So the few days leading up to the third MoT, the left cycle wing fell off. Not ideal, and lucky it happened whilst only in the workshop because you can't remove it completely until you split the top wishbone, which you can't really do at the side of the road very easily!
Once I'd got it off the car you could see what happened -all the jiggling around had caused a fatigue right on the join, at the end of my finger here:
With it cleaned up by the grinder you could see where the cracks were, not much material left holding it together:
Still, no problem for me and my trusty welder:
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| Good as new, if not better |
I welded the other side as well as that was showing the same signs of failure; then gave them a coat of hammerite and put them back.
So they're back on the car, but I'm still not happy with how they are sat or how strong they are. Plus they both have twisted slightly during the process (even though I was careful to keep the heat down so they wouldn't distort) and generally don't look too clever. So I think a re-design is in order once all this IVA business is out of the way.
Another job on the to-do list is to do away with the ignition key - it's started the whole E36 ignition-barrel-key-death-problem and sometimes won't turn and gets jammed in the lock. I have a cunning plan involving the push-button start, but more on that later.
So off to my friendly MoT station again for the third time. I booked an hour slot at 8am solely to sort out the handbrake - I thought it would be just adjustment and a quick check on the rolling road, so an hour should be fine... how wrong was I !!!?
Enjoyable trip getting there though:
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| Arrived. Car looking good and I was of course still beaming. Yes I know the headlights are cross-eyed they keep vibrating loose! Need some spring washers on them. |
Didn't get too many pics after this point, when you're using someone else's garage and their time, can't waste it by pratting around with a camera.
Before I continue though, let's talk braking efforts and efficiencies. I've learned a lot about them in the past week!!
The brake rollers measure/display kg (I'm assuming they actually measure or convert to kgfm e.g. kilogram force-metre which is a measure of torque), and they tell the operator how much torque or resistance the brakes are generating when applied.
The kg of braking effort can then be related to the weight (in kg) of the vehicle, which determines how much momentum the brakes have to stop. So with everything in the same units, the calculation is relatively straightforward to get braking efficiency
brake eff. [%] = TOTAL braking effort recorded [kg] / Gross Vehicle Design Weight [kg] x 100
My Legend GVDW is 1,000 kg so the calcs are nice and easy.
On the first IVA the handbrake efforts were 80kg and 85kg, so
brake eff = ((80+85) / 1000) * 100 = 16.5%.
Remember, 18% is the pass criteria for IVA (16% for an MoT annoyingly, and the handbrake seems to work fine in "normal" driving conditions)
So, we need to achieve at least 90kg on each side to get a pass. Not too difficult, or so I thought...
The night before this attempt I took the pads out and roughed them up with some 180grit glass paper, and did the same on the discs with the car spinning them idling in 2nd gear - it was clear they were nowhere near bedded in as the discs still had their factory machining marks on and the pads were glazed - that's hardly surprising because everything is brand new and I've done the grand total of about 20miles in the thing.
So, on the rollers, first try, for a baseline reading, it was 74kg and 79kg for each side. So, actually worse than IVA result, not great.
First off we tried just adjusting up the cable, as the lever was getting close to max travel. It came up a bit, low 80's, but still not great.
Then the MoT chap pointed out that the handbrake lever, although perfectly centred in the chassis, was pulling one of the cables unevenly and it was flexing and "splaying" outwards - so I would be losing a bit of effort via that. So we re-positioned the handbrake in the chassis to pull the cables better, instead of pointing at the gearstick at 12 o'clock it's now about 20past 1; but that's OK beacuse it should work better.
With this mod, still no real improvement. And that point his next appointment turned up so it was time to draw stumps. He was fully booked that day, but he said that if I hung around we could get it sorted, albeit using the gaps between tests. Better than trying it on your own, plus I needed the brake rollers to test for efficiency anyway; so I agreed.
The next thing we did, pulling the car on and off the ramp in the 15min gaps between MoTs, was to take the actuator arms off the callipers and move them round a few splines - adjusting the cables to be tight was only taking the slack out of the calliper mechanism and pulling on the handbrake meant it was hitting its stops, so not getting the full effect of the travel. I did take these off when I painted the callipers originally, but I was careful to mark everything with punch holes, but perhaps they could have gone back wrong.
Once more, no real improvement in efficiency; but now a lot more feel to the handbrake - we might be getting somewhere.
When they finally closed at 1pm the tester (who is a lovely guy) pledged to stay on and give me his full attention. He really wanted me to drive out of there with it all sorted, and has been following my progress since the start, after this I owe him a beer or two for all his help.
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| After closing time - the only car in the garage |
So we set to it - the last obvious improvement was the lever itself - in fairness, it didn't look that strong; it's only made of 2mm pressed steel and was flexing quite a lot. So we took it right out of the car and drilled out the big rivet in the pivot point and put an M12 bolt and some huge penny washers in there. It did stop it flexing which was great. We then put it back together de-greased the discs just in case there was any contaminant on there and put it back on the rollers.
Adjusted up the cables and:
Nearside:
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| 95kg... |
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| 135kg |
90+135 = 22.5%. Great! Or was it...?
We re-tested it straight away to be sure, and it was back down again to mid 80s. Plus, I wasn't convinced that the pads weren't binding - so we jacked it up and they did feel quite stiff.
So after all that effort, pretty much back at square one...
This was about 3pm now, and I felt really bad about taking up his time; so for one last ditch attempt we put it back on the rollers and spun them both up with the handbrake half on - trying to bed in the pads.
I then slackened everyting off, adjusted up the cables until the rollers were just able read a dragging force; and by pulling quite hard, I was just about able to get 90 for both sides on the dial, and two 90's means 18%, or a pass. That would just have to do then.
Somewhat dejected, I left; and despite all his effort he only charged me an hour's labour. What a thoroughly nice chap and if anyone wants the name of a diamond-geezer MoT inspector in Plymouth, let me know.
So I to cheer me up a little I thought about taking the long way home. That was until I started to smell brake pads!!!! Disaster; the pads were binding and got quite hot - scorched the discs and even the wheels themselves were warm to the touch. Luckily I had the requisite tools with me, and so pulled into a petrol station and slackened them off a few turns. This is not going well!!
To try and salvage some sort of fun out of what was quite a miserable day, I stopped off at home on the way to the workshop and picked up Emma, and we went out for what was quite a cheeky semi-legit 20min drive around the lanes.
It was worth it because I did feel a bit more love for the car after it caused me a day's worth of grief!! Not really done any fast B-road driving in it up until that point, but WOW it was awesome. I don't believe I've driven anything that handles as well as that, it is literally perfect. Really can't wait to get it finished!!
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| Legend 6 vs my Evo X - both very fast but vastly different experiences! |
Well then, the re-test is on Wednesday, so we'll see what that brings. I've left the gaiter off the handbrake, and my plan is to just put it on the rollers, see what happens, and if it's low on efficiency screw it up a few turns...
For reference, I found out the weight earlier this week, had to do battle with VOSA once more, who were only prepared to fax (yes that's right, fax... what's that now?) me the data sheet with the weights on. But on its own its kerb weight is 740kg (370+370, perfect 50/50 weight distribution) and with me in 840kg (395+445) and I know that's correct because I do weigh 100kg exactly!
Let's see what happens later this week then... The only place left from here is a complete re-think on the handbrake, perhaps using a different lever and cables? Maybe the setup from the car that the callipers are from? (Golf mk3)
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