CurtisRider

I've been wanting to get back on the bike and have had a urge for a single speed hardtail. A hunt on Gumtree found me a frame, cranks, some wheels and other little bits. I have ordered a chain and some other sundries so hopefully the bike will be rolling on Wednesday Initially I was going to go rigid but figured some front bounce would be nice so I reassembled my old Pikes. I also have an upgraded Hope wheelset for my Trance Hopefully with a good clean it will end up looking alright, certainly ticks my boxes of requirements!

Got my gearbox mount on and tried it out today, no more backlash and no extra vibrations noticed. £114 saved

Porsche gearbox mounts are £140 for a pair (lowest price I can find). VAG gearbox mounts are £26 for a pair+a little bit of fabrication of a top plate mounting. Quite happy with my little discovery, hopefully I can get the top plate made tomorrow and test them out at the end of the week The old mounts are falling apart completely, the gearbox must shift about a fair bit!

Nice one, that looks good! I quickly sprayed the centre of one wheel yesterday, then forgot to put the wheels back indoors overnight and they got a little wet which has ruined the finish. Much to Jolfas delight I am now bored of prepping and painting so I'll just run them over with some 'black' hammer finish paint (more like gunmetal) and be done with it, i'm 3D printing some centre caps currently, this should make them look a little more finished

My mate had one of those, it was rather lovely to ride!

I prepped the wheels this morning but it was proving to be a timely and not very worthwhile exercise as really they need shotblasting. I whacked on some primer but the dips and stuff were showing so out came the hammer finish paint to make it all look the same. I figured since the car only looks good from a distance then it'll be fine! I found some paints in the garage and did the lips gold which i'm happy with. I tried a white centre but it looks too full on as the centres are rather solid in appearance. I think I'll paint the centres satin black and do the centre caps in gold to match the lips which should break up the mass of black from when I first fitted them!

After spending the week redecorating my house I finally found the time to get prepping the steels! I'm still undecided as to what colour/colours to go for but at least I can get them in primer 2 wheels were rather riddled with brake dust and surface rust, and I wanted to keep rust at bay So I degreased them, used some alloy wheel cleaner and then wire brushed them rather a lot. I then slapped some Hammerite on with a brush as it's only the inside and nobody sees it Annoyingly there was some white paint still on the brush but at least its tidy and protected a bit better there now

Yeah the black and the silver doesn't work, but that's just how they came. I still really like the gold so I think gold centres with either a silver, white or black lip would look pretty cool? They won't be staying on the car long term, it's just a way of me being able to run some decent rubber without breaking the bank! I quite like the look of Weller wheels so may get some of them at some point

Collected and quickly fitted to see how they look. My dilemma is they need to be 20mm larger in diameter to be the same overall height as my standard wheel/tyre combo as I'm not sure if they look quite right currently although changing size makes tyre choices worse/more expensive from a quick look. Standard wheels Steel vs alloy Black vs silver All black

Woop, just found 2 separate sellers with the wheels I want at a good price. Most seem to want silly amounts for steel wheels and knackered tyres, £100+ for a set... I'd been strugling for ages to find wheels and just gave up but this morning I found some adverts that looked promising I am collecting 4 wheels from one seller with 2x5mm Paradas on and the other 2 are bare and then 2 wheels off another seller with 5mm T1Rs on. These tyres will be a significant improvement over what I have now and for £40 for 6 wheels and 4 tyres it's a saving over buying 2 new tyres that won't grip for my stock wheels. The hardest decision is deciding what colour to go for, do I stay with black or do I go with the same gold I used on my Porsche wheels? I think gold centres and silver lips could look quite nice

I'm going to look at some steel wheels tonight, I want to be able to run some better tyres on the Porsche and don't have enough for decent alloys so i'm hoping some french steels will look alright and allow me to run something stickier

Ha ha nice one! I just fitted some 25mm spacers out back, there's very little space between the tyre and arch so I'm happy with that. It now means the rear doesn't look so tucked and matches the front which has a pretty small tyre to arch gap as standard. Porsche offered 20mm spacers as an option on these cars but finding the genuine ones is near on impossible but at least it should mean that the car will gain from them being fitted as Porsche don't tend to offer performance upgrades that don't actually aid performance! I need some new tyres upfront, I kind of want new wheels but can't justify them quite yet. I'm sure some will come along for a bargain price once I buy new tyres...

I got the valance fitted and took a few shots when I went food shopping. The car needs a good polish but is starting to look the way I want it now, one day it'll get a proper paint job but it looks good from several hundred meters away! Old V new Sometimes it is good compare to how it was before...

My door seals were very rotten and kept falling off when the doors were opened. Andy from the owners club sorted me with some decent secondhand ones and the car looks just that little bit fresher! Shame it highlights other bad areas but it's all little steps forwards.Old seals That's better! I washed the new ones and gave them some tyre shine treatment Fibreglass turbo valance needed some work so i've done little bits over the week, still not perfect but is far smoother and no bloody stone chip stuff visible! I seem to ruin front valances anyway so it won't be long before it has more paint. It's been filler primered and then had a coat of white primer and a few coats of alpine white. I had to trim a spare grille to fit as the curves on these are not right, I then gave it a quick blast with black satin plastic paint. Looking forward to getting it all fitted

Danny I bought the same connectors and found them to be absolutely fine, I went for the cheapest I could find too! I just used a small flat screwdriver to press the pins in, they make a little click and they are then seated nicely.

Could you not make some out of wood? I could make them from wood or steel for you but I won't have time until Easter

That's well handy, cheers for that link Luke! George, your geekery is awesome!

Any particular accessories you are trying to shift? Or is it literally getting people to buy anything? How much room do you have to make use of?

Just the fuel, he has a gas tester so we just kept upping the fuel until it stopped being so lumpy and it was only at 2.5, started at 2.1 which was pretty good for a guess using my nose at the exhaust as a my way of testing before It's amazing how such tiny adjustments makes such a difference to it all! I have rebuilt my entire K jet system, so if you need any help then let me know, it can be a swine at first but once you get your head around it then it can work very well.

I went and saw the 924 club chairman tonight to collect some parts and for him to tweak my fuelling, finally my car runs without lumping all the bloody time! I got myself a front turbo valance (fibreglass but a good fit apparently), a spare dash which I can refurbish and fit when I have mine out to do the steering column bearings, some doors seals and an indicator housing that actually has its mountings on still...although the insides contained polythene and duct tape to hold the bulb in and 'reflect' light, so i'll rebuild it with one of my spare broken indicator housings. The indicator stuff is now in the dishwasher, ready to put together tomorrow when I get a moment.

I've been chatting to my dad about consuming a few bays of one of our buildings so I have a fresh workshop space as mine is beyond bothering to save and I really need to be moving all my workshop stuff back to the farm soon. I have done a quick Sketchup layout but realised 3 bays won't be enough, I think I will need 4 as apart from the stuff in the images I need to be able to squeeze in another lathe, swager, floor standing polisher, brake press, other welders, and a space for a long term project to sit in a rotisserie/become a spray booth when needed. It'll have an extraction system seeing as I already have a nice set up waiting, and plenty of strip lighting. I'm trying to think of a way that everything is accessible easily but equipment that is less used is tucked away. Seeing as this is part of a larger building, I will have a nice open section in front that is covered so I can do larger metalwork projects outside the workshop. I want to leave space so a ramp can be installed later but my drive on hydraulic ramps will suffice for now. A separate building will be used for storing cars, parts and materials. And once that is done I need to home all my woodwork equipment, that's an even larger collection

Ahh I see, on mine you tighten a bolt or something for the preload and ram in as much grease as possible

How does the auto adjustment work Adam? Aren't inner tie rods considered part of the rack or am I being stupid?

Mike have you checked your steering rack/column? Mine both have play in and are causing me grief, I have fresh parts to fit though and along with tracking it should make my front end feel like new

I can only do the dates between end of March/ beginning of April