2015 Service and Blat

Looks like I booked the right week off over Easter, it's been dry for the whole week and the last couple of days have been sunny. Tricia was off work today so we went out for a blat, only about an hour but very enjoyable and a lot warmer than earlier in the week.

When we got back I serviced and cleaned the car.  The service was fairly straight forward, oil and filter change, air filter cleaned and oiled, brakes cleaned and checked, checked out all the suspension, steering etc and greased the prop shaft.

I could smell petrol and at first thought that it might be just that I'd filled the tank at the end of the blat.  When I had the NSR wheel off I noticed some residue on the side of the tank and found that the vent hose had perished and split. I replaced it, not the easiest of places to get into with my fat fingers.  Will also look at the fuel lines when I'm doing the rear wishbone refurbishment.






Mechanically everything was fine but all the wishbones have bad surface corrosion at the outboard ends as are the cycle wing mounts.






I don't want to disturb the geo-alignment so I did a trial refurbishment in place, first used a rotary wire brush to remove the worst then a flexi sanding block to feather out the edge of the powder coating.  Although it was very clean I treated the area with derust gel and then hand painted with two coats of hammerite smooth black.  I only did the front top wishbones to see how well it would work and I was reasonable happy with the results, so will repeat with the rest as time allows.  I'll eventually remove the wishbones an get them blasted and repainted with POR15.

 

Fitted the carbon fibre mirror covers from Julian at Aerodynamix, very straight forward, cleaned and keyed the mirrors, trial fit to choose the best way around and then glued them in place with quick set epoxy.







When cleaning the car I noticed that the sides were scratched from where the sidescreens have been rubbing against them so I ordered some 3M clear paint protection film and will polish out the scratches and fit it to see if it will help.