Hi guys,
Its been a while since I done a full so will give a run down of whats happened over the last few (very busy weeks).
A couple of months ago we thought we would give the cam belt a check over. What we found was a little worrying, the cam belt had a large slit across the belt. Needless to say if we wanted any chance of making it to Rome it had to be changed. Cam Belt ordered I drove up to Chris' one weekend so we could change it, as well as a few other jobs we had planned such as fitting the CB radio, putting the stickers on and other peripheral things.
What shouldn't have been a very long job ended up taking us 2 days!! Not one single bolt would want to come undone, and once again iTuned came to our rescue and lent us one hell of an Impact Gun. Those bolts had no chance against that monster!
We had marked up the Cam Pullys, the cam belt and the back plate. Everything was good to go, put the new belt on and I drove home on the Sunday night. Its was only the start of what was a frustrating few weekends (for Chris). On the drive home the car felt sluggish and slow. When driving at 30 the engine was hunting. I organised taking the car back up to Norwich the next weekend, I was off to Amsterdam - Chris was off to hell! Firstly Chris adjusted the timing, it was better but it wasn't right. If there's one thing Chris hates, it not being right
The cam belt had to be adjusted again, it needed to be right (for fuel costs alone). I got many frustrated messages from Chris over the next few days. I arranged to head up the following weekend. It was time to take the top of the engine and align the cams properly.
Easy solution normally, but oh no, not on Go Nad (she has been called many other names during this process, many cannot be repeated). Off comes the top and Chris starts looking at the cams, the anger growing as he does so. Soon an expletive laden rant explodes from Chris - the cams do not have the small cuts outs that are required to line them up.
We take some time and regroup. We need to find dead top, but that doesn't solve the problem with the cams. So we take a guess we line some bits up with other bits. Dead Top is found and the engine put back together again. We have Chris' old adjustable cams pulleys, hopefully all we will need to do is some fine tuning. The timing gun is attached, Chris has the car key and starts her up. She fires first time, the timing looks better but still not right, but all that is needed is some fine tuning. Saturday, I get the message I'd been waiting for - she's running smoother now.
We also now have an MOT. I'm off to Chris' this weekend to finish up a few more finer jobs - fitting a CB radio, hopefully these will go smoother.
I am aware that there are people who would like to meet us along the way. We have several stops that people can come see us. Firstly Edinburgh, then Nottingham, then Ace Cafe and finally Dover. I will post all the timings as soon as I get them to the thread Chris has started in the meetings section.
Finally, thank you to all CCUK members who have donated and arranged collections at meets. These are really appreciated by me and Chris, and just to re-iterate what Chris said, all money donated goes to Orchid, which really is an amazing charity.