First Inspection

First real look at and fiddle with a few things. First job I thought to look at was the front towing eye and the rear which are both showing signs of rust. The rear isn’t so noticeable, but the front is quite apparent and needs some work to tidy it up. The rust has spread under the paint so it will need quite a lot of cleaning up and treating before being repainted. Closer inspection shows that where it mounts with the chassis is also corroded, so the simplest thing will be to take off the bumper to get unrestricted access.

Open up the bonnet to investigate the source of some rattles noticed on the drive home coming from the OS somewhere in the engine bay/dash. Prodding reveals several possible candidates. The lower ECU mounting bracket has come off its retaining bolt, the battery retainers are loose and the induction kit is loose and has vibrated the breather pipe loose from the head. The bolts holding the two halves of the induction house together are also loose. And teh induction clamshell doesn’t fit snuggly on the intake pipe, so that rattles too. The Simota kit fitted isn’t a 106 specific model. It’s clear that it’s been cut to fit and the bonnet pin mount doesn’t have the necessary recess, which as a result has deformed the top of the casing.

Resort to the next job, sorting the pedals out. The accelerator pedal has no rubber cover and the clutch pedal is fairly hardwork due to it’s small size and long throw. I’ve picked up a set of Sparco drilled alloy pedals to hopefully sort out these issues. So it’s off with all the old rubber pedal covers, and a case of aligning the new ones to ensure the 50mm gap between them, blu-tack was pretty good for sticking them in place and then when happy I used some enamel paint to mark where to drill. Given the way the pedals are constructed and welded to their respective arms, I suspect that there will be more to report on this tomorrow when I try fitting them. The accelerator pedal needs trimming down for starters…