CherryV's Thunder

CherryVimto said:

I wanted to go down a different path with this Puma.

Rather than sticking lumps of plastic/GRP to it and painting it odd colours, I've decided to do useful modifications which actually serve a purpose and give a benefit.

Click to expand...

Music to my ears.

Love this project. Keep it up! :thumbs:

adampuma said:

where did you buy yours? Or did you modify the top clips to fit?

Click to expand...

The fascia was bought from a local motorfactors at just over £12. It's a proper one for the Puma.
It was black but I sprayed it moondust silver. It's a bit bright and doesn't quite match the silver on the heater panel/dash, but it was all I had at the time.

XIIVVX said:

CherryVimto said:

I wanted to go down a different path with this Puma.

Rather than sticking lumps of plastic/GRP to it and painting it odd colours, I've decided to do useful modifications which actually serve a purpose and give a benefit.

Click to expand...

Music to my ears.

Click to expand...

LOL

A Puma said:

Love this project. Keep it up! :thumbs:

Click to expand...

Thanks! :lol:


So, another sunny day brought more tinkering on the Puma.

Had a slight blow in the exhaust, so got that sorted out. Then got a rattle from one of the mounts on the race tube, vibrating on the bottom of the car. That soon stopped when I got the grinder out!

I looked at the new LED bulbs I'd got for the reading lights. The polarity in the interior light unit is the opposite way round and as LEDs are polarity conscious, they wont work.
Instead of rewiring the interior lights, I managed to pull the LED bulb to pieces are wire them up the opposite way round. Now they work!

I've used all of the parts I had already bought, so am now getting stuck for things to do.
I had two large sheets of vinyl stickers that I had bought for the old Puma. So, rather than see £15 go to waste, I got them out and had a play around:









That will do until I get all the paintwork tidied up.

Minor update:

Put the LED bulbs in the rear indicators. Again, the polarity on the wiring is the wrong way, so I chopped the wires and soldered them back together the opposite way round.
Won't matter if I put normal bulbs back in as they are not polarity dependent.

Apart from the HID headlights, the only 'standard' bulbs on/in the entire car are side indicators, main beam and reverse lights! Everything else are LEDs.

looking good, i particularly like the race flag decal, looks good on the grey. how do you remove the green filter from the hcp if you don't mind me asking

If it's an old style panel, as I have, you can pull it apart and just remove the green plastic film.
If it's a new style panel, you can't..... that's why I'm using an old panel!

so the green plastic is the first layer on the back?

On the old panels, yes. On the back you will see blobs of plastic which have been melted to join it together. Drill these out and remove the back of the knobs and the panel will come apart.
The green plastic film sit under the clear plastic 'reflector' parts for the lighting of the number etc on the other side.
You can either try and pull the green film out, or remove the clear plastic reflector parts and take the green film out whole.

The new panels are made with the green tint printed/coloured as part of the front so cannot be removed.

thanks alot :thumbs:

evilrob said:

Good choice of colour! :thumbs:

Click to expand...

I agree k:

Well, at around 4am Sunday morning the car decided to take a nose dive into the ground.
The passenger side ball joint decided it didn't want any more to do with the wishbone, and promptly parted, sending the car downwards.
Typically, the boys in blue happened to drive past at the time. Quite good as they stayed a bit down the road with the blue lights flashing so I didn't get rear ended.

Thankfully I was following our master recovery guy Tom who ditched his XR2 in Tescos car park to recover me from the middle of the road.
After a wee fight with the front wheel to get the drive shaft back in, and three new nuts & bolts, all was fixed.
Other than a bit of damage to the wing, everything else was damage free.

I'm really hating this piece of crap right now.....

Hi,

I'm just wondering where you wired the front running lights from?

I was planning on doing something similar to mine but couldn't work out the best place to draw power from?

reece said:

Hi,

I'm just wondering where you wired the front running lights from?

I was planning on doing something similar to mine but couldn't work out the best place to draw power from?

Click to expand...

The simplest place would be from the sidelights.

JoeB1 said:

reece said:

Hi,

I'm just wondering where you wired the front running lights from?

I was planning on doing something similar to mine but couldn't work out the best place to draw power from?

Click to expand...

The simplest place would be from the sidelights.

Click to expand...

Why wire them to the side lights when, if you wire them properly, they should turn off or dim when you put your lights on!?

I found a permanent live in the engine bay fuse box. I pulled a wire through from there in to the car which supplies my automatic headlight unit.
I bought a DRL control module which has a dim feature. The permanent live is connected to this module along with the ignition feed from the head unit/stereo. I also connected the DRL control module to the headlights, so they dim when I used dipped beam headlights.
The DRL lights are only connected to the control module with one live (on each) and are grounded through the headlights.

Even with the automatic headlights, the DRLs still come on/dim as if the headlights were manual.

DRL control module, mounted on the front of the fuse box with all of the wiring going through to the engine bay loom along the nearside wing:


I utilized one of the original screws for strut brace as an additional earthing point


Wiring pulled through from inside and taped up neatly:

When i pulled up at work last week, a guy who had been following me parked in front of me and walked over. I was wondering what he wanted, but was nice enough to tell me that I had either a broken wheel bearing or a bad wheel as he could see the rear wheel 'wobbling' as I drove along.
I got the wheels balanced a few days ago due to having vibrations, and was told that one of them had a small flat spot on the inside but they would balance it out.
After jacking the car up and spinning the wheel round, I can see the wheel is actually buckled. So, a quick message to IanG left me with being told he hasn't got any thunder wheels. so Ive had to put the spare on for now.

I will be picking up another set of wheels soon, so will be swapping them over.

Minor update for today.
I decided to bite the bullet and attempt to fit my polyurethane ARB bushes.
It was an easy job, just fiddly and time consuming as I decided to undo one side of the bracket and bend it, rather than dropping the subframe.

l

Got some wheels picked up along with two tyres. Thanks to Tom for those.

I've got two tyres fitted and two wheels on the car, so I could get the buckled one off.

The DRL strip on one side started to gradually fail so I ordered some more.
They arrived but one was faulty, so the eBay seller sent me another two.

I thought they looked a bit boring, so added a little extra strip on each side: