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December 2004

Differential Oil Seals and Exhaust

I have put both modifications on one page as to be honest they don't justify a page to themselves each.

Oil Seals

The car was sitting on a garage ramp the other week, having the tracking done again (I seem to knock the suspension out of alignment every 3 months on average!!!) when I noticed a lot of oil collecting under one of the driveshaft housings, further inspection revealed that one of the seals had started to leak.

Fair enough, I had to go to the local ford dealer and pick up a new gasket for the engine so I thought I'll get those at the same time. Off I went and asked for the oil seals - to be told "sorry we don't make them anymore", slightly miffed I went off to Partco and was told the same. I then tried my local motorfactors who couldn't get hold of them either, nor could Burton Power, or Rally Design! I finally saw an advert for Kit-Fit in the back of Which Kit Car? Finally some luck as they had them in stock - But there are two sizes so I ordered one set in each size and agreed that I could return the unused items as credit.

So after ordering them I then had to fit them, now driveshafts are only about 20mm in diameter so how big do you think the seals are 25,30mm maybe nope they are over 60mm in diameter, now I had another problem there was nothing in the garage I could use to drift the seals in. So I took the easy option and sent the car to Tiger to get the seals replaced, this took them about an hour and a half and although it cost me it was easier than struggling while sitting on the floor of the garage especially as they put it on a car lift to do the job.

Exhaust Repacking

Exhaust packing, not one of my favourite topics as it never seems to last long, in fact the last lot I used lasted about 500 miles before disappearing out of the tailpipe. So instead of packing it with the same material I ordered a repacking kit from Wunoff.

This kit instead of just using the matting used stainless steel wire wool as the packing material with a thin layer of matting. However this did present a problem, the design of the silencer means that the central perforated tube cannot be removed and everything has to slide down into the container.

So I needed a way of wrapping wire wool around a perforated tube which you cannot get to! The solution was found with a piece of old drainpipe just the size to go over the tube, I then wrapped the tube with the wire wool and finished off with the exhaust wrap. This was slid down into the silencer body (with some difficulty) before removing the tube. The tube however didn't want to come out so I resorted to using the workmate as a slide hammer, by placing the plastic tube between the sides of the main platform, sitting on the platform and pulling the tube up against the underside of the platform to make it slide out, eventually after about 15 minutes work it did and I could refit the end-cap and put it back on the car.

The pictures below will hopefully explain this a bit better.

Preparing to load exhaust (not making a missile launcher) Belive it or not all the wire wool ended up in the silencer Wrapping wire wool View of silencer interior after fitting

After it was fitted I took the car out for a test run, although it isn't as quiet as when packed with the fibre material only, it should last a lot longer and not be gone in a few weeks.