2 years of ownership have flown by and it's hard to believe where 5222 started with me to, being nearly ready for regular use, and I will say it's been another busy year since.
So I'll do a quick summary
from last time.
my seats went for re-upholstery as my original covers are a bit on the crispy side and some stitching split (still waiting for them to be done), I also refurbished the seat rails as I didn't fancy spending nearly £100 per slide and £70 for 2 release bars, mine were rusty but not beyond fixing. had all parts ultrasonic cleaned to remove all the internal paint and left everything in a big tub of rust remover for a few days. sprayed everything up in a nice satin black and they all run smoothly again.
Replaced soundproofing over transmission tunnel as the black stuff over the original foam was breaking apart, so I ordered a roll of 3Mx1M closed cell foam at 6mm thick and some 2mm thick butyl mats, so 2 layers of foam and a layer of butyl and I noticed a decent difference in the cabin less of an echo.
I delved into the VOD to replace the O-rings under the inlet manifold and to upgrade my injector seals to DPI units (they weren't cheap if you include overseas shipping and UPS extra fees
), these were done per Suggestion by Andy W and Rich Hanlon during our mini tech evening to try and fix my high idle when we found the bypassing air.
as per my last update where I was almost stranded en-route home from Chris Nicholson's from an erratic shifting problem, the kickdown switch was indeed faulting but that wasn't the actual problem
the wire had melted..... twice. luckily no wires had melted together thank god. so I stripped the sheath and went a bit ott protecting each wire but hopefully, we're all okay now.
to deal with my frustration over the melted cable, I deleted the old exhaust system and replaced it with Mich's old stage 1 from his car. DMCH's pre-stainless stage 1. which to my surprise actually frustrated me more than the cable did.
the right manifold took 8hrs to install alone, had to remove the alternator and brackets, the oil filter removed and all studs out to finally get it into place. reinstalling the old studs through the manifold was a pain due to the lack of room to move, and the new stainless studs didn't even fit any of the holes.
but eventually, we got it all fitted and it looks amazing. I did briefly run the engine to make sure everything worked and to my surprise after the seal changes my rpm's were sitting below 1000
but it did seem a little bit rough, although it could be because I'm sort of used to it being between 1100 and 2000
Just got the newly re-foamed door cards to fit, seats and radio then we should be done with restoration then it's onto my new project that's in part linked with Vin: 3104 (the Akiba Delorean)