Happy New Year

New Year and time to get a to-do list together

In no particular order the following is a list of things I need to look at over the coming months, by hopefully putting them in print it will spur me on to complete some of them. Some of these are more achievable than others............

Fit the remaining interior trim, carpets arrived before Christmas, everything else is ready to be fitted.

Got a 4.11 diff that I'd like to try and compare to the 3.89 currently fitted.

Re-pack exhaust silencer, its starting to get a little noisy, also thinking about making up a centre pipe with a "cherry bomb" type silencer.

Make some new spindles for my throttle bodies and fit sealed roller bearings, also want to move the TPS switch to direct acting on the end of one of the throttle spindles - currently fitted on the end of the under slung linkage.

Complete and fit adjustable top arms.

Design and fabricate lower arms to take lower spherical ball joint.

Fit Caterham vertical links, AP calipers, vented disks etc.

Slight oil leak from the pushrod side of the head gasket, I'll monitor this over the next few weeks now that the engine breathing is sorted - otherwise I'll do this when I work on the throttle butterflies.

I've already cut up and re-welded my 3 into 1 collector as the exit pipe extended about 2" into the collector, might take a look at the primary to secondary collectors and see what's going on inside them. Also thinking about extending the 3 secondary pipes to the meet up at the back of the gearbox.

I'd like to get my car down to Emerald's rolling road for a mapping session sometime, probably after I've played around with the exhaust.

Like to get hold of some 195/40 R16 tyres to try in place of the 215/40's that are currently fitted, interested to see how it will effect the gearing and it will give me slightly more clearance - with the car fully loaded for the 10CR (No lowering block) I had very slight rubbing to the rear inner edge of the back wheel arch, also fouled on the front but hopefully the top arms will sort this.

Possibly change the gearbox to a 5 speed, probably Type 9, need to look at a few installations in other GT6's as I want to retain the original gearlever position. Also been looking at other options, Mercedes have a 6 Speed box that looks fairly compact, not seen one in the flesh yet so it might not be any good - would probably need to fabricate a new engine backplate if I went down this route - only ideas at the moment.

Look at doing something with the rear suspension, there are a couple of like minded people toying around with ideas at the moment so I might hang fire on this one, davesideways has some thoughts and more locally Andy Smith is building a V8 Vitesse and is keen to upgrade the diff and rear suspension. My ideas at the present are along the lines of some of the tried and tested stuff, Rotoflex uprights, MGF hubs and Metro driveshafts, I'd like to do away with the swing spring and go for coilovers mounted in the original shock positions. For starters I am thinking about bolting a box section to the top of the diff to give me top arm pick up points. Long term these could be fabricated on the chassis which would then give me the freedom to change to a stronger diff if required (Ford, Subaru, BMW all have LSD units available fairly cheap on ebay).

The gearbox and diff mods will all be dependant on how the current items perform, I would like to keep as much of the "original" drivetrain as possible, but there is enough evidence around to suggest that they wont last forever.

That's about it for the moment

If you are sitting there wondering why I am bothering to do the above modifications, I totally understand, I felt the same way when I started reading other peoples modifications, don't really have any defence, I like doing it and it becomes a challenge looking for the next improvement.

HAPPY NEW YEAR