Saturday, September 06, 2014

More jobs done.

I forgot to mention that I had one of my sealed beam headlights fail. This prompted me to carry out the halogen conversion. I borrowed a sealed beam unit from a Sprint owner whose car is in the throes of a weldathon. I bought a couple of fused relays from the local Halfords and fitted them close to the battery and wiring loom to keep the cable runs as short as possible to avoid introducing any further problems.
As soon as I'd done the relays, another sealed beam unit failed so I ordered the halogen conversion kit from James Paddock which included the halogen bulbs.
I fitted them to the car without too much trouble and the headlights are looking much brighter now.
Getting back to the brakes, after much discussion on the TDC forum I decided that the best way was to stick with standard brakes (I considered Jon Jackson's "trackerjack" conversion which uses VW Golf vented discs and Ford Sierra calipers). To this end I bought a pair of reconditioned calipers. TDC Spares had none I stock so I ordered a pair from Wins International and they came in the post the next day.
I wasted no time in fitting them. The job went without a single hitch. The old pads had plenty of meat left on them so they were reused making sure they went back in exactly the same place as before. Once I'd bled the air out of the system braking was restored. I've also changed the transmission fluid and renewed the road tax.