OK, I’ll admit that I’ve been a bit remiss lately, but there’s a good reason for that in that we spent last week skiing in Switzerland. Of course, that means that next to nothing got done to the car.
However, here’s a picture of a few alps as taken last week. The only problem is, I want to go skiing again; although I smashed myself up skiing a few years ago it’s still fantastic when it works right.
However, I’m back now and starting to think about it again. In fact, I’m also thinking about the new season and I think that next weekend I’m going to have to exhume the Fury and do some work on that in preparation for the upcoming first meeting of the season. I probably ought to do at least a bit of testing too.
Before doing that, though, I’ve been trying to press on with the J15. I think I’m in that part of a build where things appear to go slowly but, duck like, I’m paddling like mad behind the scenes.
Following Adrian‘s principle of doing a system at a time, I’ve been trying to get the brake system all working. This involves a lot of pipework and much fiddling about with pipe flarers and the like. I’ve decided to use separate reservoirs for each hydraulic system this time and here they are, for the two brake circuits and the clutch.
Another change this time is that I’ve decided to use an electrical brake light switch, rather than a hydraulic one which seems to produce lots of silly little problems. You can see the switch just sticking onto the back of the pedal in this photo here. I bought the switch from Rally Design; it’s yet another of the long list of Escort Mk II parts that are still available.
As usual I’m trying to do most of the lines with hard Cunifer piping, as in the bit snaking around the front of the chassis here. This is tedious, but probably the right solution in the end due to the reduced flex in the lines when under pressure.
However, the master cylinders are rather tricky to get at, because of their positioning, and I’m probably going to have to make at least some of the lines flexible hoses from the master cylinders themselves as making hard lines there is just too tricky. Come to think of it, I’ll probably run the entire clutch line as a single flexible hose. Of course, in the process of doing all this pipework I’ve run out of just the vital fittings that I need; although I’ve got loads of fittings that I don’t need.
I’ve decided to relocate the steering column slightly and I’ve remade the lower steering column as a consequence. Although I might change this again, if I’m honest. What I’ve done is to raise the front of the column slightly to make sure that there’s a bit more clearance above my size 12s. The thought of a brake/steering/foot conflict at some moment is slightly worrying!
While looking at the pedals, I’ve been wondering about how to attach a throttle cable, which of course is going to have to be really long, to the throttle pedal which is shown here. Obviously, i could attach a cable by just drilling the lower part of the pedal and using a nipple over the end of the cable but I don’t really want to do that as it doesn’t allow me to change the pedal ratio at all. Ideally, I’d make something that would be able to move along the pedal a bit. Problem is, I can’t quite work out how to do it. Suggestions gratefully received…