the car (when I get the shocks back on I’ll want to shake the car down to make sure it’s all back together properly).
I decided to tackle some of the surface rust on the chassis but this turned out to take less time than I expected so I went poking about the rear end of the car.
I removed the top rear panel:
This allowed me to see the rear end of the car easily:
It’s my first poke around at the back so I took my time to identify what I could.
I spotted a series of numbers on the left rear spring. I did grab a picture of these but it seems to have corrupted. I’ll check again tomorrow but I seem to recall they were 8 inch, 2.25 ID and 180lb. The 180lb seems a little soft so I’ll check this and might want to change them.
I also manages to identify the brand of fuel sender and the inline fuel pump:
Looking at the image on the right when I head back to the garage tomorrow I’ll want to ensure that fuel pump is secure.
I got a good look at the leak on the differential. This was identified when I had the car checked over by a mechanic and is to be expected. I suspect the diff is over 30 years old:
It looks worse than it is. Given this bit of the car certainly hasn’t been cleaned in the last 1,500 miles it really is only a small amount of oil. I’ll just need to keep an eye on the oil levels. At some point it might be a good idea to get the whole think reconditioned. I understand this would be one of the parts that would be hard to source if I had a failure.
Finally I was running the engine up to temperature to get some oil circulating around it when I noticed that one of the hose clips is broken. A small part, but one that might lead to a problem if not replaced. You can see it bouncing around in this clip (I’m not sure why there is no sound!):
And here is a picture:
Tim’s Tiger blog 