Great news everyone! The Dacia Sandero won’t be on the Ford Anglia 105E Owners Club stand in hall 18 at the Lancaster Insurance Classic Motor Show at the NEC on 14-16th November!

But, my car will be!!

A few weeks ago I took a call from the club’s events organisers, looking for a modified vehicle to show off on the stand, and have asked me to take mine.

So, amongst other things that need doing, we have been tidying up some things to get it into a transportable and “presentable” state.

This involves such tasks as…

Fitting of a new windscreen rubber:

Some quick & unpolished grinding back of rough welds, filling of holes in the doors, and temporary rust protection of exposed metal with zinc primer:

Making up a bracket to hold the coolant expansion tank (and more zinc primer):

Fitting of the front bumper, and number plate:

Fitting a gear lever gaiter:

So, it’s basically ready to be driven onto the trailer, unloaded and parked up on the stand. So, if you’re visiting the show, come along to hall 18 and take a look in person!

The first task tackled this time was to cover the pedals & master cylinders, to both make it water-tight, as well as add some strength back to the bulkhead where a little metal had been removed.

Therefore, a box was made up, with a removable lid to aid access, which covers this area. The clutch pipe was also re-routed inside the car, along with the brake pipes, moving it from its previous route which went down the bulkhead right next to the exhaust.

Next up was to fit a new set of front shocks & springs, which are now fully adjustable for ride height and damping rate.

When lowering the steering rack to allow the engine to fit in place, the steering geometry was modified from standard, by lowering the rack, “bump steer” was introduced – this is where the wheel as it moves up/down, also rotates as though it is being steered.

In order to overcome the bump steer that was introduced by the need to move the steering rack, it was necessary to move the mounting of the track rod end downwards, to match the downwards move of the steering rack.

This is accomplished by use of a long high tensile suspension bolt, suitable spacers, a rose joint and a length of hexagonal bar, with the correct threads tapped.

Moving underneath the car, the remaining chassis outrigger/jacking point was replaced – not with capabilities for the standard jack, but instead utilising some box section, which will give a perfect location for a more commonly available scissor jack, like is found with more modern cars.

Additionally, the rear end of the driver’s side sills were finished, which mostly concludes the remaining structural welding that was required underneath.

So, I’ve concluded that I suck at taking photos and keeping this updated!

I’ve had a couple of trips to my dad’s since the last update, and have failed to take any photos!

The first trip involved removing the engine/gearbox, and sorting out a couple of small oil leaks, which came from the lack of gaskets on the turbo oil return pipes. Whilst the engine was out, a new sump pan was also fitted, to replace the corroded one that was on there.

A little more tidying was done of fuel/vacuum pipes coming through the bulkhead, these now are plugged in on either side of the bulkhead to a small length of copper pipe which is soldered to the bulkhead. Quick to remove the pipes from inside or outside, and a water-tight way to get through the bulkhead.

Also, whilst the engine was out, the area we had cut away from the bulkhead to facilitate the water manifold and radiator hoses was looked at and mostly replaced, and we now have just a small removable panel to make and fit.

The second trip was more eventful, as we decided to take a day off from working on the car, to go and show it off at the annual Anglias At The Ace meet, organised by 105speed. The Friday evening was spent tidying up to make it somewhat “presentable” – it had a wipe down with a damp sponge and dried off with a towel, the passenger seat was re-fitted, the remaining cables under the dash were tidied with a few cable ties, and I even screwed in the glove box lid and ashtray/heater control panel!

Saturday morning, we loaded up onto the trailer, and headed off for the Ace Cafe, my dad towing my Anglia, and me driving his, and arrived to a mostly empty car park, being about the 8th Anglia to arrive. We unloaded the trailer, and parked up, and awaited the rest of the arrivals.

The day didn’t disappoint, with 54 Anglias all together, and I had a great opportunity to speak to many people about the car.

And our two cars, including my dad posing with his cup of coffee!

On our way back, we had a radiator blow out on the Shogun, which left us stranded at the side of the A406 for over 8 hours awaiting a truck to be provided that could recover the Shogun + trailer back home! So, that was quite a bad end to an otherwise great day!

I hope that normal service will resume next update, and I’ll try to take some more photos!

First task was to remove the final bit of the chassis where it had started to go rotten – the rear cross member.

This involved cutting out the existing metal, and we decided to graft in a 50x50x3mm box section – which will be way stronger than the original box section. I may well add a jacking point/towing eye to this in the future. This was grafted onto the existing chassis legs (which are no longer load bearing due to the changes in suspension), and brought round to meet up with the original rear panel.

With the rear valance back in place – no visual differences from the rear.

Moving forwards, the items that live in the boot are secured down – the battery is tied down, the straps for the fuel tank are secured to the floor, the vacuum tank for the servos is secured (you can just see a shiny strap in the first photo) and the charge cooler pump/reservoir are secured, as is the charcoal canister which prevents petrol fumes from being smelt via the tank breather.

Moving forward again, and into the car this time. A new transmission tunnel top was fabricated and welded into place, to cover the 200SX gearbox. Additionally, all the fuel and brake pipes, as well as the main battery cable which run through the car were secured into place. The chargecooler pipes and vacuum pipe for the vacuum tank still need to be secured in their final positions once I get some suitable clips of the correct size for them.

I didn’t put up any photos of the front end last time out, and although the wiring was done, it wasn’t tidy, so, spent some time tidying up the remainder of the wiring, both on the front end, and under the dash, taping up any loose bit of wire! Over all, I must have used well over a roll and a half of insulating tape!

Also, the key locks to secure the flip front in place, and some lengths of chain were added to limit how much it opens – this gives good access across to the top of the engine, without putting the front too close to the floor. The wiring was secured by fibreglassing some cable ties onto the inside of the front, which create loops to put a further cable tie through – meaning if I need to remove the wiring loom (for example for painting), I can easily do so, and re-attach it again at a later date.

With the dash in finally (and the wiring loomed up, as mentioned earlier), I thought I’d take a photo of the gauges working – I’ve got about 1/8th tank of fuel, and it’s ticking over nicely at just under 1250rpm.

Additionally, some welding was tackled underneath.

And finally…

Following on from last time, I have now completed the wiring to the front end, with indicators, side repeaters and headlights now all wired up and working.

When browsing forums, I found someone who was selling a MAP-ECU 2 – the next version of the MAP-ECU which I already have installed (the little box of tricks that allows removal of the MAF sensor) – the newer model adds a few new features – ignition timing control, two switchable maps, electronic boost control, air/fuel ratio adjustment, fuel cut removal, speed cut removal, and launch control.

I paired this with a wideband O2 sensor/controller, which provides a very accurate air/fuel ratio to the MAP-ECU2, as well as a simulated narrowband output to the stock ECU.

A standard narrowband O2 sensor as fitted to most vehicles operates by switching the output between 0v and 1v when the air/fuel ratio (AFR) goes either side of the stoichiometric point – the point at where all fuel is evenly burned with all of the available air – with petrol this is an AFR of 14.7, or lambda 1.00

The narrowband O2 sensor is used by the ECU to adjust the amount of fuel – an input value of 0v means “add more fuel” and an input value of 1v is “less fuel” – under normal use, the standard ECU will adjust the fuelling to ensure that the input voltage from the O2 sensor is rapidly fluctuating between 0v and 1v – this keeps the engine around lambda 1.00

This is shown by the following graph (graphs taken from the PLX website)

The wideband O2 sensor gives a voltage output which is directly related to the AFR, typically from 0v to 5v. The PLX SM-AFR I have provides a linear output and can show the AFR from 10:1 to 20:1 (lambda 0.68 to 1.36), as demonstrated by the following graph (again, taken from the PLX website)

When running under load, you may not want an AFR of 14.7 – you may want to run richer (more fuel), say at an AFR of 12 – with a narrowband O2 sensor, you have no way of telling what your AFR is, only that it’s “rich” or “lean”. With the wideband, I can monitor this via the MAP-ECU2, and adjust the fuelling accordingly to reach that target.

The MAP-ECU2 came from another VR-4, and the configuration that’s on it is much better than the one that came on the original MAP-ECU I had (which also came from a VR-4) – the new one idles even better, and the lag that I had when pressing the throttle has disappeared. Even just this change is worth the money spent on it, as it puts it a lot closer to what’s needed, which will hopefully reduce the need for an immediate expensive tuning session!

In addition to this, I received a nice package from ETB Instruments consisting of a 52mm fuel gauge, a 52mm temperature gauge, an 80mm electronic programmable speedometer and an 80mm tachometer.

I am fitting these to a glove box lid, so I started by marking up and drilling out the necessary mounting holes:

It was then time to fit the dials, and wire them up to a connector plug to allow easy removal from the rest of the wiring loom.

The new speedometer is programmable so it can be used with a wide variety of speed sensors and can be programmed to suit your wheel/tyres, diff and gearbox – and any changes to any of these the speedometer can be reprogrammed very easily – if I had a mechanical speedometer, I’d need to send it off for recalibration if I ever made any changes.

It also provides the following features:
2 trip counters
0-xxmph time (comes as default set as 0-60mph)
1/4 mile time
Max speed recall
In built indicator lamps

I also fitted a 3-spoke Momo steering wheel from an Evo 6, which is slightly smaller than the standard wheel from the VR-4, and placed the dials in place (but the glove box lid is not secured to the dash properly yet)

Whilst I was fiddling with wiring and electronics, my dad was concentrating on welding, and we now have the passenger side rear suspension mount and floor completed, as well as the exhausts now properly mounted on cotton reel mounts, rather than suspended from bits of electrical wire.

More wiring! More headaches!

Other than general tidying and removal of extra length, the main thing that needs sorting now wiring wise is for about the only electrical systems left on the vehicle – lights, horn and wiper!

So – onto those then! Wiring for horn + front lights was identified, tidied, routed, loomed and affixed:

With a nice connector plug ready to make removal of the fibreglass flip front (which has been ordered, awaiting delivery) as simple as possible.

And the rear lights were dug out of storage, bulbs checked and replaced where necessary, and wired up, including tidying up and re-looming the run of wires to the rear: