RobinJI

The oil's more than likely leaked from the gearbox over time, if it's leaked, then been topped up, then leaked, topped up etc... Then it would easily end up dumping more oil than its actual capacity into the motor. I'd chuck a new seal in the gearbox, clean everything up and carry on. It shouldn't have done any damage. For the seal just search somewhere like simplybearings.com for a matching size, seals and bearings in industrial stuff tend to be fairly generic. Before going too far with things the main thing will be to check that the bed of the lathe isn't overly warn. If it is you'll be fighting the thing forever and it's usually prohibitively expensive to repair. If the bed's good most other stuff's usually pretty fixable.

I've had noisy bearings with no play in the past too. Usually if you hold the suspension spring and spin the wheel you can feel the roughness in the bearing amplified by the springs wobblyness when you can't feel it otherwise. Could be worth a go before messing around with gearboxes. I've had rears sound like fronts and left's sound like rights etc too, so check all 4 before ruling them out.

Thanks guys. It's amazing how much nicer it is to work on on a spit Mike, but it's all too easy to get carried away with the idea of 'if I ever might want to do this, now would be the time as it's so much easier with it in the air'. Danny, basically it's just because the old lot was knackered, I like making stuff and if I'm lucky it might go round corners better now. Not that 924s don't handle well to start with. I've moved the lower arm inner pivots up about 40mm and the ball joint down a similar amount, letting it sit pretty low without putting the roll centre underground (I'm sure you know, but I stumbled across this great explanation of why that matters the other day) I've also made very offset top mounts that give way more caster and push the whole strut assembly outboard without the increased SAI/KPI I'd get from just a lengthened wishbone. I've replaced the steering rack with a mk2 escort quick rack to speed up the steering and make spares easier in the future, and the uprights I've made use yaris rear wheel bearing assemblies and have brake mount's to take mk2/3 golf brakes. So it's now 4x100 (originally 4x108) and brake upgrades will be available off the shelf going forward. The back ends getting a similar treatment; a tube subframe with new arms, tweaked pivot points, Audi S3 rear brakes, mk4 golf front wheel bearings and CV joints etc. I'm essentially just using parts bin stuff to hopefully improve performance while keeping cost (current and servicing) low.

Well this seems to have died so I guess I'd better stop lurking and post something. I finally finished making the bits to bolt the first wheel onto my 924, the wishbone's only temporary until I get more laser cut parts to have another go: Then this weekend I went and collected a pair of seats, then test fitted the drivers one: Might even finish it one day!

Would it cost more than £1000 to get your Mondeo fixed? It can seem silly to spend a car's full value fixing it but buying another ageing cheap car is just resetting the lottery of what could go wrong next. Fixing it on the other hand removes one item from that lottery and leaves you with a car you know you like, you know is mostly good and you know suits your needs.

I think you'll really struggle to get a constant force over a varying distance. I'm fairly sure that the power of attraction varies as an inverse square function of distance, and as such it'll be linear-ish at larger distances, (although relatively weak), but never quite a constant force. I don't believe there's much you could do about this other than using control systems doing something clever with relating the voltage to the distance.

As I was at the unit this evening I had a nose under my friends 240z's bonnet to see what he'd done for his AN lines. He seems to have a line with a barbed fitting onto the fuel filter at one end, and an AN fitting onto a distribution block at the other. I guess if you use -6 so it's 8mm ID, and its a soft hose then you can just not use an AN fitting one end. On the other hand, if you want the fancy bits throughout then the thingy you linked too looks right to me, but I'm going off nothing more than the description! The aforementioned line: And a couple of engine bay shots for good measure, and to show how worth it AN fittings are:

I can't help with formulas or anything, but I've spent a while at work messing around with magnetic locks recently. I tried to do a little research into whether the design of the winding had an effect on the magnetic fields size/strength ratio (we didn't need much strength but needed it to work over a slight distance). I drew a bit of a blank but from what I saw while looking, for the sort of thing you're talking about the calculations didn't look too tricky (depending on the orientation of the rod to the coil.) Sadly I didn't go into it enough to be much help to you though . We were restricted to budget off the shelf part's, so beyond seeing if I could find any trends I didn't need to worry about numbers too much as the products spec sheets told me what I needed to know.

Not usually, but I guess we could save some money on bolts and welding if we switched to self adhesive backed stuff.

Thanks for the nearly 6 year bump, but I'm now nearly 5 years into a different profession. I still need to get stuff cut, but I don't think the average plotter would manage the 304 stainless steel we usually use.

As above really, that should be work for me. There's even a very slight chance of the porsche working around then. I'd have had to bail on this Sunday in the end as life's gone a bit hectic recently and if I'm not working I'll need the time to sort other stuff out.

2019? well, maybe the end of 2018 of I'm lucky! I'm happy to resign myself to the e36 for now. At least it's slightly interesting/modified.

Like Luke, I'm still up for this if other people still are.

I never have much trust in putting a car on 4 axle stands. I tend to go with 2 well placed stands then something more secure. I welded up a sturdy axle stand height tressel that I use if I need to take all 4 wheels off. If 2 can stay on I tend to either just do with work one end at a time or place the other 2 wheels on something; either ramps or an old pair of wheels usually. A decent jack that lifts to a good height and rolls well enough to not drag the car towards you as it goes up is a godsend though. My 318tds now has another 12 months MOT. It only needed one front arm bush (although I changed the pair) and some trimming of the arch liners where the lower offset 5 series wheels were catching, not bad for a 19 year old £600 car that I haven't really touched for a year!

What that guy said. ^ There's no way in hell I'll get the 924 done by then, so I'll be heading up in the e36. I'm still keen for this.