WITW - Mark's poorly Dolphin

[MikkiJayne]

More cleaning and reassembling tonight





Front panel on tomorrow

[MikkiJayne]

Cleaned up and reattached the front panel





Power steering cooler on tomorrow then I can fill it with fluids and start it up

[ThisWayUp]

Excellent progress - I need to print this and keep it as my motivational target!

[Markiii]

Originally Posted by MikkiJayne

Cleaned up and reattached the front panel





Power steering cooler on tomorrow then I can fill it with fluids and start it up

random thought, is the aircon rad on that lump? does it then need a regas?

[MikkiJayne]

Yes, its the front bit with the two black pipes to the right. I don't open the AC for this job - I just swing the condenser off to the side. The AC is still nice and cold

[MikkiJayne]

Right, I've got very behind on updates in the push to get the car finished, so this is quite a big one!

I checked everything with VCDS before startup and found that the ECU was reporting a MAF error. Changing the MAF didn't help, and it wasn't fuses, so that meant a wiring problem. Pulling back the boot on the connector soon revealed an air gap!



Luckily these terminals fit all sorts of things so I had a spare to hand



Soldered and heat-shrunk since there's no room in there for a crimp. Happy ECU and the engine runs sweetly



Both bumper support bolts were seized so I stripped the bumper down and put the brace bar in the vice then cut the heads off the bolts



Remove these two T25 screws and the 'nut' complete with the stump of the bolt can be removed and the supports are free



Normally I'd try and save the nut, but these will need a lot of work



So I cheated and nicked a pair from a spare bumper



I replaced the lower bumper with the one Strummagnet found for us, and also a parking sensor, and then put it back on the car





I had a slight coolant leak from the one hose I couldn't get new It was just the hose clamp not quite seated properly which was simple to resolve because the SAI rubbish was gone. If that was all still in place this would have been a nightmare to get to!



The air intake on the front panel was broken with all but one of its fixing tabs missing so it just rattled around. Luckily these are still available from Tradition and I have a few sets in stock so this was replaced





The car needed a new windscreen which Mark arranged through insurance. I already had the wiper mech and scuttle panel out but I also removed the windscreen trim ready for the fitters and discovered one of the clips had disintegrated



This is entirely because the factory put some butyl rubber sealant in the bottom of the channel, causing water to pool up around the clip. Why would they do that? I drilled the heads off the rivets and removed the remains of the clip



Then removed the sealant



Cleaned the rusty stains off the paint with fallout remover



I can't get the rivet gun on the rivets with the glass in place



So waited until the glass was out (a 1 hour ordeal for two fitters!) and then rivetted the clip in.



I also rebuilt the wiper linkage using bits from a couple of others (the usual drill) and now there are no good ones left so I am forced to get on with my plan to re-engineer / re-manufacture the mechanisms. I have a cunning plan for that so will provide updates on that separately.

All finished and a clean pass on the MoT



Wheel alignment tomorrow then its all done and ready to go home

[Adrian E]

Fantastic results, as ever MJ

Car looks fab

How were the windscreen fitters? Must admit I’ve avoided using insurer approved fitters for last 3 windscreens I’ve needed…..

[tintin]

New wiper linkages!! . Can't wait

[MikkiJayne]

Originally Posted by Adrian E

Fantastic results, as ever MJ

Car looks fab

How were the windscreen fitters? Must admit I’ve avoided using insurer approved fitters for last 3 windscreens I’ve needed…..

This was done by Auto Windscreens and they were really good. They sent two fitters because the screen is so large it's a two-person job to lift it in to place, and that turned out to be invaluable for getting it out too. It was the original screen and the glue was apparently incredibly hard so it took both of them an hour to get it out using every tool they had, but they were very careful with the trim and paint while doing so and didn't damage anything.

As they had, rather optimistically, picked up this job at 4:45 on a Friday afternoon, they were quite grateful that I'd already removed all the trim and so didn't require them to put it back.

I'd made a cardboard template of the position of the glass relative to the body so that we could set it in the right place, since the surrounding trim wasn't going back on at that point, and they were happy to tweak the new glass around so that it matched the template perfectly so everything would go back together.

I think it was 6:30 by the time they left, although they were on overtime by then so not too miffed!

[RICKY D]

That is looking might fine now. Great work as usual