round all four corners

Back up to Dallas again.  In spite of incipient bronchitis, we tackled the car again Saturday morning. While I took apart the leaky cam tower, the rest of the crew disassembled the Spider rear axle I had brought up and got out the axle shafts.  They swapped perfectly with the shafts from the Brava, and now we had the mounts for the rear disc brakes, instead of the drums there before.

I found a broken bolt in the coolant tee, which is likely where our coolant leak has been. I managed to get the stub out with Vice-grips, and fortunately the first bolt I found in my pile of spare bolts fit perfectly.

Glen got a nice wiring harness and power points set up for our radios and camera.

Our friend Csaba showed up at this point, and brought a nice new gasket for the cam tower. I installed that, and he adjusted the valves for me. The crew in the back installed a couple of rear calipers from my stash that seemed to work (they are really hard to rebuild), and by that time the engine was back together and I went to install the new timing belt, only to find it was for an 1800 engine, not the 2-liter in this car.  Fortunately, Csaba  produced a spare and we installed that. I got the engine started, but it ran really badly and knocked, so we shut it off and inspected everything. I found that the auxiliary shaft had turned a bit during the belt installation, so I took off the belt again and set everything correctly, then installed it. Csaba found a loose exhaust manifold bolt which he tightened, and I took the plugs out and cleaned them. As I did that, I found that a rat had chewed our plug wires pretty severely, thus the missing. We routed them around to avoid grounding, then started the car again and it ran much more smoothly. It's still running rich and occasionally missing, but it's not bad at all.

The next morning Erroll and I bled the rear brakes, and the pedal feels really good now. While we don't have a parking brake, hopefully this will give us a little better braking than we have had in the past.  We fixed the other broken bolt for the driveshaft mount, filled the gearbox with oil, and then I left - my work is done and the others will have to finish it up. Race is in two weeks!