A lot has happened since my last post - I bought my first house with my partner, and we now have a dog
Said house has a garage (with power!) so I now have a really nice space to work on the Toledo. It's spent nearly 2 years in a dusty old lockup so probably deserves it!
Forgot how much I love the look of this little thing.
Following on from my last post I decided it'd be best for the car if I replaced the radiator. I managed to source a 1500HL rad as I'd heard they are a drop-in replacement of the smaller 1300 radiator.
Here you can see the old rad. It's covered in flux from the soldering, and the core itself was missing quite a few fins.
1300 tolly rad vs the larger 1500 one
I thought it'd be fairly easy as essentially its some hoses and 4 bolts which mount to the body. Then I managed to strip one of the bolts, which would not come out even with easy outs etc. so ended up getting drilled. I did then manage to re-tap it so the thread is OK now.
Along the way, I had to wreck some of the jubilee clips which had gone completely rotten. Just like the thermostat housing!
After trying to pull the thermostat housing off, I also managed to snap one of the bolts holding it on. As well as this, the surface which the thermostat actually sat in was very corroded and had pitted badly to the point where i'm surprised it ever actually sealed. I decided the best thing to do was just pull off the water pump housing/assembly and replace it all. I managed to find one from a spitfire which is exactly the same so decided to clean it up and wire brush the mating surfaces, not realising the old (red) gasket material may well have been asbestos... whoops. Hoping I'm wrong about that. My Dad who's done the same many times on his Marinas over the years said it'd be unlikely and that asbestos gaskets were used more on extreme heat applications like head gaskets, exhaust gaskets etc. - hoping he is correct.
All re-assembled. I re-used the water pump because it didn't have any play in and looked somewhat new. If it goes again it's also only three nuts to undo, so not a big job at all.
Also cleaned up and sprayed the radiator brackets as they had surface rust, thought I might as well if the radiator is in such good condition. My partner (surprisingly) wasn't overly keen on me using the washing line to hang them so I could spray them!
Now waiting on a 1500 lower hose which is on its way as it's obviously slightly longer than a 1300 one as the overall height of the radiator is much larger. You might also see in the picture above that I have fitted a 2-wire temperature sensor which will be wired into my ECU to control a thermostatic fan which i'm part way through fitting.
I have a slight dilemma as the distance between the water pulley and radiator is pretty small and my fan is
just too thick to fit straight behind it. I am toying with either mounting it lower down which may potentially get in the way of the crank sensor, or just mounting it on the other side and using it as a "push" style fan as there's lots of room in front. I have seen some cars do this before, but I think the general idea is to mount it behind the radiator.
Also slightly closer with the electronic ignition wiring. Here is the "smart" coil ie coil with a built-in igniter module. I had some HT leads for a shogun which will work OK I think, as the coil has the other type of HT crimp on the end of it. This type of coil needs to be grounded on the engine ideally so I'm going to try and make a bracket up for it which mounts using a couple of the bellhousing bolts. The distributor will then get blanked off.
Also managed to score a cheap ish dolly sprint splitter on ebay, though the fittings for it looked like they'd been for a swim in the atlantic. I got them out and devised a way of mounting them with some m4(i think?) allen bolts and nuts. The end studs/bolts had completely rusted and had made big holes in the plastic, so I had to "create" some washers using assorted coins! Any excuse to use the pillar drill really.... Also i'm not sure if it's technically legal to drill holes in coins so for the purpose of this post they were definitely not real coins.
More to follow soon!