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

[Fanwheel]

Nice one Barry. Great job and must say your car looks stunning. My passenger mirror is a badly painted replacement, so will seek out some moondust silver rattle cans at some point
Will

 

[TylerB]

Looks real clean! Red suits the Puma well

 

[tuonokid]

Cheers Will good luck with painting yours but Moondust is one of the hardest colours to get right.
Cheers Tyler I didn't set out to buy a red one but it's my favourite colour for them now.
Barry

 

[tuonokid]

With a bit of decent weather this week it was on to some more cosmetics. When I first got the car there was an annoying dent and a couple of paint scrapes in the sill just to the rear of the pass door.

310520162736_zps4newvypp by barry wilson, on Flickr

So first off I roughed up the paint with 40 grade.

310520162737_zps4l8if7qy by barry wilson, on Flickr

Then I fillered it and rubbed it down.

310520162738_zpsvgwaete7 by barry wilson, on Flickr

Then primer fillered it.

310520162739_zpsyuglc2iy by barry wilson, on Flickr

Then flatted it.

310520162740_zpsj53hutvo by barry wilson, on Flickr

Sprayed some red on it

030620162741_zpsrwoyxrmq by barry wilson, on Flickr

Then flatted and clear coated it

040620162742_zpsbzkf5p7b by barry wilson, on Flickr

Just need to flat and polish the clear coat now and the job's a good 'un.

 

[moondustka]

Nice little touch up :thumbs:

 

[tuonokid]

Cheers Ben, it was a lot more work than shown but well worth it.

 

[XAF]

You are starting to worry me Barry. Firstly your skills have no end as we can add painting to them, but also you'll be round nicking my clay bar next

 

[tuonokid]

Hi James
I have a bit left from my last one How's the wedding and car plans going?
Barry

 

[tuonokid]

Well pretty much a bad end of the week for me. I went to the classic car show at Locke Park in Barnsley yesterday and it was a fairly good show for just £3.

070620162759_zpsfvcvk0la by barry wilson, on Flickr

Everything was going ok until just after 3pm when it started to rain so I offered a couple of my Westy friends a lift back to their car as it was about a mile away. The rain got harder and harder until it reached biblical proportions and I could barely see through the windscreen, honestly the heaviest rain I've ever seen. I dropped my friends off at their car and set off home quickly trying to work out which way would beat the floods. My first try failed as one of the roads out of town was about 6" deep in water. I eventually found a route that only had 3m wide channels of water flowing down each side but after about 5 miles I got an EML but the car was still running fine so I guessed it was the cat that had gone cold with all the splashing water as it had done last year.
Anyway after carefully driving home looking out for floods and lifted manhole covers I spotted this when I got out of the car.

070620162763_zpsrptk5x4y by barry wilson, on Flickr

Water coming out of the heater vents. I wasn't going to do anything about it then but today because my son Andrew was with me I put him to the task of turning off the EML with Forscan and had a good prod around the carpets. He soon got rid of the EML but my carpets were damp so I stripped the interior out.

080620162764_zps7o83kzmc by barry wilson, on Flickr

This is the bulkhead sound proofing that I'd cut out previously to repair the floorpans, you can just see the dampness on the matt that goes on the floor rather than the bulkhead so obviously water wasn't coming in from the bulkhead, unlike Andrews Ka (phew!) Also the big piece of soundproofing under the carpets was completely dry, again phew!
I checked the condition of my floors to see if I'd had a long term problem and...

080620162765_zpszliuktpu by barry wilson, on Flickr

080620162766_zpscmhwlcwf by barry wilson, on Flickr

Definitely not, they haven't had wet soundproofing on them for the last nearly 3 years.
So the next culprit could be this the heater drain...

080620162767_zpswh38vdaj by barry wilson, on Flickr

So I will take it off tomorrow and make sure there's no crap inside it, whilst another set of Ford carpets dries off in my garage.
The next bad thing was my bike, I'd had to ride it to VOSA in Sheffield as the MOT tester hadn't written this years mileage down correctly and I hadn't noticed for a couple of weeks so they had to verify it by sight. I went down on Tuesday and it was a really hot and unpleasant trip. Shortly after I got home I noticed it was dripping (v slowly) petrol out of the tank breather pipe but thought no more as it was so hot. On Friday, I think, I went back in the garage to do some work and the place reeked of petrol with possibly a gallon leaked out.

080620162768_zpshl508hxg by barry wilson, on Flickr


This is from today but the size of the stain where the petrol was can be seen.
To make matters even worse it appeared to be leaking from underneath the rear of the tank. So I dragged it out of the garage, drained all the petrol out and went on the internet looking for clues.
http://apriliarsv.com/aprilia-rsvr/5629-fuel-tank-leaking.html
This was what I found... deep joy!
Looks like the Anglia will have to wait a little longer. :-(

 

[XAF]

[post]352992[/post] Hi James
I have a bit left from my last one How's the wedding and car plans going?
Barry

Hi Barry, don't know how I missed your post! Sorry!

Car is going well, you should have popped in whilst in sunny Barnsley. We were trying to wiggle a manifold in when that rain came. Dry top, soaking feet as they were sticking out the garage door!

 

[XAF]

And as for the bike and Puma. Oh dear. Water leaks are a real pain, next worse thing are fuel leaks....

 

[tuonokid]

Hi James
When I left Barnsley it was anything but sunny in fact I'm sure I saw Noahs Ark coming down summer lane. I think the water leaks just the heater drain either partially blocked or couldn't handle the deluge that was thrown at it. As for the bike I'm dreading that one as all the repairs on that link look like bodges and a new tank's over £1000. Give me a bell if there's anything that wants forscanning when you get the FRP on the ground and I'll get my technician to look at it for you
Barry

 

[moondustka]

Puma doesn't seem too bad, Barry. The fuel tank on that bike looks a little more of a headache. Weird design also?? Or is this normal for Aprillas?

 

[tuonokid]

Hi Ben
Yeah confidant about the Puma but really worried about the tank. One of the pipes is a drain for water from the indent of the petrol cap, the other one is a tank breather but not sure how that works until I strip it down. however rigid plastic pipes inside a plastic tank seems to be looking for trouble when Ethanol is an additive in petrol. There's also another potential problem as the tank can go out of shape where the fuel pump bolts on which stops the sealing o ring from working.
As for Aprilia over the last few years they've had a fairly good reputation for reliability as they buy in from good sources eg the ECU is SIEMENS. Just could have done without this now :-(

 

[moondustka]

I see, yes after seeing that link, I'm not sure what you can do with the plastic tank like that :?

I know that feeling very well!! :-(

 

[tuonokid]

Thanks for your sympathy Ben, it's much appreciated and I hope the work on your engine is going well.
Barry

 

[tuonokid]

Well today, in between rain showers, I managed to get off the heater drain pipe. What a PITA that was as Ford use those horrible spring clips to hold the drain to the heater box. The only way I could fathom out how to remove the clip was to spin it so the tangs were facing to the front of the car and then use circlip pliers over the rubber pipe from below the heater stub. When the pipe came off it dropped a bit of water out of the heater box.

090620162770_zps31khjkp3 by barry wilson, on Flickr

So it looks like the pipe was blocked so I gave it a good poke out with a brazing rod and then run it under the tap for a few minutes, blew through it a few times and quite a bit of crap came out of it. When it came to putting it back on I thought no way is that clip going back on!

090620162771_zpsolkihsoh by barry wilson, on Flickr

So I thought a jubilee clip would do the job a lot better and be easy to take off again as I'm going to check this on a regular basis now.

090620162772_zpsb9l3qgac by barry wilson, on Flickr

Pipe back on showing access to jubilee clip. I think I might also replace the bottom half of the drain pipe as it tapers down at the bottom to a fairly small diameter which leaves it prone to blocking.
Changing the subject slightly I received another HCV from STEAVIE today as the one on Andrews Ka had done the typical fail ie one of the stub pipes sheared off so I had to fit my old Puma one to his Ka as he was left stranded in Barnsley when his went. So for anyone who hasn't changed their HCV in the last over 5 years change it NOW or be left stranded or worse still ruin your engine!!!!

090620162773_zpsbcydyppm by barry wilson, on Flickr

 

[Wild E. Coyote]

Barry, I feel for your problems. Had the same situation with the draining pipe and I think atleast half a kilo of dirt fell out of it when I took it down. How it was possible to have so much dirt in it is still beyond me!
And yes, the HCV should be replaced as part of preventive maintenance on EVERY puma now, as it is just a metter of time before it goes south...

Good you had everything under control

 

[tuonokid]

Cheers Sinisa
I hope everything's going ok with your engine plans.
Barry

 

[rnnicol]

What's the best place to buy the HCV, or is it best to get it from Ford, I've just stripped out my interior ready for the massive task of welding, so I think I'll check this pipe whilst it's all out, thanks for the tip, Richard