It's been a little while since my last post, in this time I've visited Frankie and Benny's twice (yes I am broke but both are once a year occasions!), written a few reports and actually finally done some reading for my individual project!
Oh and the big news is that I'm trying to move course, it's quite late in the day for such a thing but as things are the future is bleak, next semester the quality of teaching plummets from poor to abysmal, also the content is less and less relevant to my plans for the future. So I'm hoping to change from Aerospace to Mechanical Engineering (Nuclear) aka Nuclear Engineering. There will be 3 instances of playing major catch up; one being these last 4 weeks of the first semester as I attempt to learn 8 weeks worth of material over night; a task I'm told is possible!
I will not know until the earliest Monday, but I have made a phone call and sent a follow up email tonight which should get the ball rolling. In some respects I would miss Aerospace, mainly due to the wow factor.. but I suppose Nuclear Engineering does still sound quite formidable.
I've been meaning to call you a number of times to see how you're doing but there doesn't seem to be enough hours in the day! I'm also guessing from the fact you haven't called me you've either realised I'm busy or you're as busy as I am!
I hope Granme is doing better now and is there any news on the car?
Saturday, 19 November 2011
Thursday, 3 November 2011
Saturday, 29 October 2011
Tuesday, 25 October 2011
DR600
With the money left from expenses and a helping hand from Claire I was able to buy a winter bike.. and it's really nice!!!
Tuesday, 11 October 2011
Wednesday, 5 October 2011
Compact MPVs
Compact MPVs are a good alternative to estates, what they lack in length they usually make up for in height and can have quite a high driving position. The higher driving position makes the car more appealing to the elderly or those who frequently transport the elderly/those with disabilities, this actually has an indirect bonus of the car usually being well looked after and having fewer previous owners (increasing the chance of a FSH).
So on to the cars:
The C-MAX
An MPV offering from Ford, with the car starting production around 2003 and a facelift taking place between 2006-2007. The common choice of engine is the 1.6L turbo diesel but a 1.8/2L petrol (same engine as in the mondeo mk3) is also on the cards.
The standard trim is hideous and looks as bad as the mk1 mondeo standard interior.. infact it looks like they had some left over fabric and thought 'why not?'. There is an all leather interior which is better looking and I've seen a cream interior but I'm not sure if this was from the facelift version (2010+).
Price wise these are on the top end of budget starting at around £2200 upwards, however most of those on offer that I've seen have had low mileage and appear to be well kept. A number of these are extremely over priced in what I can only assume is traders attempting to fool unwitting buyers (which many elderly are) into paying more than is reasonable. It's a good looking car and has all the standard features expected of a modern car (CD, electric windows, A/C, remote central locking, power steering etc). This really is the mondeo of the MPV market.
A larger alternative to the C-MAX is the S-MAX which is people carrier territory, and I would say larger than required. Since it was released in 2006 it may be hard to find one of these in the price range.
Zafira
Vauxhall's offering was the inspiration for this discussion on compact MPVs. The Zafira is now on it's 3rd generation classed as the Zafira C which is yet to be released. The Zafira A is starting to show its age now in both its style and asking price:
The Zafira B began sales in 2005 which means it comes in at more expensive than the C-MAX with asking prices around £4500 and sales between £3000-4000 depending on mileage, that said the imminent release of a new facelift model can only cause prices to drop.
You can recognise the Zafira B from the thick bit towards the top of the grill.
Scenic
The offering from Renault is what introduced the compact MPV to the world. The first generation Scenic was simply a small MPV but is a bit bigger than other car which have been discussed. What we're really looking at is the 2nd generation 2003-2009. The question with this, and infact all Renaults of the time, is do you love the styling or hate it. I am of course referring to the 'bum' on the back:
After a quick search the Scenic is probably the cheapest of the bunch with sales rarely exceeding £3000 even from 2008 models. Renault offer good value for money as depending on the trim level there are extra features, gadgets and gizmos to play with. Some would argue all these extra things are just faults waiting to happen, which may be true, but this is the generation of Renaults that made up the lost ground from poor reliability of the older models.
Altea
This is from Seat and is a slight divergence from the other cars shown. Rather than being a scaled down MPV the Altea is more of a stretched hatchback:
This is a nice looking car and seems to be going for the same price as the C-MAX, similarly it seems to have a bit of a dull interior but boasts the same features.
There are other compact MPVs out there but I have either not included them because I think they're either too crap, too ugly or too far out of the price range. Any of the cars above would be reliable, stylish and cheaper to tax if the 1.6 Diesel option was selected (with the exception of the Vauxhall which is a 1.7 Diesel). All the cars have similar engine options starting from a 1.6ish Turbo diesel and 1.8+ Petrol.
Tuesday, 4 October 2011
Car Search
Hey I’ve had a quick glance and like all of the car market cars just aren’t selling its a real buyers market at the moment. With a budget between £2000-3000 you could get one of youngest mk3 mondeo estates
[mk3 Mondeo]
(around 2005 with low mileage) which will look the same or very similar to the one here but there are improvements to the design etc. You would probably have some money spare at the end too!
[mk4 Mondeo]
A mk4 mondeo sadly is not on the cards simply because they started in 07 and you’re still paying for the age and in some cases warranty.
[Volvo V40]
[Volvo V40]
A surprising find was that Volvo’s seem to be very cheap to buy! Volvo are renowned for safety and reliability but have more of a luxurious feel than a Mondeo. The V40 is a very good and stylish (later models anyway) car and come in slightly cheaper than a mk3 Mondeo. The V50’s (newer model and more stylishly designed) are being listed quite a bit higher but are simply not selling so it’s likely they might just about fall into the very top of your budget.
[Volvo V40]
What is hard to find with a Volvo is a low mileage (or a low mileage thats not on an auto), since they are such a reliable car and don’t tend to be bought by people who care a great deal about fashion or modern styling the second hand market tends to be flooded with cars that have 100+k miles on them. That said most Volvos expect to see the 200k mark and maybe go way beyond it!
[Vauxhall Vectra]
[Vauxhall Astra]
Ofcourse there is still the Renault Laguna estate as an alternative to the Mondeo and a Vauxhall Vectra Estate, The Vauxhall Astra estate is comparable to the Focus estate which you may find too small.
A further alternative is the MPV market including things like the zafira or larger.
Finally a thought on why you want a bigger car; In addition to preferring larger cars I’m assuming your wanting a bigger car incase I need to move stuff or move house. The fact is no estate, van or car in general would be big enough to accommodate all my stuff, infact only a truck would be upto the job. But what may be better if your wanting to keep these things in mind is a smaller car (ie focus size car medium hatch/saloon that has a towbar and roof box. That way when you don’t need all the storage space your not wasting fuel dragging it around town and when you do you have more space than is possible than with even the largest estate car. It seems like a happy medium, also you would likely find the cars cheaper to run on fuel and they would feel more powerful as the same engine is powering a lighter frame. A focus is still a big car, alternatively a Zafira could also tow and thats an MPV.
You’ll have to let me know what you think
Saturday, 1 October 2011
Busy Busy Busy!!
So this has been the first proper week back at uni and already I feel like I've been back a month!
There's a few things to report:
Uni Stuff
First off I've made a very brief start on my individual project,that is a feasibility study of fitting a nuclear reactor on an aircraft. At the moment it's just a contents page so I have an idea of what to cover and a little bit of an introduction. It's still quite an interesting project and there are many sceptics who I can have a good debate (argument) with about it all.
Aswell as this project we have another year long project, although this one is a group design project. The task is to conceive and design a fractionated space craft (one where each part of the space or even individual spacecraft has its own unique role) to perform as task or service of our choosing. For this we've decided to create a defence satellite constellation which is able to provide on demand high resolution ground imaging and closer to real time surveillance all at a lower cost than current technology. The plan is simple enough that there are 2 separate constellations, one for controllers which maintain a geo-stationary orbit (the satellite will stay over the same bit of earth at all times) and one which will be in low earth orbit. the GEO constellation is for conrtoller sats which will keep constant communication with the surveillance sats, these are used to maintain a good coverage of the earth and allow for information to be passed to any part of the globe. The surveillance sats have a standby orbit where they simply orbit the earth by a flight path as determined by the controller sats. However, should it be required the sat can break orbit and descend into an elliptical orbit allowing it to get closer to earth and potentially communicate with earth directly. By being closer the resolution of the images are improved and communication time is reduced.
It's only in the earliest of stages but the project seems to have alot of meat in it that we can get stuck into, its also quite an interesting concept which, as far as I know, is not currently employed.
In addition to these projects I still have x2 nuclear units, x1 maths unit and x1 modelling & simulation unit. Theres no slow welcome back for us it's straight in and on with the work! Assignments have been set. That said over the past 2 weeks I've been partly pre occupied with PASS and similar bits of organisation. This week we ran an icebreaker event for the 1st years; it's an important event as it not only gives the 1st years a good opportunity to meet with their coursemates and their PASS leaders but also the success of the event will dictate the attendance to the sessions for the remainder of the year. The event was one primarily of my design which was to design and build crude polystyrene models to be used in a smoke tunnel so that flow around the model could be visualised. Unfortunately I had to miss most of the event to purchase the prizes, and while the event went ok I can't help feeling it could've been better. Overall I think it was an improvement over what has been run in previous years but if run smoothly it would've been even better. Here are a few pics from the event:
Bike Stuff
As I mentioned today I have won the competition!!! And will be touring all over the place taking photos of road signs and the bike. It's going to be action packed and will last 7 days, which is alot of riding! Someone suggested I should put the photos up on facebook or something as I get them.. it would be quite cool if I put them on a blog like this so you could be emailed and maybe even follow me on a map over the course of a day!
Anyway, since the bike clutch has been giving me hell for a good while and I hadn't gotten round to looking at it, I finally looked today and not 10 minutes later it was completely sorted and the clutch is not better than when I bought the bike!!! - So much so that I look forward to riding it to uni at the next opportunity! Also with all that travelling I've decided to buy a top box and rack, unfortunately I don't think I can afford to keep them once I come back but its better than having a heavy bag on your back for hours everyday. I'm considering buying some touring boots but in honesty I'm not sure I can find where I can steal the money from in my already stretched budget!! But all in all once the rack arrives I'm pretty much set to go! Have been looking at when is best to set off, for me it's probably Oct 10th but it doesn't seem like Claire will be able to do that week so it may be the week of Oct 17th instead. We shall see...
Car Stuff
With all the other things going on I haven't had chance to do much on the car, but it has had a wash!! and is now very shiny.. there's a few scratches and marks to T-cut out yet. My plan for the car this weekend is to get the fuel gauge working. On Monday I should be receiving a call about the part I ordered and will be able to do the crankshaft pulley and have another shot at starting the engine. My aim is for the car to be completed by next weekend sort of time, but we'll have to see.
Last time I was by the car I remembered to finally take a photo!This is a pic of the crank locking pin that has caused all of the recent troubles!!!
Notice the bend.. which is not supposed to happen!!
Other Stuff
Other than that Rosie has been for her innoculations and the vet seemed genuinely afraid of her. She didn't really enjoy the experience and was a bit moody with me after as I had to hold her still whilst the vet was stabbing her with a needle! Also, to our surprise she is micro chipped, but not yet registered to me. She's due her 2nd set of injections in just under 2 weeks time. She's having to wear her vet cone all the time now and I had to pay out £15 for some cream because she thinks chewing on her leg is a good idea and me and the vet disagree! Shes on the mend and still looks as ridiculous as ever with the cone on!
There's a few things to report:
Uni Stuff
First off I've made a very brief start on my individual project,that is a feasibility study of fitting a nuclear reactor on an aircraft. At the moment it's just a contents page so I have an idea of what to cover and a little bit of an introduction. It's still quite an interesting project and there are many sceptics who I can have a good debate (argument) with about it all.
Aswell as this project we have another year long project, although this one is a group design project. The task is to conceive and design a fractionated space craft (one where each part of the space or even individual spacecraft has its own unique role) to perform as task or service of our choosing. For this we've decided to create a defence satellite constellation which is able to provide on demand high resolution ground imaging and closer to real time surveillance all at a lower cost than current technology. The plan is simple enough that there are 2 separate constellations, one for controllers which maintain a geo-stationary orbit (the satellite will stay over the same bit of earth at all times) and one which will be in low earth orbit. the GEO constellation is for conrtoller sats which will keep constant communication with the surveillance sats, these are used to maintain a good coverage of the earth and allow for information to be passed to any part of the globe. The surveillance sats have a standby orbit where they simply orbit the earth by a flight path as determined by the controller sats. However, should it be required the sat can break orbit and descend into an elliptical orbit allowing it to get closer to earth and potentially communicate with earth directly. By being closer the resolution of the images are improved and communication time is reduced.
It's only in the earliest of stages but the project seems to have alot of meat in it that we can get stuck into, its also quite an interesting concept which, as far as I know, is not currently employed.
In addition to these projects I still have x2 nuclear units, x1 maths unit and x1 modelling & simulation unit. Theres no slow welcome back for us it's straight in and on with the work! Assignments have been set. That said over the past 2 weeks I've been partly pre occupied with PASS and similar bits of organisation. This week we ran an icebreaker event for the 1st years; it's an important event as it not only gives the 1st years a good opportunity to meet with their coursemates and their PASS leaders but also the success of the event will dictate the attendance to the sessions for the remainder of the year. The event was one primarily of my design which was to design and build crude polystyrene models to be used in a smoke tunnel so that flow around the model could be visualised. Unfortunately I had to miss most of the event to purchase the prizes, and while the event went ok I can't help feeling it could've been better. Overall I think it was an improvement over what has been run in previous years but if run smoothly it would've been even better. Here are a few pics from the event:
Bike Stuff
As I mentioned today I have won the competition!!! And will be touring all over the place taking photos of road signs and the bike. It's going to be action packed and will last 7 days, which is alot of riding! Someone suggested I should put the photos up on facebook or something as I get them.. it would be quite cool if I put them on a blog like this so you could be emailed and maybe even follow me on a map over the course of a day!
Anyway, since the bike clutch has been giving me hell for a good while and I hadn't gotten round to looking at it, I finally looked today and not 10 minutes later it was completely sorted and the clutch is not better than when I bought the bike!!! - So much so that I look forward to riding it to uni at the next opportunity! Also with all that travelling I've decided to buy a top box and rack, unfortunately I don't think I can afford to keep them once I come back but its better than having a heavy bag on your back for hours everyday. I'm considering buying some touring boots but in honesty I'm not sure I can find where I can steal the money from in my already stretched budget!! But all in all once the rack arrives I'm pretty much set to go! Have been looking at when is best to set off, for me it's probably Oct 10th but it doesn't seem like Claire will be able to do that week so it may be the week of Oct 17th instead. We shall see...
Car Stuff
With all the other things going on I haven't had chance to do much on the car, but it has had a wash!! and is now very shiny.. there's a few scratches and marks to T-cut out yet. My plan for the car this weekend is to get the fuel gauge working. On Monday I should be receiving a call about the part I ordered and will be able to do the crankshaft pulley and have another shot at starting the engine. My aim is for the car to be completed by next weekend sort of time, but we'll have to see.
Last time I was by the car I remembered to finally take a photo!This is a pic of the crank locking pin that has caused all of the recent troubles!!!
Notice the bend.. which is not supposed to happen!!
Other Stuff
Other than that Rosie has been for her innoculations and the vet seemed genuinely afraid of her. She didn't really enjoy the experience and was a bit moody with me after as I had to hold her still whilst the vet was stabbing her with a needle! Also, to our surprise she is micro chipped, but not yet registered to me. She's due her 2nd set of injections in just under 2 weeks time. She's having to wear her vet cone all the time now and I had to pay out £15 for some cream because she thinks chewing on her leg is a good idea and me and the vet disagree! Shes on the mend and still looks as ridiculous as ever with the cone on!
Sunday, 25 September 2011
Mondeo Progress
Following on from the work with the cylinder head I've now nearly completed rebuilding the engine with a great deal of help from Rob, proof:
(Click on the images to see them full size)
I've had a good opportunity to use the compressor on quite a few jobs and it's made it a much easier rebuild than it could've been! That said not everything went according to plan!!
To start with the engine block need cleaning which has to be done by hand. Really I shoul've done a before and after shot but I only remembered the camera in time for the after:
It's a bit of an awkward and boring job but the end result was quite satisfying. Next up is placing the new gasket on ready to fit the cylinder head:
The new gasket seemed quite flimsy compared to others I've seen but was definitely the correct one and aside from being a bit bendy and wouldn't stay in place was fine. With the gasket in place it's time to fit the head:
So now it's starting to looking like an engine again.. however there are still some important bits missing and the one job I was a little worried about. The job I'm talking about was refitting the camshafts and timing chain, here the camshafts are in place in the engine but not bolted down:
Now it's probably worth explaining how I was planning on fitting these. Usually I would've locked the camshafts however this time I was being very careful and decided to follow Haynes and do it a ridiculous (but ultimately succesful way). I had fitted a crankshaft locking pin which you may remember I had to wait quite a long time to arrive in order to remove the crankshaft pulley... well it turns out the pain actually bent whilst removing the crankshaft pulley which is ridiculous since it should be designed for this sort of job. I'm guessing this happened due to the crankshaft pulley being overly tightened by whoever last put it back on and also me not having an impact wrench to remove it. Anyway, luckily I was able to extract the locking pin from the engine but this presents two problems.
The first problem was that when I had stripped the engine it wasn't at TDC (top dead centre) as I had thought. This made rebuilding a problem as I needed to fit the camshafts in the correct position with respect to the crankshaft. My first attempt was to use a photo I had taken whilst stripping to try and place the cams in the correct place:
You can see on the end of the camshaft there are notches which should be parrellel and clearly here are not!!! I rebuilt the engine to look like this so it would match up with the crankshaft. Sadly after bolting down the crankshaft, fighting the timing chain and guides back on I tested the engine by turning it over by hand. There was interaction between the valves and piston which means if the engine had been started by the key it would've bent all the valves and caused a terrible mess pretty much destroying all the work I'd just done! However since I checked it was alright but meant I had to go for plan B. Going for plan B also meant having to remove the recently fitted timing chain, guides and camshafts which were hard enough to put on the first time!!
The problem was that plan B required me to find TDC and without the timing peg/locking pin locating TDC is a bit tough. We had to resort to the screwdriver in the spark plug method, whilst not quite as accurate as a timing peg (a straight one that is) it did the job nicely:
Now in the above picture you may see a ruler and some screwdrivers wedged to hold the camshafts in place, after some debate we decided this wasn't good enough but still I wasn't willing to spend the money (and more importantly the time) getting a specialist Ford tool delivered. So we headed off to B&Q and after a great deal of searching found a 5mm strip of metal which was used in place to lock the camshafts. On a side note its nearly impossible to find anything 5mm thick in B&Q!!!
That was the end of Yesterdays efforts. Today I neglected to take any photos but I can be forgiven for this as I got quite a bit done: We found TDC using the screwdriver and then had to move the piston about half a turn to avoid damage whilst fitting the camshafts, the camshafts were bolted down and the timing chain and guides refitted. Now once again the moment of truth I turned the engine by hand, this time however it turned as I expected and a it had done before it was stripped. Once this gap had been bridged it was just a matter of pressing on. The timing cover and side of the engine block were cleaned and a new silicon gasket applied and the cover fitted. Next the crankshaft pulley went back on, followed by the water pump pulley and drivebelt tensioner. Once those bits were in place the engine mount was back on and the engine was once again being held in place by the car and not a jack as it has been these past weeks! Not content with what had been done so far the inlet and exhaust manifolds were refitted and the camshaft cover had it's gaskets replaced and was refitted, just as it was getting dark the power steering pump was being repaired. I'm not entirely convinced this repair will hold but removing the power steering pump is not the toughest of jobs but will mean that the power steering fluid level must be checked daily at first and if it's ok checked and refilled weekly from then on.
Tomorrow will be relatively easy in comparison, that is if everything has worked so far! the jobs for tomorrow are:
finish fitting power steering pump
attach fuel injectors
reattach wiring loom
refit air intake and various bits of body work
perform a service
buy and put in some power steering fluid
and finally after wondering what all the spare bits I've got are for I can attempt to start the car! This will either be a moment of great celebration or disappointment (as is always the case after rebuilding something).
Either way lets hope I remember to take a few photos tomorrow!
(Click on the images to see them full size)
I've had a good opportunity to use the compressor on quite a few jobs and it's made it a much easier rebuild than it could've been! That said not everything went according to plan!!
To start with the engine block need cleaning which has to be done by hand. Really I shoul've done a before and after shot but I only remembered the camera in time for the after:
It's a bit of an awkward and boring job but the end result was quite satisfying. Next up is placing the new gasket on ready to fit the cylinder head:
The new gasket seemed quite flimsy compared to others I've seen but was definitely the correct one and aside from being a bit bendy and wouldn't stay in place was fine. With the gasket in place it's time to fit the head:
So now it's starting to looking like an engine again.. however there are still some important bits missing and the one job I was a little worried about. The job I'm talking about was refitting the camshafts and timing chain, here the camshafts are in place in the engine but not bolted down:
Now it's probably worth explaining how I was planning on fitting these. Usually I would've locked the camshafts however this time I was being very careful and decided to follow Haynes and do it a ridiculous (but ultimately succesful way). I had fitted a crankshaft locking pin which you may remember I had to wait quite a long time to arrive in order to remove the crankshaft pulley... well it turns out the pain actually bent whilst removing the crankshaft pulley which is ridiculous since it should be designed for this sort of job. I'm guessing this happened due to the crankshaft pulley being overly tightened by whoever last put it back on and also me not having an impact wrench to remove it. Anyway, luckily I was able to extract the locking pin from the engine but this presents two problems.
The first problem was that when I had stripped the engine it wasn't at TDC (top dead centre) as I had thought. This made rebuilding a problem as I needed to fit the camshafts in the correct position with respect to the crankshaft. My first attempt was to use a photo I had taken whilst stripping to try and place the cams in the correct place:
You can see on the end of the camshaft there are notches which should be parrellel and clearly here are not!!! I rebuilt the engine to look like this so it would match up with the crankshaft. Sadly after bolting down the crankshaft, fighting the timing chain and guides back on I tested the engine by turning it over by hand. There was interaction between the valves and piston which means if the engine had been started by the key it would've bent all the valves and caused a terrible mess pretty much destroying all the work I'd just done! However since I checked it was alright but meant I had to go for plan B. Going for plan B also meant having to remove the recently fitted timing chain, guides and camshafts which were hard enough to put on the first time!!
The problem was that plan B required me to find TDC and without the timing peg/locking pin locating TDC is a bit tough. We had to resort to the screwdriver in the spark plug method, whilst not quite as accurate as a timing peg (a straight one that is) it did the job nicely:
Now in the above picture you may see a ruler and some screwdrivers wedged to hold the camshafts in place, after some debate we decided this wasn't good enough but still I wasn't willing to spend the money (and more importantly the time) getting a specialist Ford tool delivered. So we headed off to B&Q and after a great deal of searching found a 5mm strip of metal which was used in place to lock the camshafts. On a side note its nearly impossible to find anything 5mm thick in B&Q!!!
That was the end of Yesterdays efforts. Today I neglected to take any photos but I can be forgiven for this as I got quite a bit done: We found TDC using the screwdriver and then had to move the piston about half a turn to avoid damage whilst fitting the camshafts, the camshafts were bolted down and the timing chain and guides refitted. Now once again the moment of truth I turned the engine by hand, this time however it turned as I expected and a it had done before it was stripped. Once this gap had been bridged it was just a matter of pressing on. The timing cover and side of the engine block were cleaned and a new silicon gasket applied and the cover fitted. Next the crankshaft pulley went back on, followed by the water pump pulley and drivebelt tensioner. Once those bits were in place the engine mount was back on and the engine was once again being held in place by the car and not a jack as it has been these past weeks! Not content with what had been done so far the inlet and exhaust manifolds were refitted and the camshaft cover had it's gaskets replaced and was refitted, just as it was getting dark the power steering pump was being repaired. I'm not entirely convinced this repair will hold but removing the power steering pump is not the toughest of jobs but will mean that the power steering fluid level must be checked daily at first and if it's ok checked and refilled weekly from then on.
Tomorrow will be relatively easy in comparison, that is if everything has worked so far! the jobs for tomorrow are:
finish fitting power steering pump
attach fuel injectors
reattach wiring loom
refit air intake and various bits of body work
perform a service
buy and put in some power steering fluid
and finally after wondering what all the spare bits I've got are for I can attempt to start the car! This will either be a moment of great celebration or disappointment (as is always the case after rebuilding something).
Either way lets hope I remember to take a few photos tomorrow!
Wednesday, 21 September 2011
A new addition to the grease family
Further to my previous blog "bloody impact wrenches" I have now bought not only a really long bar but also an air compressor which came with a tonne of tools!!!
Here are the pics of what I got...
(Click on the images to see them full size)
The contents are:
x1 50L 2.5HP air compressor with x2 quick release outlets (standard) and built-in pressure gauge and regulator (also both standard)
x1 5m recoil air hose with quick release
x2 1/2" impact wrenches
x1 3/8" air ratchet
x1 short blow gun
x1 long blow gun
x1 spray/grease bottle
x1 spray gun
x1 sand gun (with x1 spare cover)
x1 air saw (with x1 saw)
x1 air grinder (with disk)
x1 air shears (with oil, quick release nozzle and allen key)
x1 air drill (with x1 drill bit)
x1 air hammer (with x1 chisel)
in the photo it also shows a tyre inflater but this wasn't actually included. I've since bought one quite cheaply on ebay which is pretty much the same. So now I have a decent air compressor and 14 air tools!
To be honest I'm really chuffed with the purchase and managed to haggle a bit more off while I was there!! It was a real steal and I've already been using it to clean the cylinder head!
Here are the pics of what I got...
(Click on the images to see them full size)
The contents are:
x1 50L 2.5HP air compressor with x2 quick release outlets (standard) and built-in pressure gauge and regulator (also both standard)
x1 5m recoil air hose with quick release
x2 1/2" impact wrenches
x1 3/8" air ratchet
x1 short blow gun
x1 long blow gun
x1 spray/grease bottle
x1 spray gun
x1 sand gun (with x1 spare cover)
x1 air saw (with x1 saw)
x1 air grinder (with disk)
x1 air shears (with oil, quick release nozzle and allen key)
x1 air drill (with x1 drill bit)
x1 air hammer (with x1 chisel)
in the photo it also shows a tyre inflater but this wasn't actually included. I've since bought one quite cheaply on ebay which is pretty much the same. So now I have a decent air compressor and 14 air tools!
To be honest I'm really chuffed with the purchase and managed to haggle a bit more off while I was there!! It was a real steal and I've already been using it to clean the cylinder head!
Tuesday, 20 September 2011
Grinding Away
(Click on the images to see them full size)
Over the past week or so aswell as giving freshers directions and wearing silly hoodies I've been working on the cylinder for the Mondeo. After the head was taken off I took it away to be skimmed. I did take some photos but unfortunately I can't seem to find them!
The head came back nice and shiny on one side and the guy had given it a nice wash for free which was kind of him. This is a picture of how the cylinder head looked when it came back.
In those pictures you may be able to see some dark coloured circles, these are actually the valves, the valves had to be removed for overhaul and cleaning, and also to replace the valve stem seals. Below is a picture of the new valve stem seals in place in the cylinder head.
Before going back in the engine the valves needed grinding or re-seating. The valves are supposed to make a near air-tight seal but overtime and use gaps form and the sealing ability of the valve is reduced, re-seating the valves simply improves this air-tight seal. Below you'll see the grinding stick which you may have been slightly confused why I needed to buy it.
And now me using said grinding stick...
You can see whilst the work was being done the valves, springs, collets, retainers and waste steam seals had to be kept organised.
And lastly me assembling a valve ready to go in place.
Unfortunately there's no pictures of when me and rob were having to both work on the engine (as there was no one to take the photo!!!). This happened during the final parts of re-assembly where the collets had to be inserted into place. It is much MUCH easier if one person using the valve spring compressor whilst the other nudges the collets into place. So a big thanks to rob on this one, and as I was saying at the time "he is the beef and I am the magic man!"... This is due to our ability to place the collets in correctly after only a few seconds and a few good wobbles and prods!
Hopefully there will be more photos to follow shortly, I keep forgetting to take them as I go along, often as my hands are completely black! Oh and yes this was all done in the living room!!!!
Over the past week or so aswell as giving freshers directions and wearing silly hoodies I've been working on the cylinder for the Mondeo. After the head was taken off I took it away to be skimmed. I did take some photos but unfortunately I can't seem to find them!
The head came back nice and shiny on one side and the guy had given it a nice wash for free which was kind of him. This is a picture of how the cylinder head looked when it came back.
In those pictures you may be able to see some dark coloured circles, these are actually the valves, the valves had to be removed for overhaul and cleaning, and also to replace the valve stem seals. Below is a picture of the new valve stem seals in place in the cylinder head.
Before going back in the engine the valves needed grinding or re-seating. The valves are supposed to make a near air-tight seal but overtime and use gaps form and the sealing ability of the valve is reduced, re-seating the valves simply improves this air-tight seal. Below you'll see the grinding stick which you may have been slightly confused why I needed to buy it.
And now me using said grinding stick...
You can see whilst the work was being done the valves, springs, collets, retainers and waste steam seals had to be kept organised.
And lastly me assembling a valve ready to go in place.
Unfortunately there's no pictures of when me and rob were having to both work on the engine (as there was no one to take the photo!!!). This happened during the final parts of re-assembly where the collets had to be inserted into place. It is much MUCH easier if one person using the valve spring compressor whilst the other nudges the collets into place. So a big thanks to rob on this one, and as I was saying at the time "he is the beef and I am the magic man!"... This is due to our ability to place the collets in correctly after only a few seconds and a few good wobbles and prods!
Hopefully there will be more photos to follow shortly, I keep forgetting to take them as I go along, often as my hands are completely black! Oh and yes this was all done in the living room!!!!
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