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Thread: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

  1. #641
    Pit Crew Turbosport Subscriber Stu.C's Avatar

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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    Kind words indeed, thanks folks

    I've just checked on www.ultraleds.co.uk and the lamp units I got for the dash have indeed disappeared from sale. One quick email later and it turns out that they're out of stock with "more due in a few weeks". When they come back, you'll be looking for "501/194/T10 New Mini Light Tower 9 x WA HB Leds BLUE".

    Out for a drive on a sunny spring day reminds me why I got this car

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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    thanks stu, will get some ordered! ...keep up the cracking work,..been doing bits on mine because of you! ..well if i blame someone else it keeps the mrs happy! hahaha
    1984 Ford Capri Laser..at heart
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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    'Honestly, It was Stu's fault.' I don't see anyone buying that one.

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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project


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    Pit Crew Turbosport Subscriber Stu.C's Avatar

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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    I call your tumbleweed and raise you a jar of marmalade

    It's taken me all the way through to page 5 to find this, so the least I can do is add a pointless post to bring it back up to the top

    Current status is that the MOT expired in October and it never got put in for a fresh one due to other distractions, so it's sulking just a little at the minute. If that wasn't the least of its' problems, it got turfed out of the garage to make some storage room "just for a couple of weeks" ... three months ago

    Purely for the sake of doing something, I ordered a new starter for it today and will see if I can spend some time giving it the once over this weekend ... but I've got to get the MOT & service done on the Impreza first, which just might be the more expensive side of the equation

    Out for a drive on a sunny spring day reminds me why I got this car

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    Pit Crew Turbosport Subscriber Stu.C's Avatar

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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    Oh, I knew that there was some actual news ... Ultraleds have got those little blue tower LEDs in stock again...

    Out for a drive on a sunny spring day reminds me why I got this car

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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    This was linked over at 205Drivers forums, just finished a front to back read-up and wanted to say brilliant thread

    Always liked capri's and its always nice seeing an 80's car being well cared for.

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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    Chris - I'm to blame for cross-posting this thread to my 'home' board...

    Thanks for taking the time to record all your efforts, not only is it hugely informative it's very nicely written and a pleasure to read...

    cheers
    Ian

    Just wanted to pass on the first couple of comments from 205gtidrivers members.

    miamichris - just spent about 2 1/2 hours reading through that capri restoration thread, it was like a book I couldn't put down! great thread, I love old fords

    EdCherry - The same as chris! f*** me I better get to bed (posted at 1.48am)
    Last edited by maturin23; 12-12-2008 at 12:44.

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    Pit Crew Turbosport Subscriber Stu.C's Avatar

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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    You're more than welcome fella's and it's very decent of you to come over and put pen to paper

    I will make sure I return the compliment and pop over to read up on some nice 205 stories, armed with a nice big mug of cocoa and a few hours to kill

    For now though, I'm off outside to fit that new starter before it starts snowing

    Out for a drive on a sunny spring day reminds me why I got this car

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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    Hiya Stu,

    Another of the 205 chaps here and I'd just like to say thank you for what was a fantastic read, I've been doing something similar over the summer with an escort based kit car and it has been great to see how you have tackled the same problems that i had to (to a higher standard might i add!). Looking to get a Capri in the net couple of months and seeing this has sealed the deal. Good luck with the car and keep it up

    James.

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    Pit Crew Turbosport Subscriber Stu.C's Avatar

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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    I never did get outside before it started snowing

    So, I bought a new starter motor off t'Interweb and it arrived all nice and shiny, but it was only when I came to fit it that I realised it was missing a little spade connector on the solenoid. Turns out that though it was advertised as being for the Capri amongst a great many others, it's actually a Sierra item ... but by this time it was far too late to send it back for a refund.

    Nah worries, I thought - I'll bob down to GS Escorts and get one as then it'll definitely be right. Well, maybe he was having an off day, but I just went there for a starter and not to be patronised (and overcharged as it turns out) I simply commented that it looked rather different to the one on the car and was basically told I was imagining it ... or my car must be an auto!

    Anyhoo, so that we can all see what I'm ranting on about, the shiny starter on the left is for totally the wrong car, the grubby one in the middle is the one that came off the car and the one on the right is the latest replacement.



    With the replacement starter on, a quick turn of the key caused the engine to ... well, do bugger all if I'm honest. The car had been sitting on the drive so long that there wasn't a drop of life in the battery and even attaching the defibrillator wasn't enough to get it turned over. An overnight charge on the battery, though, and it fired up first time and has been tickety-boo ever since

    After getting distracted by stuff going on in "the real world" the MOT had expired in October, so a new ticket was needed if I was to stop this hunk of metal being just an oversized garden ornament. Unfortunately, as the garage is still "temporarily" full of other stuff I had to work out on the cold, windy driveway , but I gave the car a basic checkover and then just thought "sod it, what's the worst that can happen?" and put it in for the test.

    As nice as the MOT tester was about the car, the spiteful little man (only joking ) still failed it on the flimsy basis that one of the front wheels had a bit of a wobble on it and the handbrake wouldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding.

    What's most annoying is that the wobble coming from a loose joint within the steering rack itself, and I'd only replaced that just over a year ago. To see if I could get away without needing to replace the rack, I snipped off the cable ties on the gaitor and tried tightening up the nut, but even though I managed to get it the best part of a full turn around, there was still play in the joint. So off came the rack ...



    Turns out that steering racks are now considered a consumable item and that no new ones have been made in any great numbers since the late eighties, they just keep reconditioning the old ones. To be sure, I've made a diary note to check it all again in eleven months so that I can get it replaced under warranty if it's as short-lived as the last one.

    On the upside, however; the Powerflex bushes on the steering rack looked as fresh as the day I'd put them on

    Adjusting the handbrake was a new one on me and the description in the Haynes is a vague mish-mash of 'old type', 'later type' and 'refer to supplement' Once I got under the car though, it was all self-evident; handbrake off, pull the cable taught by holding onto the threaded sleeve and wind the black knob up the thread until there's just a little slack.



    The handbrake's now fully on at the fifth notch, rather than when the lever's pointing at the sky. As you might be able to see, I took about an inch of slack out of the cable, so maybe they had a point

    I'll drop it back down to the test centre in the morning, as it only needs a partial re-test on the bits that failed, and see if the man from the Ministry says "yes".

    Out for a drive on a sunny spring day reminds me why I got this car

  13. #652
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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    good to see this is still going along stu,should fly through tomorrow m8.well done

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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    Nice work Stu .

    Hope you are recovering from your real world distractions, if 'recovering' is the right word (which I'm sure it isn't, but can't think of a better one at the mo.) Have missed reading of the highs and lows of Capri ownership. Hope the next instalment is not long coming.

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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    I had an Orion fail on a knackered rack for two years running. They didn't last a year.

    Strictly speaking Stu, your handbrake should be self adjusting. Adjusting the cable like that may well have fixed it for now, but I think it is only hiding some other problem.
    The "some other problem" won't be anything major. On Capris the handbrake levers inside the drum are very prone to siezing. If it is that, just a quick clean up an copper grease sorts it.

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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    Glad to see this thread back up again StuFingers crossed for the MOT
    tommy 2000

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    Pit Crew Turbosport Subscriber Stu.C's Avatar

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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    The man from the Ministry ... he say "yes" Advisories on the sills and the exhaust, but they've been advisories for at least the previous two MOTs and are on the to-do list, so don't bother me.

    I think the issue with the handbrake is most likely simply the cable stretching (it's probably still the 29 year old original) combined with the self-adjusters already being at the maximum travel of their self-adjustabilitiness, but when I get a minute I'll get the back up and have a look - but it's low down on the priority list.

    It's funny how when you don't go near a car for months it sulks and breaks out in dirty great rust patches Looking over the car, just about every panel has got new bits coming through, including bits like the tailgate where I squirted some new paint on a couple of years ago. I know how the blokes on the Forth Bridge feel now I'd love to strip the car down and repaint it properly having sorted out all the patchwork, but there's two things stopping me at the moment; a) I'd need to rebuild the garage first and b) I don't reckon I'm good enough/have the tolerance for sanding that's required to do a proper job on the paint.

    With the car now fully legit, it was immediately pressed into service as the most practical vehicle in the fleet for the run to the builder's merchants. In any other car, it's a quick trip, but this takes about two hours in the Capri as the place is full of old boys who 'had one of them back in the day ... course mine was a 2.8/3.0, etc., etc.' - none of them can seem to understand that I simply don't want a V6 and that I didn't just settle for this cos' all the good ones had gone, but they're nice about it, so I don't mind

    We tried just putting standard 4.2m lengths in, but it was a little bit unsafe, so we had to cut them down slightly



    So that I can give myself stuff to aim for this year, I'm just going to jot down a small list of jobs that want doing, in the hope I can cross some of them off whilst staying within the "pocket money" constraints for the car Let's see, off the top of my head we've got;
    • Skim, build up and fit the unleaded head (kindly supplied by Dave)
    • Paint and fit the axle location kit (again, thanks to Dave)
    • New dampers all round
    • Remove all the surface rust from the sills to see if the MOT man notices next year
    • Replace exhaust
    • Get a spare tyre that's the same size as the four on the car
    • Fit a replacement alarm/immobiliser
    • Replace front diff seal, diff gasket, refill oil and paint axle
    • Devise some permanent fitting for the front indicators
    • Rewire the fan to a switched live
    • Find some chrome window trims, door handles and wiper arms

    Should keep me busy for a few minutes here and there

    Out for a drive on a sunny spring day reminds me why I got this car

  18. #657
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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    good to see you still cracking on mate, my to do list always grows, great joy!
    1984 Ford Capri Laser..at heart
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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    Not just me that has had Plank in their Capri then.

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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    Nice to see this back on the go Stu after your enforced abscence

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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    Any updates on the capri. It has been some time since the last update. I would be interested in how the upgrades have gone.


    Tom
    Last edited by Group4_Mark2; 06-03-2010 at 14:02.

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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    just looked in his profile and stu aint posted for nearly 4months,hope all is well with him and the car etc

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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    hope all is well too

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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    Quote Originally Posted by Group4_Mark2 View Post
    hope all is well too
    Me 3

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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    I haven't heard from him for ages, but did get a text a while ago to say he was a new father.
    I'm thinking that is where his attention is these days

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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    Quote Originally Posted by Dave View Post
    I haven't heard from him for ages, but did get a text a while ago to say he was a new father.
    I'm thinking that is where his attention is these days
    Thats nice, although he will probably find working on the capri far easier and cleaner than raising 'orrible kids

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    Pit Crew Decade Plus User merp0's Avatar

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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    Quote Originally Posted by Dave View Post
    I haven't heard from him for ages, but did get a text a while ago to say he was a new father.
    I'm thinking that is where his attention is these days
    He could have started a new project thread

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    World Champion Decade Plus User caprimentle's Avatar

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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    i'm shattered, i just read from comment 1 to last comment 666, bloody damn good thread i must say, i would have something proberly more intelegent to say about it but i can quite see things in anything other than digital form for the moment, my eyes and brain have had it, i hope thiers more to come though, would be good to know

  29. #668
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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    Nice, Fjord blue capri reminds me of my old 1.6s oh those were the days

    Paul

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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    Just spent the last couple of days reading this thread on and off
    One of the best ive read and sims up the relationship we have with these old cars
    Hope all is well stu and we get an update soon
    Luke
    Hexham and District Motorclub

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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    Whatever happened to Stu........


    Real men do it Sideways

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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    Had a baby mostly

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    Cool Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    Dave's mostly right...

    So I'm talking over a beer or two with a mate and he asks how come the car's still up on bricks in the garage, on the basis that saying I've got no free time is silly because if I've got free time to have a beer then I've got free time to play with the car. Of course it's never as easy as that, because free time at eleven o'clock at night is not much use when you want to play with power tools and still be speaking to your neighbours in the morning ... but he had a point. And there was beer. And then wine. And then gin.

    My little girl's now five and since before she was born, the car's been sat there unloved and sulking. Thankfully the roof hasn't blown off the garage (yet) so it's mainly just dirty - except for pretty much wherever I've worked on the car before, where there's new pitting of surface rust. So here begins the gentle process of bringing it out of hibernation, with an hour or two here and there whenever I get the opportunity.

    There's no grand plan to which I'm working. There's no date by which anything absolutely has to happen. We'll just get it back on the road first and work from there. The last list of jobs that wanted doing (from 2009) still applies. You'll not be surprised to learn I've made a few more lists in the meantime , but we'll get to them in due course. I had some bits waiting to go on the car before it went into hibernation and I've accumulated one or two more since...

    boxes1.jpg

    The rad cap lost its springiness and the battery lost its oomph, but apart from that, getting it fired up again was a pretty straightforward process running through electrics, plugs, oil, coolant flush and timing ... and wahey, it's breathing again, drinking its' way through a five year old tank of fuel.

    Out for a drive on a sunny spring day reminds me why I got this car

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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    Cool glad your well, look forward to some updates sometime

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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    Good to hear from you stu
    Hope to see some regular updates
    Hexham and District Motorclub

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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    great to know you've still got it
    its not dead till it's buried!


    T.I.T engineering. "Feel the power!"

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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    Yahoooooo, good to see you back on it Stu. Loved reading this thread over the years

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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    One summer I was going out to the garage to find some humdrum household item or other, when I glanced through the mucky windows of the Capri and noticed something out of place, stuffed down the sides of the rear seat. Opened the door and was greeted with that unmistakeable stench of mouse piss

    20150214-01.jpg

    Dug the car out from underneath a tonne of boxes, dropped it off the axle stands and rolled it outside so I had room to get the seats out to assess the damage ... and to be able to breathe.

    20150214-02.jpg

    20150214-03.jpg

    The squeaky little fckers were nowhere to be seen, but they'd obviously been inside the seat base for some time, though thankfully hadn't been able to then get out into the rest of the car. They'd chewed through half the insulation that's glued to the floorpan and had a go at the plastics and the frame, then I guess they buggered off back out from the hole through which they got in. It looks like the boot floor sits on top of the rest of the floorpan at this point, and these three channels go into a void where maybe rust has made enough of a hole for Mickey and his mates to get in.

    20150214-04.jpg

    20150214-05.jpg

    Stripped out the whole lot, attacked everywhere with disinfectant, blocked off the holes as a temporary measure until I could find out where they went and put loads of coffee grounds in the car to absorb/mask the smell. Added a Magic Tree too, for good measure.

    Bollocks...

    Out for a drive on a sunny spring day reminds me why I got this car

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    Pit Crew rwd2ltrfiesta's Avatar
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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    Wow spent most of yesterday reading this,
    1 of the best threads I've red ina long time, can't wait for the next instalments,

  41. #679
    Pit Crew Turbosport Subscriber Stu.C's Avatar

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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project

    When you're sat next to your little girl's bed in hospital, it's 4am, you haven't slept in days and there's no more Jammie Dodgers left on the nurse's station - the last thing you want is the banality of 24 hour telly. At times like these, you want distraction, you want warm comforting words, you want to know that the simple things in life work and that they can be explained ... you want Des Hamill

    512BinHKfQL._SX258_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

    One subject that's close to his heart is his passionate belief that in anything other than a run of the mill, bog standard production engine, ignition advance should be "all in" by 3650 RPM. It's hardly the makings of an election manifesto, I'll grant you, but if I learned one thing from the book it was that.

    Now I've had many an hour to ponder what I might do with my car over the last few years, read many a blog article, absent-mindedly added a million things to my eBay watch list (maybe even bid on one or two ) and drifted off to sleep making yet another mental list. One of those lists concerns giving the engine a bit more poke -but that's all it needs is "poke". Don't get me wrong, resto threads with triple-turbo'd YB screamers, or V8-bellied drag monsters with rear tyres wider than my sofa are fascinating, it's just not what I'm after for my car ... it just needs a bit more poke

    But like that advertising line from the other year went - poke is nothing without control. So, with that in mind, today's task was to understand the ignition advance curve that I've currently got. Call it idle curiosity, but in an awful lot of googling I don't think I've seen anything about "standard" curves on the Bosch Pinto distributor, so I thought I'd find out. Now a long time back the only way I had to check the timing was an old Gunson light that required you to make your own degree markings on the pulley, barely illuminated them anyway when you did and occasionally zapped you if your hand went too close to the unshielded wire on no. 1 spark plug. Time for a change then. I knew I wanted a timing light with;
    • inductive pickup
    • a really bright bulb
    • the ability to dial in advance so I only had to make sure TDC was clearly marked
    • a rev counter, because funnily enough, when I've got my head under the bonnet I can't see the one on the dash

    Fancy Snap-On ones come up frequently on eBay, but they usually end up going for fancy prices. Of all the rest, I plumped for an Accuspark SP8000 as it seemed to be fairly well reviewed and was less than fifty quid.





    This isn't a big review; it plugs in, it flashes, it reads revs, it works. Yeah, it feels a bit plasticky but that's cause it's plastic. Some folks said the buttons can be a little fiddly to use when you're trying to flip from advance to RPM and pull the trigger whilst turning the dizzy - they must have stubby little fingers as I found it alright. Bang on the money, really

    So now I've got the timing light, but I'm not Mr Tickle, so I was trying to work out how I could reach the throttle, hold it at a 500 rpm increment for a few seconds to let it settle, whilst playing a merry dance with the buttons on the gun to flip between revs and advance to work out what the dizzy was putting in at each point. Burtons probably sell a chrome thingy to do the job, but I just bent a length of rod to hook into the bracket on the carb's throttle spindle .. and ended up with something that give's incredibly fine control yet is easy to hold. You can watch the revs on the gun, when it hits your next rpm increment you listen to the engine note as it settles, flip the display on the gun over to advance and use the buttons to move it forward until the timing mark on the pulley lines up with the guide. It actually takes longer to write about it here than to do it (and it's impossible to hold the throttle, the gun and take a picture)





    When you've been through the rev range, you end up learning that the standard Bosch distributor on a 2.0 Pinto has an ignition advance range of 24 degrees, with a curve that looks (subject to me getting it wrong) like this;

    boschdizzy.jpg

    Well isn't that fascinating...




    Apologies if you read all that and thought "huh, where's the ending?" - think of it like those bloody Lord Of The Rings movies; there'll be more soon ...
    Attached Images Attached Images
    Last edited by Stu.C; 16-02-2015 at 02:50. Reason: Fixed image

    Out for a drive on a sunny spring day reminds me why I got this car

  42. #680
    Pit Crew Decade Plus User merp0's Avatar

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    Re: Stu's Mk3 Capri project


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