My Puma 1.7, more than a year on (A works in progress)

ProjectPuma

Help Support ProjectPuma:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
tuonokid said:
Cheers Martin. Is that you in the Mex? If it is I bet you wish you still had it.
Barry
Your not kidding Barry never thought I,d see the day when an RS2000 would fetch £20,000+ and I recently saw a Harrier go for £42,000 thats a ridiculous sum of money :wink:
Oh sorry yes it is me in the Mex :grin:
 
Hi Martin
42K for a Harrier! I'd want the Hawker one for that. Aye even the four doors are fetching good money now and up to a few years ago people were just chucking 'em away.
I hope you'd done the right thing and stuck a 2ltr in the Mex :grin:
Barry
 
Carrying on with the weldathon that is my Puma. I had a look under the front bulkhead and it looked a little rusty but I thought it might clean up,


Inside the car there looked to be a little surface rust on the seam.


So I attacked the underside of the seam and ended up with this. The bulkhead looks salvageable but it looks like I'll have to cut another patch out of the floorpan


Same as usual I marked out the limit of cut by drilling through from underneath and marked out the line of cut above using masking tape


Cut from above, unfortunately there is a little rot on the top face of the bulkhead so this will have to be cut out as well


View from below.


I cut out the patch from the bulkhead and also extended the hole in the floor and then cut out the patches ready for welding.


View from below


It's important when welding in patches to have them at the same height as the surrounding metal so I used a bodywork dolly on a scissor jack to press the patch against to ensure the area remained level.


1st patch welded in.


2nd patch welded in.


View from underneath.


After etch primer and stonechip.


Ready for joint sealer.


Looking at the inner sill on the drivers side I could see rust breaking through the seam sealant


A quick rub with the drill ended up as this.


View from below before cleaning up


View from below after cleaning up

I'm not going to bother to inlay a patch to this as it's too fiddly so I will overlay and weld a small patch on top of this and finish it off from below.

Cleaned off and patch ready to go.


Patch welded in.


View from underneath.


Etch primered and stonechipped


Drivers side floor finished now at last!


Just these two patches left on the passenger side


Patches sized to fit and cut for spot welding.


Yay! Last patches (hopefully) welded in now!
 
Finally got some 10mm rear axle spacers to swap for the 20mm ones I had on (Thanks James. XAF on here) as with the 20mm spacers I think my tyres would have caught the top mudflap mounting and I really wanted to keep the mudflaps.


I had to swap out the bolts as they were too long so I used 45mm shank length which are about 1mm too long on 2 of the bolts and about 5mm too long on the other 2 (if you're running discs). On this photo one of the bolts is at 45mm and all the others have been cut so that just one thread protrudes.



All done now.



These are the bolts I used 10mm high tensile (12.9) capheads

Back to the bodywork again. I'd previously cleaned up the area around the VIN plate and then given it a coat of etch primer. I followed this with a coat of rubberised joint sealer to try and match the original.


Doesn't look too clever but I'll see what it's like after I've cleaned up the original underseal and sprayed to match


As I put the underseal on I noticed another rust blister so I dug out the wire brushes again and it turned into this. Rust all along the seam hidden by the underseal but not serious enough to cut out and weld...phew!



View of the general area showing the penetration of a previous weld done from above running from left to right towards the top of the photo.
 
I want to finish off the schutzing underneath but need to get the brakes finished before I can get it really high in the air. I'd fitted braided hoses at the back but at the front I just couldn't get them to work to my satisfaction as my bigger discs take the caliper entry too close to the inner wings. I'd cut off the strut bracket for the existing hoses as I thought it might foul the braided hoses so I needed a new plan. I bought some new standard hoses off Skippy (thanks James). Looking at the ends of the hose I wanted to install the shorter fitting at the caliper end (wrong way around) to help to keep it away from the inner wing but there wasn't enough thread on the other end to fix it to the inner wing bracket.




So first off I installed the standard hose , the standard way making sure it was in a relaxed position with the cars steering in the straight ahead. Then I made a strut clamp out of thick steel and drilled it out to take the standard hose bracket.



I then welded a guide to the end of the hose bracket which matched the alignment of the brake hose and put a hole through the bracket to accept a cable tie. I intended to put some thicker rubber tube around the hose where it goes through the guide so it can hold it in place without damaging it.



I needed to check the hose for fouling or for strain so first of all I put weight on the strut by jacking it up off the axle stands by the bottom ball joint.



This is full left turn showing how close the hose is to the inner wing. If not for the bracket it's possible that the hose could get trapped under the inner wing and cut. I made the strut clamp so that the bolt for the bracket is 20mm forward and 45mm lower than it's usual position this is to compensate for the bigger discs (300 instead of 260s =40mm/2 =20mm) and also the 40mm lowering springs which would leave the hoses too sharply bent most of the time.



This is full right turn, so far so good now to release the jack and let the strut go to max drop



Full right turn max drop, still good.



Full left turn max drop yippee it works!



Different angle showing how close the hose gets to the inner wing even with the bracket holding it away from the inner wing (with 300mm brakes)

Bled up the brakes today (Wednesday) They bled up fine and glad to report none of the calipers are sticking but thankfully I was using see through pipe to bleed the brakes as I noticed one of the bleed nipples was leaking. On taking it out it had a deep groove around the taper seat so someone's over tightened it in the past or tightened it onto some grit or metal particle. Best get a new one then.
I bought 2 new bleed nipples the other day. Ford parts used to be cheap. Not any more! £10.61 for 2 bleed nipples, the robbing dogs!

 
I can see why you wanted the flexi hoses! Good work. The bodged brackets worked for the braided hoses on my standard/meagre calipers, but without something to change the angle at your calipers it looks impossible for you.
 
Cheers Glenn but it's taken a long time.
Hi James, aye it's taken a long time to sort out but I'm glad you could see what my concerns were.
Barry
 
Decided to pull the car out of the garage today so I could blow all the metal particles off it and then give it a good powerwashing as I didn't want the paint marking.
Here's a few photos;







 
Looking good Barry, now when will you actually be able to drive it!!!
 
Cheers James and James
Tank to clean up and put back on, rest of exhaust to fit and then the cambelt change plus a good service and that's it, hopefully.
Barry
 
Hi Glenn
It's a Cebora turbo 130 and it's quite an old set (probably 20 yrs) but a good set as it's also re-stickered as a Snap On. The thing about MIGS is you get to learn their quirks. Every set behaves differently but with practice you get around it.
Barry
 
Hi Paul
I hope so but if it gets too late in the year I'll not bother as I don't want to drive it through the winter. It's like your FRP now, a keeper. Have you decided to go to Donington tomorrow? We're going and looking forward to it.
Barry
 
Can't say for definate about Donington mate. If I go I'll look out for you. Are you taking the Westy?
 
Hi Paul
I don't know whether the weather (???) is going to be ok tomorrow so we'll be in the Fezzer service barge. Fully prepared for it now, just bought some fold up camping chairs from the local garden centre so we can watch the trackday in comfort.
Barry
 
Coupled the handbrake up today and gave it a try and it seemed to work ok but the bracket that pulls both rear cables wasn't straight, I'll investigate that later. Anyway now I can lock both the front and rear wheels I need to get the car as high as I can in the garage to finish off the Shutz work. So I started to take it higher in increments until I ended up with this;



Views from below showing patches still to shutz. The outer 8" or so of floorpan I've tried to replicate the rubberised underseal so that will get cleaned off and get lightly sprayed in body colour.











I have about 1.5 litres of shutz left so I'm just going to blast it all over underneath so I thought it would be a good idea to mask off first.



There are also another two areas of, thankfully surface rust, one on the left and one on the right both on the joint between the firewall and the floorpan but this time adjacent to the trans tunnel.



LHS area rubbed down.



RHS area rubbed down.



LHS etch primed and stonechipped



RHS etch primed and stonechipped


view from rear after shutzing


view from middle


view of right floorpan


view of left floorpan
 

Latest posts

Back
Top